Dr Laura Plans to End Radio Show

Talk show host Laura Schlessinger says her desire to talk freely without having affiliates and sponsors attack her led to her abrupt decision to end the"Dr. Laura" radio show later this year. Schlessinger said she is walking away a week after apologizing for repeating a racial epithet 11 times on the air while talking to a black woman with a white husband, then saying, "if you're that hypersensitive about colour and don't have a sense of humour, don't marry out of your race."

She apologized a day after the Aug. 10 remarks, but Media Matters for America called for her removal from the talk show. The group encouraged its members to contact show sponsors and affiliates and urge them to drop "Dr. Laura."
Schlessinger said Tuesday on CNN's "Larry King Live" that her daily talk show will end when her contract expires this year, with the last show probably around Christmas. She said she was wrong to say what she said, was sorry for it, but "there are people who won't accept my apology."
"When I started in radio, if you said something somebody didn't agree with and they didn't like, they argued with you," she said. "Now they try to silence you ... My First Amendment rights have been usurped by angry, hateful groups who don't want to debate. They want to eliminate."

Media Matters' Ari Rabin-Havt said the apology wasn't accepted because his group was concerned about Schlessinger's overall attitudes toward race, more than just the epithet. And those attitudes weren't addressed in the apology, he said.
For Schlessinger to portray herself as a free speech "martyr" is an outrage, he said.
"She has the constitutional right to make her statements, and I have the same right to assemble people to challenge the statements," he said.
It was not immediately clear how many sponsors had pulled out of her radio program but there were several.

Previously, Schlessinger's negative comments about homosexuality on her television show in 2000 inspired gay activists to campaign to get her off the air. Seems like this lady's speciality is jamming her foot in her mouth.