Dr. Laura considered harmful

On Tuesdays I go to Scripps Oceanographic for a seminar, and the shuttle bus driver always listens to Dr. Laura's radio show. This is so irritating I'm considering buying a portable music player just to drown it out on this one fifteen-minute bus ride a week.

I'm aware that an awful lot of criticisms have been leveled at this show over the years, but most of it seems to be about her severely small-c conservative axiom set. Naturally I don't buy into this, but if that were the only problem it would not be nearly so annoying. What gets to me is how often she displays this utter tin ear for human nature and as a result her advice is just wrong. Case in point: one caller identified himself as divorced with one teenage child, custody held by the mother, he wasn't allowed to see either mother or child because of (he said) false claims of abuse made by the mother. Schlessinger advised him to use an upcoming field trip, permission for which had to be signed by both parents, as leverage to get visitation rights back. Suppose for the sake of argument that the claims of abuse really were false; that's still exactly the wrong thing to do if he wants to rebuild trust. If I were the mother I would shove the restraining order in the principal's face and make him/her accept the field-trip permission signed by just myself, and then I would take the incident back to the judge as evidence that this person was failing to stay out, out, out of my life and my child's.

Can I get a witness?