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Humbled by Pride For eight years, every time Bill Clinton dropped his pants, out popped another soldier in America's legion of decency, the curtain-twitchers and finger-pointers who stand ever-ready to hurl the Bible at sinners. Those of us with soiled souls have had to bide our time waiting for the high and mighty to tumble from their pulpits. Our day has come this week with the most gratifying demise of a gospel-chucker since televangelist Jimmy Swaggart was busted for ministering to a hooker. Television executives finally cancelled Dr Laura, the noxious show hosted by the Mother Superior of America's so-called moral majority, Dr Laura Schlessinger. Schlessinger – who doesn't actually have a medical doctorate – rose to fame hosting a radio advice show on which callers are routinely berated as moral degenerates and subjected to a biblical barrage of "tough love". The radio show is heard on more than 400 stations and draws an audience estimated at 18 million. The tube version of Dr Laura was expected to draw similar numbers when it debuted last September. Instead, its ratings sank faster than the stock market. That just might have something to do with the fact that Schlessinger is a homophobic bigot who describes gays as "deviants" and "biological errors". Gay groups waged a highly effective campaign against Dr Laura, persuading corporations not to buy commercial time on the show. Within weeks, it was consigned to graveyard time slots after midnight. Clearly spurred by low ratings, Schlessinger said that while she speaks as a staunch Orthodox Jew, she was sorry that gays were offended by her "poorly chosen" words. It was a mea culpa without the mea.
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