It sounds like she had a bad childhood. This explains her personality. I respect her views for the most part, but I don't respect her behavior. I've never liked how she makes money by tearing into pathetic callers on her show. I've listened to her program about twenty times when travelling. I've never really learned anything from her show, except that there alot of troubled masochistic people in this country who want to get onto the radio even if it leads to being scolded, or worse, on the air.
Almost everyone who calls in to her show knows the moral answer to their problem. They just need it spelled out and sometimes verbally "smacked" into them.
Starting just about the time this women was a girl going through her childhood a movement was sweeping the country whereby parents were being rethought as arbiters of morals, reason, propriety and even discipline; it was from this movement that Dr. Laura received her impetus and careered down the path of those pioneers who convinced us that child-rearing was an art and not an example leading her to where she is today.
She isn't sharing her past with us, she is justifying her own position as self-appointed expert and bad-mouthing her dad in the process just because she may feel her readership will identify with her and create a bond.
Teaching children isn't all that hard, un-teaching them is almost impossible.
It's been a long time since I listened to Dr. Laura. It just doesn't come on at a convenient time for me. But when I did listen to her, the people she scolded seriously needed someone to tell them they were responsible for their own problems, and to quit screwing up. So I don't blame her for doing it. After all, they asked her to do so.
However, I totally agree with your description of the people who tend to call her show, or get on Judge Judy, etc, or worst of all get on Jerry Springer. They are all pathetic. Although the Springer ones are far worse than the Dr. Laura ones. At least they are trying to learn how to make an effort.
I've got problems, like everyone else. Not one of them is half as serious as the ones Dr.Laura addresses every day. Yet there is no way on Earth I could get in front of a radio audience of millions, even anonymously, and describe them. Too humiliating. They are my personal problems, and I'll handle them or live with them, but surely not share them with strangers.
Masochistic callers?I think you hit it.
So,I offer these lines,with apologies to the Rolling Stones-
Well,I went and called the Doctor Laura show
To get my fair share of abuse