Today it was announced that “Dr. Laura” Schlessinger’s mother was the apparent victim of a homicide, and that she had been laying dead in her apartment for several weeks.
My jaw dropped at this news, and my first thought was, how could this be? If you hadn’t heard from your mother in weeks, wouldn’t you be worried? Then I read this:
“I am horrified by the tragic circumstances of my mother’s death, and so sad to learn that she died as she chose to live — alone and isolated,” Schlessinger said in a statement about her mother, Yolanda Schlessinger. “My mother shut all her family out of her life over the years, though we made several futile attempts to stay connected. May God rest her soul.”
Without minimizing the pain I’m sure is being visited upon “Dr. Laura,” I wonder what made her mother cut her out of her life. The few times I have read or heard “Dr. Laura,” I have been incensed at how insensitive, brutal, and just plain mean she is. She is eager to point out the shortcomings of all those around her, and is particularly nasty when those people do not share her views on family, love, morality, or life in general. Could that have played a role in her own family estrangement? I’m afraid it is not for me to say, nor is it fair of me to suggest it, as I do not know her nor her family. But it’s a good object lesson for those who believe that they are in some way superior or know what’s right for the rest of us: as Old Miser Madison once said, “Clean your finger before you point at my spots.”
