What Is the Moral of This Story?

What a difference a phrase makes.

Much of the current acrimony surrounding Laura Schlessinger, a.k.a. Dr. Laura, has its roots in those pithy little promotional slogans radio talk-show hosts throw around. In Schlessinger’s case, hers went from “Go take on the day” to “Go do the right thing.”

Innocuous as that sounds, that change proved significant. It reflected a shift to an increasingly strident and moralistic tone--not “Go be strong and self-sufficient” but rather “I know what’s right, buster, and you better do it”--that has permeated the program and grown more severe since Schlessinger’s conversion to Orthodox Judaism a few years ago.

For those who have been living in a cave, Schlessinger’s statements regarding homosexuality have angered gay rights activists, who have targeted sponsors of her nationally syndicated radio program as well as her upcoming daytime TV show, which will premiere in September and is being distributed by Paramount.

The campaign has scored some victories, persuading several major sponsors--including massive Procter & Gamble--to disassociate themselves from Dr. Laura. Paramount, however, insists that the television program, despite threats that the first advertiser will land a place of dishonor on the StopDrLaura.com Web site, will run fully sponsored.

If Paramount is weathering a storm many of its employees would just as soon have blow out to sea (taking the executives who chose to give her a TV showcase along with it), Schlessinger herself--prone to occasional public fits--appears to be cracking a little.

Last week, she posted a letter on her own Web site, drlaura.com, which she titled “A Call to Action for the Dr. Laura Family.”

In it, Schlessinger directs listeners to patronize sponsors who are “committed to supporting me and therefore my ongoing relationship with you.” Saying she will for the first time begin reading commercials on the radio show, she urges fans to write advertisers to thank them and “tell them you are going to express your gratitude with your dollars.”

While rallying her followers, this has also convinced the anti-Dr. Laura contingent it has successfully gotten under her skin.

Schlessinger, who has been criticized by some Jewish groups that don’t see a religious foundation for her views, also looks a little desperate posting the “call” next to a letter of support from something called Rabbinical Alliance of America. According to published reports, at least one leader of the group has been associated with interpretations of the Bible that many might consider extreme, among them one offering religious justification for killing Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was later assassinated.

Schlessinger’s spokeswoman, Keven Bellows, was unfamiliar with details about the alliance and maintained that the call to action is simply a way to help fans get their voices heard in a positive way. “It came out of thousands of letters from her supporters who say, ‘What can we do to help?’ ” she said.

OK, so let’s say Schlessinger is a bit of a loose cannon as well as a lightning rod for controversy. This hardly disqualifies her from being on television. What it doesn’t address is that her TV show, and its prospects, must be viewed in the context of daytime television: How viewers feel about the hosts generally takes a back seat to the contempt engendered for the oddballs they trot out for ridicule.

“The Jerry Springer Show,” after all, really isn’t about Jerry Springer. It’s about the circus acts brought in for Jerry to look at--along with his audience--in stunned disbelief. “Now let me get this straight,” Jerry seems to say about five times every show, “you’re sleeping with both of them?”

With the exception of Oprah Winfrey, whose personality and marketing genius allow her to operate on a different plane from mere mortals, daytime TV and its hosts--as in Sally Jessy, Maury, Jenny, Ricki--have for the most part come to follow this model.

The same holds true for court shows, the genre that has driven talk into retreat. Judy Sheindlin may be the most consistently ill-tempered TV star since Mr. T in “The A-Team,” but “Judge Judy” thrives because the people who come before her are so in need of a good tongue-lashing that Judge Judy provides a surrogate for her viewers, whose biggest fear should be that some of these people will leave the courtroom and propagate.

No one would want to be seated at dinner next to someone as obnoxious as Sheindlin, who, in her own Dr. Laura moment, was quoted (out of context, according to the show) as saying in regard to drug users, “Give ‘em dirty needles and let ‘em die.” Yet she prospers TV-wise as self-appointed vigilante, a sort of Dirty Harriet, armed with a gavel instead of a .44 Magnum.

Television executives, who make most decisions based on what’s currently hot, have concluded that the popularity of these shows reflects a hunger for morality. In addition to Dr. Laura, the new roster of syndicated series includes “Moral Court,” which involves two local KABC-AM (790) radio personalities, Larry Elder--who will host--and Dennis Prager, initially penciled in for that chair and now serving as a consultant.

A check of what’s succeeding in ratings, however, makes both programs look ill-conceived, because daytime television doesn’t wrestle with morality or ideology in any substantive way. To thrive in this world, the issues tend to be as black as Judge Judy’s robe and as white as Phil Donahue’s hair. It’s all about real-life soap opera, about setting up straw men to be knocked over, with the guests cast as “characters” you can instantly feel superior to and usually despise.

Trying to convey moral lessons, whether biblically rooted or not, may be possible in radio. It doesn’t work, however, in the context of television, unless reduced to the kind of caricatures strewn across the daytime landscape.

This backs Dr. Laura into a corner. To really be effective in furthering her self-proclaimed crusade to “preach, teach and nag” people into behaving as she thinks they should and restore crumbling family values, she would need to explore matters of substance in a thoughtful way.

One suspects, however, there will be little appetite for that among the audience and even less among advertisers. The combative, confrontational way she treats callers is easier to endure in the anonymous world of talk radio, but put a face on those hapless souls seeking her counsel and it isn’t especially comfortable or conducive to selling dishwashing liquid or cold medicine.

As one TV studio source put it, half in jest, there’s ultimately one moral at work behind any of these programs, and that’s to make money. Even Dr. Laura must be pragmatic enough to accept that reality and amend her act or take it elsewhere, because in daytime television, it’s the only golden rule anyone appears to be following.

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Brian Lowry’s column appears on Tuesdays. He can be reached by e-mail at brian.lowry@latimes.com.