Judgemental(?) Radio Advice Shows

To print this article, select file from your browser's menu, then select print.

Judgemental(?) Radio Advice Shows
by Dave Munger

Prior to the fuss about Dr. Laura's T.V. show and her alleged homophobia (actually heterosexism), the criticism I heard of her radio show is just silly. Whenever a person calls a radio show to ask for advice, I assume there is something wrong with the way they are behaving right now. If their problem can't be fixed by a change in their behavior, then unless they want simple validation nothing the host can tell them will help. There are so many other ways of getting this (especially for women; wear something tight and strangers will validate you in the street). And many of the callers' problems are so obvious that it seems unlikely that this is what they need. Someone looking for mere validation, rather than actual advice, is not likely to call Dr. Laura. Implicit in any good advice is the imperative: "You are wrong. Act differently." If you need advice from someone and they simply agree and tell you to 'just feel good about yourself', they haven't helped you in the slightest. Plenty of people are already telling you whatever they think you want to hear; if that helped, you wouldn't need advice. An extremely attractive person may never hear anything other than what other people thought they wanted to hear.

This attitude is reminiscent of the callers to another radio advice show, Loveline. It's intended for adult listeners, but the callers seem mostly teenagers. Often more interesting than the calls themselves are the discussions between the two hosts, Adam Carrola and Dr. Drew, about what must be going on in the heads of their typical callers. Dr. Drew is often asked about the risks of certain behaviors (like taking drugs a la Ecstasy, which he advises is bad), by callers who then object to the answers because they aren't what they wanted to hear. He recommends birth control and prophylactics a lot, but for some things, like Ecstasy, he simply says not to do it. Then, suddenly, he becomes 'The Man'. He's trying to trick them somehow, maybe the establishment paid him off. The only other possible explanation is that something I want is bad for me even though I want it very much. Dr. Drew has been toying with the idea of simply validating these callers, saying "You just called because you want me to tell you it's OK to do X, so just do it and die."

Thirteen year old girls call, worried that one of their nipples is slightly bigger than the other. Both hosts know that someone that worried about minor nippular asymmetry at that age has deeper problems, and they inquire. Eventually they find that she was abused at an early age, although she'll say she wasn't really abused because daddy never beat her with an actual stick, or the guy that diddled her was also a minor at the time. But that's all behind her now and she has no concerns outside her nipple problem. She'll change the subject hastily to her other problem, which is pinkeye. More questioning and beating around the bush reveals that she got pinkeye from semen squirted on her at a party. Not her boyfriend, just some twenty-five year old guy at a party thrown by seventeen year olds and attended by one fourteen year old. She insists she's still a virgin, having never been vaginally penetrated by an actual penis. The hosts express disgust for the ejaculator, confusion about the caller's definition of virginity, and concern for her dismissal of her actual problems. "No, you're not getting it", she objects, "Just tell me what to do about the nipple and the pinkeye!" The hosts persist in trying to get the caller to admit she's suffering right now and should change her behavior in some way (lest she spend the rest of her life dealing with infections, pregnancies and bad breakups). For daring to confront a caller's real problems, Dr. Drew is portrayed as judgmental.

Adam Carrola has the perfect response. He continually reminds the callers, "You called us, we didn't call you!"