Of course, much as I admired her and refreshing as I found her, Dr. Laura wasn’t perfect. A good listener and a shrewd thinker most of the time, she could get hung up on tangential matters that would sometimes get in the way of the true meat of the caller’s issue. (It sounds as though the notorious call that triggered her resignation eariler this month might have been one instance of this unfortunate tendency.) And the more she grew to embrace her Jewish identity, culminating in a conversion to Orthodoxy, the more Dr. Laura seemed to get drawn into politics, mixing in commentary regarding Israel and the so-called War on Terror, all of which tended to undermine her cred as a nonpartisan, apolitical dispenser of relationship and family advice.
But if Dr. Laura had flaws, she never in any way resembled the caricature constructed of her by her enemies: that of a mean, hateful, rapaciously-judgmental dragon lady. Much as she frequently unloaded on her callers and spoke her mind, Schlessinger as often as not sent them off with a tender word; moreover, she was a true emotional sap, often driven to tears on the air. I vividly remember one call from a young mother with an infant child who shared her tragic story of being stricken by terminal cancer; when she mourned, “I’m not going to get to see my baby walk,” Dr. Laura was so choked up she couldn’t speak, and had to go to a break.
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