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Dr. Laura's Lasting Truths
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When Dr. Laura Schlessinger got her foot entangled with shards of broken glass a few months ago, she cleaned the wound, cringed at the amount of blood and went about her business despite a lingering, stinging pain that nagged at her to do something.
Apropos of what she does in her professional life as the host of the "Dr. Laura" program on satellite radio, she yielded to the warning signs and went to the doctor, who informed her there were several pieces still lodged in her foot.
She had them removed and then kept them as a reminder of sorts to listen to those uncomfortable things we need to address in our lives, and in fact, to look them square in the eye every once in a while so you don't make that same mistake twice.
At 72, Schlessinger is many things.
Her 40-year radio career in which she dispenses blunt, pragmatic advice that sometimes pushes, sometimes guides and sometimes delivers a kick in the gut recently earned her an induction to the National Radio Hall of Fame.
She is also a mom, an exhaustive Lego builder, a sailor, a pool shark, a tennis player, a jeweler and a powerlifter who adores her daughter-in-law and loves to hike, go shooting, ride her Harley and wear as much pink as possible in every way she can.
Schlessinger described her tattoo. "On my left shoulder is a beautiful rendition of a skull -- not the kind of stuff you see on Hells Angels. It's got a rose in its mouth," she explained. "I said to the guy; I'm really kind of a bad-ass girly girl. People kind of keep trying to pin me down. You're this conservative, tight-ass broad. No. I'm not. I'm quite complex. I'll stand by a door all day until the guy opens it. I can kick the door down because I'm a black belt, but I wait for a guy to open it, and I thank him very cordially."
Listen to her Sirius XM show with any regularity and you notice the relationship she has with her listeners is deep, complex, loyal, loving and connected. Oftentimes after she delivers a harsh assessment of a listener's problem, he or she will concede, "I knew you were going to tell me that."
Industry insiders say that not only has her popularity not ceded any ground but it has grown, in particular among young conservative women and men.
Her newest book, "Love and Life" (she has 12 New York Times bestsellers under her belt), is a collection of her columns over the past 15 years that cover a broad spectrum of the complexities of life and love. It's a book of the truths that have stood the test of time in the way a good movie holds up long after the scenery in the world has changed. This is nothing short of astounding, given our rapidly changing culture.
"Frankly, nothing changes," she said. "The human heart, the needs of children, the pains of disappointment, frustration, and loss, the expectations not met. The fear of taking on challenges -- I mean that and more. That's a constant throughout all humanity from day one in the Bible for goodness sake."
She added: "And that's why all this holds up because there are some basic truths that regardless of the era and the new popular thought -- the truth is there are things women need, there are things men need, there are things children need, there are things parents need, there are things friends need. It doesn't change. It never has."
She is correct. Humans need words and contact to feel safe. People need to give as a way of feeling good. In short, people need to have a purpose in their lives in order to build a life more meaningful than just accumulating goodies. Our culture today doesn't agree.
"Our culture is horrible," she said. "Look at the meanness. And it comes from our media and the internet in particular because anonymity allows people to have their dark side implemented without any restraint. Human beings need restraint. That's why we have religion, we have rules, we have morality because we're quite aware that we as human beings can run the gamut from compassion domiciled."
One of her favorite parts of the book is the afterword, whose subtitle, "96 Kinds of People Who Hate Dr. Laura (and Dr. Laura Loves It!)," reveals her quirky sense of humor. Schlessinger's haters attempted to cancel her long before "canceling" became a vindictive verb. She says they are hilarious. And she's not wrong.
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Who Is 'Dirty John' John Meehan?
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https://www.aetv.com/real-crime/dirty-john-meehan
“Dirty John”—real name: John Meehan—was a criminal, con artist and master manipulator known for preying upon women in various states who he considered easy targets. A former nurse anesthesiologist, Meehan was also accused of stealing drugs from hospitals in four states: Ohio, Michigan, Indiana and Kentucky.
His pattern was to sweep his romantic partners/victims off their feet using an elaborate web of flattery and deceit, weaseling his way into women’s financial good graces and then growing increasingly abusive when they eventually threatened to leave him. A suspected sociopath , the now-deceased Meehan left a long trail of restraining orders and court filings in his wake.
Keep reading for more backstory on the infamous lothario known as Dirty John.
Meehan was a drug addict, grifter and one-time law student who later became a nurse anesthesiologist. (Fun fact: He was once accused of bringing a gun into an operating room in Dayton.)
Meehan was known for his penchant for colorful revisions of his own life story. For instance, he pretended to be a doctor who had recently returned from a volunteer stint with Doctors Without Borders in order to win the heart of his last wife, Debra Newell.
[Watch episodes of American Justice Fridays at 10/9c on A&E. And stream episodes now on our website and apps.]
Meehan met Newell on a dating website for 50-somethings in 2014, and they started living together in a swank waterfront home Newell rented in Newport Beach for $6,500 a month within five weeks. Shortly after that, they got married without telling Newell’s family.
Meehan’s sisters said that John picked up at least some of his illicit ways from his father, who ran the Diamond Wheel Casino in San Jose, California. One of the top things Meehan learned? “Bogus lawsuits and insurance scams,” according to one of his sisters, Donna Meehan Stewart. Another sister, Karen Douvillier, told The Los Angeles Times , “If anybody did anything to John, my dad would tell us, ‘You go there with a stick and take care of it… It’s the Brooklyn mentality of ‘you fight, you get even.’”
Meehan attended Prospect High School in Saratoga, California, and reportedly began having issues as a teenager when his parents split up amid cheating and violence. Meehan was widely known as a manipulative ladies’ man who thought he was smarter than the people around him.
Meehan reportedly earned his nickname “Dirty John” (also “Filthy John” or just “Filthy”) for his notoriously slimy ways with women—and the crude terms he would allegedly use to talk about these women. The moniker may also be linked to his penchant for “dirty” misdeeds; he was a master manipulator, even going so far as to leap in front of an oncoming car and put broken glass in a fast-food order in order to win settlement money .
One former classmate and roommate described Meehan as “rotten top to bottom,” untrustworthy to his core.
Meehan dropped out of law school during his second year and subsequently disappeared. It turns out he was failing out, though he didn’t reveal that to anyone. In 1990, he married his first wife, Tonia Sells, a 25-year-old Dayton, Ohio nurse anesthetist. (He told her he was 26, though he was actually 31.) This is when Meehan’s pattern of preying on women by marrying them officially began.
The Los Angeles Times notes that their wedding was bizarre ; none of John’s family showed up, and the speeches his friends made felt oddly generic and hollow.
After Meehan followed his wife into anesthesiology—Sells helped pay his tuition —he lost his license to work as a nurse anesthetist. Why? Because during a search of his home, police found a loaded gun, plus 45 empty containers for six medications from a hospital in Kentucky where he used to work. Ohio police had been investigating Meehan after accusations by his employer, a group of anesthesiologists, that he was stealing drugs that he should have been administering to patients . He was also caught trying to submit a patient’s urine as his own during a drug test.
After 10 years of marriage and two children, Meehan and Sells split up in 2000 and officially divorced in 2001. Following the split, Meehan harassed and threatened Sells until she took him to court, where he was convicted of menacing and received a suspended sentence.
In 2002 he spent 17 months in a Michigan prison after pleading guilty to drug-theft charges.
He went on to marry Debra Newell, a successful Orange County, California interior designer whose kids detested their mom’s new paramour, who had begun to “isolate” his new wife .
In an August 2021 interview with A&E True Crime Newell says that Meehan used “love bombing” (manipulation by overwhelming someone with loving words, actions and behavior) and what she later realized was coercive control, or micromanaging someone’s life in an effort to create dependency and dominate them.
Fearing their mom had rushed into the relationship, Newell’s kids begged her to get away from him. One of Newell’s daughters, Terra, said, “There’s just something wrong about him. I don’t like him.” (Terra reportedly questioned why Meehan, who claimed to be a doctor, wore his scrubs absolutely everywhere and had dirty fingernails.)
Meehan had an extensive criminal past, but he didn’t serve any time for murder. He did, however, seem to view killing as an appropriate option for handling his failed relationship with Debra Newell. In fact, Meehan threatened Newell’s nephew as well as her four children, eventually turning violent against one of them.
When Debra Newell finally began to see John’s true colors, with the help of her kids’ digging into his past, she opted to annul their marriage. It was then that Meehan went after her daughter, Terra.
In August 2016, Meehan attacked Terra Newell in her Newport Beach, California parking lot, where he had been waiting for her with a “ kidnap kit ” in his car (the kit included duct tape, cable ties and knives). Though he injured her, Terra was able to wrangle the knife away, subsequently stabbing Meehan numerous times in the head, arms and chest. “I’m really, really sorry,” she reportedly told her mother on the phone after the vicious incident. “I think I killed your husband.”
Meehan, then 57, died at a hospital of his injuries. Terra never faced charged because it was determined she stabbed him in self-defense .
Since his death, additional women have come forward with grim stories of Meehan’s manipulation and predation. (He reportedly sent an email to one woman that said, “ruining your life will be my masterpiece.”)
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Published November 3, 1998 8:00PM (EST)
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T he scenario inspires dija vu: a well-known figure, caught at the center of an Internet sex scandal, follows up a public denial by a courtroom-mandated confession. Dr. Laura Schlessinger -- talk radio phenomenon and morality maven to the masses, whose syndicated show receives upward of 60,000 phone calls a day from listeners seeking her counsel on subjects such as premarital sex, fidelity and the importance of being a stay-at-home mom -- had been caught with her pants down. Literally. True, the resulting photographs were ancient history, 20 years old or more. But suddenly they were on dozens of Web pages and newsgroups across the Net. How was the best-selling author of "Ten Stupid Things Women Do to Mess Up Their Lives" going to spin this ?
It all began on Oct. 19, when Web-porn giant Internet Entertainment Group (IEG), which previously made headlines with the Pamela and Tommy Lee honeymoon sex tapes, posted a dozen pictures purporting to be Schlessinger on its ClubLove Web site. The photos -- taken by Schlessinger's mentor, California radio personality Bill Ballance -- displayed a sportive, 20-something Dr. Laura in various stages of undress, including one classic open-legged money shot. To enhance viewing pleasure, IEG offered "Live Picture Technology," enabling users to zoom in on specific body parts. As Seth Warshavsky, the entrepreneur behind IEG, boasted on the site, "You can point your arrow on any part of her body and blow it up to full size!"
When approached by the New York Post's Page Six soon after the photos surfaced, a spokesperson for Schlessinger refused comment, noting only that the radio personality would not have anything to say about the photos because there were no photos -- though if there were photos, then most likely they were fakes. Then, only a few hours after ClubLove posted the full-color pix, Schlessinger's lawyers slapped IEG with a temporary restraining order -- citing copyright violations.
For, it turns out, the young woman wearing a smile and little else in the 20-year-old pictures is indeed the current radio queen of family values. Schlessinger's representatives did not return my phone calls, but Schlessinger's spokeswoman at Premiere Radio Networks confirmed the fact in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution last week: "They are genuine," said Keven Bellows. "We wouldn't be suing . . . if that were not the case."
If her radio faithful failed to see Dr. Laura in the buff at ClubLove, they've certainly had plenty of opportunities to do so since. "The Dirty Dozen," as IEG dubbed the photos, have been popping up on pages all over the Web like mushrooms after an Oregon rainstorm. And, almost as quickly, IEG's lawyers have been shutting those sites down.
In other words, while Dr. Laura is suing IEG for violating her copyright, IEG is going after others on the Net for violating its copyright. For the time being, at least, Dr. Laura and IEG are complicitous -- though while the former wants to quash the pictures entirely, the latter is merely trying to control their distribution. "We shut those sites down," says Warshavsky. "We own the copyright to those photos and we intend to protect that copyright. If anyone, including Dr. Laura herself, tries to print those pix, we will shut them down."
As ludicrous as the image may be of Dr. Laura and IEG tag-teaming the Net to nuke amateur pornographers' sites, there are some interesting legal issues involved in their tug of war. Typically, the creator of content (such as a photograph) owns the rights to that content -- with certain exceptions: There are limitations, for example, on a person's right to own the image of another. While these limitations often have been interpreted leniently when that image is of a public figure, the fact remains that Laura Schlessinger was not a public figure when the photographs were taken. U.S. District Judge Dean Pregerson began hearing IEG's arguments on Monday in Los Angeles -- and late Monday IEG said that the court had lifted its restraining order, freeing the company to publish the photos once more.
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