It Isn't Torture, It's "Tough Love"

Your schadenfreude of the day:

Dr. Laura's psychotic 21-year-old son — one of the U.S. Army's fresh new faces — claimed on the MySpace page that his "job" was "running around this horrid place doing nasty things to people that deserve it … and some that don't."

The illustrations include one of a man forcing a child to suck his dick, at knifepoint and in front of the child's terrified mother. In another, "a top-hatted man laughs as he rapes a bound and bleeding woman in front of her family."

Dr. Laura has been curiously silent about her son's bravery.

Insert judgmental psycho-crap about how strong parents don't raise bad kids here.

Comments

[Fluffy]

Come on, let's be fair. If you were raised by Dr. Laura you'd turn out to be a Jaime Gumb too.

[Fluffy]

Dr. Laura: "Come on honey, eat your Cheerios."

Son of Dr. Laura: "It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again."

Dr. Laura: "No honey, you can't go in the basement and play until you finish your Cheerios."

[Sam_H]

This is just a thought, but how do we know it is really her son's page? I know for a fact they would kick him out of the Army for that.

It seems really easy to libal someone by opening a fake myspace page.

[thoreau]

This is just a thought, but how do we know it is really her son's page? I know for a fact they would kick him out of the Army for that.

Not in the Bush administration. Instead, they'd give him a medal of freedom and a promotion.

[J]

I don't know much about the Doctor or her psychotic son, but I know enough about the Army and myspace to be at least a little skeptical here. Insert judgemental psycho-crap about the perils of uncritically accepting as fact anything you read/see online. Especially if it conforms to your existing views.

[aaron]

Not in the Bush administration. Instead, they'd give him a medal of freedom and a promotion.

You mean like Lynndie England?

[Warren]

Here's what I don't get. Why don't these celeb du jour get tossed out after their jour has passed on to nuit.

[R C Dean]

I've got 20 bucks that says this whole thing is a hoax.

[Chucklehead]

Dr. T,

I think Sam H meant they'd kick him out for hosting a myspace page while on active duty.

[John]

I think RC may win his bet. Dr. Laura has a lot of enemies out there. Make Dr. Laura and the military look bad? That is too good to be true.

[dagny]

I'm pretty skeptical, too. I mean, how hard is it to start a MySpace page in someone else's name? Not very.

[Bhh]

Is Dr. Laura a big enough celeb to hoax? Even in our age of microcelebrity it seems a stretch that our enemies would be so emboldened as to do that.

I could see photoshopping some pix of Sean Hannity but I didn't know she was still on the air. I'm amazed at the durability of C and D list radio wingnuts.

[jb]

Propaganda agents at the Pentagon offered a hilarious response: TERRISTS DONE IT.

Army spokesman Robert Tallman told the Salt Lake Tribune "it may be possible that our enemies are actually behind this."

[wayne]

Dr T,

You are getting a little obsessive with the, "George Bush" is Satan stuff. I don't like him either, but there are other topics of interest in the universe.

[J]

"Is Dr. Laura a big enough celeb to hoax?"

She isn't broadcast in my market (that I know of), but based on this - http://www.talkers.com/main/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=17&Itemid=34 - she appears to be at least B list and probably A. I had no idea Michael Savage was that popular.

[John]

"Army spokesman Robert Tallman told the Salt Lake Tribune "it may be possible that our enemies are actually behind this."

That might be the case. What is so frustraiting is that the military isn't doing the same thing. How hard would it be to find a look alike of the Iranian President and film the look alike engaged in various acts of sodomy with very young looking males and post said video on the web?

[P Brooks]

"How hard would it be to find a look alike of the Iranian President and film the look alike engaged in various acts of sodomy with very young looking males and post said video on the web?"

You could put a goat in the show, too, but why would you want to make him more popular than he already is?

[Bhh]

I did not know that. I thought she rode the anti-sex league Monicagate stuff to some fame and then wandered off.

[waltlaw]

I worked in a large bookstore in the nineties when Dr Laura came to sign her new book. The line of people waiting to talk to her snaked through several departments and up and down the stairs. She is well remembered as one of the most unpleasant and demanding authors ever to visit.
Her son came along and also made the list. He ran around wild and undisciplined and annoyed everyone except his mother.
It's a very liberal bookstore but the good doctor's son inspired some very authoritarian comments regarding proper child care. Some of us wondered how he would turn out.

[mk]

Does anyone else remember that Dr. Laura had an actual tv show for a few minutes? I stumbled upon it and it was the most joyless, miserable and boring tv talk show I have ever seen. The studio audience looked like they were about to slit their wrists.
I, of course, ended up watching the whole thing. It was like looking at a really bad car accident. I just couldn't tear myself away.

[MPG]

May or may not be true. I won't judge on that, though the military seems to be taking it very seriously, which suggests that there may be at least some element of truth. Still, as others have said, this could easily be a fake.

Still, if it were true, one hopes the MSM will be as quick with the blame the parents schtick as Dr. Laura has been. What goes around, comes around.

[Lurker Kurt]

Last I heard, her son was heading for the Air Force academy. This was several years ago when she was still on WLS in Chicago.

Can anyone confirm/deny this?

[Bhh]

I remember the TV show now that you mention it. I think I caught a minute or two and it looked like something out of East Germany. We are now talking of the issues of importance comrades.

Rush's bizarre infomercial show will always be my fav though.

[thoreau]

This could very well be the doing of a foreign enemy of America, but it's far more likely to be the doing of a domestic enemy of Dr. Laura.

[D. Greene]

I went to school with that kid in Hillsdale for a year. He was a total sociopath.

[wsdave]

Fluffy,

RE: Post at 8:06

You are a god.

[VM]

D Greene - Tim Sandefur, sometimes contributor to REASON went there, IIRC. Do you know him, and have you ever checked out his work?

Very interesting fellow, he is!

[dagny]

Is Dr. Laura a big enough celeb to hoax?

Since this has been picked up by news sources, I think she's very easily famous enough to hoax. I mean, this is not difficult AT ALL.

How much motivation does it take some college kid to set up a fake MySpace account? I think "I'm hungover and don't feel like going to math class today" would probably cover it.

[Bhh]

I'm thinkin, does some taliban guy know who Dr. Laura is and decide to set up a hoax Myspace page? Not buying that if that's the thesis. Some college kids? Do they know who Dr. Laura is? Maybe. I feel sad for them if they're spending their salad days setting up hoax Dr. Laura Myspace pages. Some Kos operatives? Pick a fatter target - the aforementioned Sean Hannity. So I'm invoking Dr. Occam here and saying 70/30 it's real.

[Mr. Hacker]

Well, TFA does say it linked back with friends of his and had lots of pics of him in Afghanistan with said friends, as well as similar-sounding posts on their MySpace pages.

Faking one MySpace page is easy. Getting the guy's friends, or realistically faking the friends' pages is a lot harder. Most fakes really aren't that good.

And as for being done by "our enemies"...no. Seriously, have you seen their attempts at disinformation? They're pretty pathetic, and on sites the average Jihadi thinks are cool. They make MySpace look like a bastion of good web design by comparison.

Sorry, our enemies really aren't that sophisticated. For that matter, neither are we--did you see the photoshopped job of him that they dropped as leaflets into Afghanistan during that war? They'd be thrown off the SomethingAwful forums, and those aren't always gung-ho about realism.

[Sandy]

Frick, finally the Remember Me thing works after one post on a joke name. Hopefully this will correct it.

[Matt]

I call bullshit on this story. The Pentalon "immediately cleanse all evidence of the MySpace pages, including whatever copies and cached versions were kept by Google and the Internet Archive." Sorry, not possible. I think there is no page available because it never existed.

What's more horrifying is Wonkette's displaying of a picture of a jihadist attacking "terrorist" Americans and pre-emptively excusing and celebrating a future American genocide. What a piece of shit she is.

[Jim Walsh]

As a broadcast semi-insider, I'm pretty sure that Laura's kid joined the Navy.

[The Dolly Barmaid]

It's tough, Luv.

[Egon]

As a broadcast semi-insider, I'm pretty sure that Laura's kid joined the Navy.

As an occasional Dr. Laura listener, I'm pretty sure he's an Army reservist. She says he's a "deployed Airborne Ranger."

[MPG]

I do find it interesting that this whole issue, whether or not it is the real thing, seems to coincide with the military's cracking down on soldiers' use of YouTube and mySpace. This case may be a fake, but there seems to be at least some smoke to suggest a genuine fire.

[Utah]

I believe this story originated (I am not sure about this) in the Salt Lake City Tribune by a columnist Matt LaPlante who covers the military for that paper. He apparently recently got into some trouble with Dr. Laura listeners over an article he published with a comment Dr. Laura made about military spouses.(http://blogs.sltrib.com/iraq/). I dont think she needs to be any level of celebrity nationally. She makes some people incredibly angry, that plus her connection to the military--it is easy to imagine that the myspace page is a hoax. or not. Also I believe her son is an Army Paratrooper.

[Jim Walsh]

As an occasional Dr. Laura listener, I'm pretty sure he's an Army reservist. She says he's a "deployed Airborne Ranger."

I'll take your word for it. The whole mess sounds like a job for Snopes.com.