Wired Women: Dr. Laura Hit Again

June 13 -- Poor Dr. Laura. The queen of talk-show intolerance is learning — the hard way — that the Internet will hold her accountable, one angry bulletin board posting or e-mail after another.

You'd think she'd have figured it out after the gay and lesbian communitymobilized last spring to push Paramount to cancel her television show.

After the good doctor — Ph.D. in physiology, don't you know — maligned gayrelationships, activists posted her comments all over the Web, picketedParamount and boycotted the show's sponsors.

In March, the studio droppedDr. Laura Schlessinger like a hot rock.

"I believe we could have earned a substantial audience in time, but thetelevision advertiser boycott precluded that," the doc whined.

But three months later, her rapid-fire radio rhetoric has her right back in the soup. This time, she's taken on the families of children with Tourette's syndrome.

Tourette's is an inherited neurobiological disorder characterized byinvoluntary body twitching and vocal tics. It affects about 200,000Americans, according to the TS Association, only about 15 percent of whomhave symptoms that include outbursts of obscene or inappropriate language.

Obscenities at a Wedding

On May 22, Dr. Laura responded to a caller who asked about whether hernephew with TS should be invited to a family wedding.

"Well, I'm going to come to your party and just scream F-YOU, F-YOU, F-YOUevery five seconds and see if you want to invite me back," Dr. Lauraresponded.

"[The child's mother] can punish the whole world because of thisaffliction of her son. She can punish everybody who doesn't want to callthis normal. But it's not normal. And it's not nice."

Egads. Speaking of not nice. …

Within days, TS families were waging Internet war. They posted a Web site,targeted the show's sponsors, talked up the cause in online chats fromiVillage and AOL to the Massachusetts General Hospital Neurology forum, and contacted the media.