Asking a conservative pundit for advice on race is like asking an ayatollah for advice on preparing the Christmas ham.
So the train wreck of a radio segment that generated unwelcome headlines for talk-show host Laura Schlessinger last week was predictable the moment she took a call from an African-American woman named "Jade."
There are exceptions, yes, but by and large, this terrain is the dark side of the moon for conservatives. They don't know it well, so they tend to go there rarely, reluctantly and seldom voluntarily. And when they do, they not infrequently make Patrick Buchanan-size jackasses of themselves.
So the train wreck of a radio segment that generated unwelcome headlines for talk-show host Laura Schlessinger last week was predictable the moment she took a call from an African-American woman named "Jade." See, Jade, inexplicably, sought Dr. Laura's advice on what to do when her white husband's family and friends make "racist comments" in front of her.
And that's when the train took a header into the gorge. First, there was Jade's mention of a neighbor who can't drop by without asking her how black people like this or black people like that. Dr. Laura said that wasn't racist - which is arguably fair, but ignores the fact that a person gets tired of constantly being treated as an emissary from the planet Negro.
Then there was Dr. Laura's non-sequitur rant about how blacks voted for Barack Obama "without giving much thought" - the brainless, easily swayed black voter being a fiction beloved by many conservatives, and never mind that it was Queen of Soul Hillary Clinton who had the black vote sewn up and Obama who was forced to earn it.
There is much more, but we are running out of page and still haven't gotten to the part that made headlines and forced Dr. Laura into an apology the next day. Jade asked, "How about the N-word?"
"Black guys use it all the time," snapped Dr. Laura. "Turn on HBO, listen to a black comic and all you hear is n-----, n-----, n-----."
When Jade challenged her casual use of that word, Schlessinger doubled down. She repeated her N-word trilogy and at one point told Jade, "I think you have too much sensitivity ..."
Oh, my stars and garters.
There is, should it need saying, a big hole in Dr. Laura's reasoning. Comics do all sorts of obnoxious things. They call women by a synonym for female dogs. They talk about menstruation, masturbation, nose-picking, gas-passing and other subjects generally avoided in polite company.
Read More: Argus Leader
