The Naked Truth

Among the erotic fantasies I have never entertained is one of Dr. Laura prancing about in the nude.

It hadn’t occurred to me that radio’s Queen of Morality would ever do that sort of thing so I never included her. I may have to rethink my fantasies.

I refer, of course, to Dr. Laura Schlessinger, the talky-preachy St. Laura of radio station KFI whose nude photographs are the hit of sleaze Internet.

For those who missed the story due to distractions caused by important national and international events, Dr. Laura lost a court battle recently that would have pulled her aforementioned naked pictures out of cyberspace.

A judge ruled, more or less, that since they were already there it was too late to do anything about them.

These include a dozen photographs of her taken 23 years ago by talk radio pioneer Bill Ballance during the heat of a two-year romance.

The way I understand it, Ballance was Dr. Laura’s mentor in the radio world and Dr. Laura, to show her appreciation, became his lover.

He convinced her to pose in the nude so she would someday know how she looked at age 28. He kept the pictures and then, because he felt “minimized” in a

magazine article about her, he sold them to an Internet company.

And now we know more about Dr. Laura than God ever intended.

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I have nothing against nudity. I am often tempted to write in the nude to add a certain dimension to my prose. However, I would never allow photographs to be taken of me even at the best of times, of which, alas, there are few.

What caught my attention in Dr. Laura’s case is that she’s so damned kick-ass pious when it comes to everyone else’s activities and all the time she’s had this skeleton in her closet. A naked skeleton at that.

The contradiction has focused massive attention on the Club Love Web site that features her so-called Dirty Dozen. Dr. Laura, in glorious nudity, is a bigger hit than the videoed sexual exploits of former “Baywatch” babe Pamela Anderson and rock star Tommy Lee, also Club Love stars.

Seth Warshavsky, president of the company that owns the Web site, told me that before the appearance of Dr. Laura the site had 7 million hits a day. Since her appearance, that has shot up to 14 million.

By contrast, her nudity is mild stuff compared to what Club Love otherwise offers. I mean, Dr. Laura smiling happily in the buff is nothing at all compared, for instance, to the X-rated activities of Pammie and Tommy.

When I asked Warshavsky why with all the sexually explicit stuff his site offers would he want to feature naked photographs of radio’s holy mother, he replied that she’s a public figure and the public has a right to know.

I’m not sure that my right to know includes viewing anyone’s naked body, but he won the case so who’s to argue?

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Lovers, in the furnace of their passion, sometimes do peculiar things, such as posing naked. That’s not the worst of sins, but the reconstituted saint of KFI would probably eat your hide off if you admitted doing it.

What lingers in my mind beyond all that is why Ballance would sell the pictures. One answer offered by another radio personality, Tom Leykis, heard here on KLSX-FM, is the “minimalization” of Ballance in a Vanity Fair profile of Dr. Laura.

In the article, she denies their affair and dismisses Ballance as a mere mentor. Leykis, who interviewed Ballance for his show, says this enraged him. Ballance insists he and Dr. Laura “used to thrash around like a couple of crazed weasels,” and to prove the point sold the photos of the naked weasel.

I asked Warshavsky if he would ever peddle similar photos of a wife or girlfriend and he quickly responded with “No! Never!” He would, however, buy photos of someone else’s wife if it involved our right to, well, see.

The danger of preaching morality is that one’s petard is always vulnerable to hoisting. St. Laura spends her public life railing against sin and damnation as most of us live it.

It’s a terrific gimmick and has won her a large audience, but, just as I may have to rethink my fantasies, she may have to rethink her moralities and stop wielding God’s sword of reproval with such sanctimonious zeal.

Either that or put on her clothes and go home.

Al Martinez’s column appears Tuesdays and Fridays. He can be reached online at al.martinez@latimes.com