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PROTESTS ANNOUNCED AGAINST PARAMOUNT OVER "DR. LAURA"
PROTESTS ANNOUNCED
AGAINST PARAMOUNT OVER "DR. LAURA" Los Angeles, CA -- The StopDrLaura.com coalition announced today that protests will be held at the gates of Paramount Studios, Tuesday March 21, 8:30-10:30 a.m. PST. Paramount Television Group is located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. "Paramount would never give a TV show to a host that called any other minority 'biological errors,'" said Robin Tyler, lead organizer of the protest and a member of the StopDrLaura.com team. "We will take our message to the gates of Paramount." The studio plans to offer "Dr. Laura" on television this fall. Schlessinger has used her current radio program to rail against gays and lesbians, calling them "deviant," "biological errors" and has suggested that gays are likely to be involved in pedophilia. The protest will be co-sponsored by The Horizons Foundation. Two weeks ago, the Child Welfare League of America and the National Mental Health Association of America joined Horizons to run full-page ads in the New York Times, L.A. Times, San Francisco Chronicle and San Francisco Examiner asking Dr. Laura to consider the effect of her anti-gay rhetoric on children. Schlessinger failed to respond to Horizons' open letter. "It is now up to Paramount to mitigate the damage Dr. Laura causes and refuses to acknowledge by shelving the ill-conceived concepts of a Dr. Laura TV program," said Peter Teague, Horizons' executive director. Tyler said she expects the protest to be sizable, as it comes on the heels of the passage of an anti-gay ballot measure in California, the Knight Initiative, which Schlessinger actively promoted on her radio program. "Prop. 22 was as much her victory as Sen. Knight's," Tyler said. "Enough is enough." The groups decided on a protest at a meeting last night in Los Angeles, attended by a number of leading gay and civil rights activists, and entertainment industry figures. The protest announcement comes just eight days after the debut of StopDrLaura.com. The site has received more than three million hits, and ratcheted up the controversy over "Dr. Laura" to a point where local TV stations are "squirming," forcing Schlessinger to hire a crisis management firm. Paramount is being "besieged" with emails and telephone calls, reports the New York Times (3/5). "She hired a crisis-management firm," reported the latest edition of People magazine (3/20). Earlier in the week, Schlessinger railed against her critics in a 15-minute monologue during her daily radio program. "Criticism sends 'Dr.' Laura into a tizzy" the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported on Schlessinger's strange diatribe, in which she called John McCain "despicable," labeled her critics "fascists," and even diagnosed the entire sitcom "Frasier" as "sick." LOCAL TV STATIONS "SQUIRMING" Meanwhile, some of the local TV stations that have signed up to air Paramount's "Dr. Laura" show this fall may be having second thoughts. The alternative Houston Press reported this week that "executives are squirming" at the affiliate there, Channel 2. "KPRC has found itself stuck in a roiling controversy months before the first show is even broadcast this fall," the Press reported. Meanwhile, San Francisco's KPIX, which also purchased "Dr. Laura," quickly found itself featured on the front page of StopDrLaura.com, and also in the bulls-eye of activists in that city. As the San Francisco board of supervisors passed a resolution opposing Schlessinger's anti-gay rhetoric, activists began discussions about protesting at KPIX.
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