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** Who Is 'Dr. Laura?'   That Evil Study

May 2000

Who Is 'Dr. Laura?'

Laura Schlessinger, now 54, was born in Brooklyn, New York to an American Jewish civil engineer, Monroe Schlessinger, and his Italian Catholic war bride, Yolanda Cecovini. She and her only sibling grew up in a strife-torn, non-religious household. Her snidely sanctimonious attitude toward the dysfunctional family situations of callers who seek her advice on the air masks a long history of estrangement from her mother and sister.

An undergraduate biology major, she pursued graduate studies in physiology, the science of the physical functions and properties of living organisms, at Columbia University Medical School in the early 1970s. After earning her doctorate, Schlessinger moved to the West Coast, taught in the Biological Sciences Department at the University of Southern California, and dabbled in acting.

During this period she posed for a number of nude cheesecake photos taken by former L.A. radio personality Bill Ballance, a married man 28 years her senior, with whom she was, in Schlessinger terminology, "screwing around" before divorcing her first husband. (In 1998 Ballance sold a dozen of the pictures to Seth Warshavsky of Internet Entertainment Group, whose website clublove.com displayed them-- and won the legal right to continue to do so when Schlessinger sued for their removal. The photos now pervade Internet porn sites; an Alta Vista search for "Dr. Laura" turns up web pages with titles like "Dog Cock," "Teen Ass," and "Women Pissing.")

Despite sketchy credentials outside the field of biology, Schlessinger taught graduate psychology classes for eight years at Pepperdine University. Postgraduate studies in family counseling at the University of Southern California's Human Relations Center helped her obtain, in 1985, a California state license as a Marriage, Family, and Child Counselor (MFCC). By this time she was already building a private therapy practice, and hosting a weekday talk show at KMPC-AM in Los Angeles. In 1990, she moved to KFI-AM; four years later, her show went national. In 1997, she became the first woman to win the Marconi Radio Award from the National Association of Broadcasters.

Schlessinger is now an industry. Her website, www.drlaura.com, hawks mugs, mouse pads, caps and T-shirts with the Dr. Laura slogan "I Am My Kid's Mom;" teddy bear tea sets; stuffed animals; Dr. Laura children's books (written and illustrated by others); Dr. Laura inspirational calendars; and her four bestselling self-help books: Ten Stupid Things Women Do To Mess Up Their Lives, Ten Stupid Things Men Do To Mess Up Their Lives, How Could You Do That?!: The Abdication of Character, Courage, and Conscience, and The Ten Commandments, whose authorship she shares with Rabbi Stewart Vogel. Her next book, Parenthood by Proxy, is due out momentarily.

On fundraising, lecture or promotional tours, Schlessinger is a notoriously difficult guest who has been known to reject hotel rooms and transportation because of real or imagined allergic reactions. Audiences are not universally enchanted with her public appearances. Her 1997 trip to Texas to address the Jewish Federation of Greater Dallas, for example, was disastrous. "She was nasty, arrogant, insulting," attendee Myra Cohen told the Dallas Morning News. "Her remarks were disgusting. She was putting down everyone in that audience."

Now married to Dr. Lew Bishop, a former USC faculty member who acts as her business manager, Schlessinger has one child, 14-year-old Deryk, whom she calls her "bunchkin." An article in the July 1998 issue of Vanity Fair describes Deryk as an out-of-control brat who, brought to work by his mother, would terrorize the radio station. Deryk, who has an artistic bent, designs covers for his mother's monthly magazine, The Dr. Laura Perspective.