Posted on 05/19/2007 5:23:46 PM PDT by Lorianne
Site contained violent, sex-oriented images one official called 'repulsive' ___ The soldier son of talk radio relationship counselor Laura Schlessinger is under investigation for a graphic personal Web page that one Army official has called "repulsive."
The MySpace page, publicly available until Friday when it disappeared from the Internet, included cartoon depictions of rape, murder, torture and child molestation; photographs of soldiers with guns in their mouths; a photograph of a bound and blindfolded detainee captioned "My Sweet Little Habib"; accounts of illicit drug use; and a blog entry headlined by a series of obscenities and racial epithets.
The site is credited to and includes many photographs of Deryk Schlessinger, the 21-year-old son of the talk radio personality known simply as Dr. Laura. Broadcast locally on 570 KNRS, "Family Values Talk Radio," the former family counselor spends three hours daily taking calls and offering advice on morals, ethics and values. She broadcast a show from Fort Douglas, in Salt Lake City, last week.
Military leaders have long grappled with how to balance positive publicity and operational security with technological opportunities for troops to tell their personal stories.
The Pentagon last week shut down access to a variety of video-sharing and social networking Internet sites, including MySpace, on its computer systems worldwide. Officials said the change was made to enhance security and protect a strained bandwidth, but critics worried that it might close a public window into the lives of deployed U.S. troops, some of which can be raw, frightening, violent and revealing.
"Yes . . . F---ING Yes!!!" said one blog entry on the Schlessinger site. "I LOVE MY JOB, it takes everything reckless and deviant and heathenistic and just overall bad about me and hyper focuses these traits into my job of running around this horrid place doing nasty things to people that deserve it . . . and some that don't."
Deryk Schlessinger joined the Army in 2004, telling a crowd of Santa Barbara, Calif., Army reservists gathered for an appearance by his mother that he resented the way Americans criticize the war without recognizing soldiers' sacrifices.
"Real people were fighting, and I wanted to be part of that," the younger Schlessinger said, according to The Associated Press.
Since Deryk Schlessinger deployed earlier this year, his mother's talk show increasingly has been focused on the battles being waged in Iraq and Afghanistan and the wars' effects on families back home. Meanwhile, the radio host has taken to referring to herself as "the proud mother of a deployed American paratrooper" and speaks frequently about her soldier son before military audiences nationwide.
Deryk Schlessinger did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment from The Tribune.
Mike Paul, spokesman for Laura Schlessinger, released a statement which said, in part, "We hope all news media outlets will respect his privacy for his safety and the safety of those serving with him." In an interview with The Tribune, Paul suggested that the page could be a fake.
That was a contention echoed by Army spokesman Robert Tallman, who said "it may be possible that our enemies are actually behind this.
"Our enemies are adaptive, technologically sophisticated, and truly understand the importance of the information battlespace," Tallman continued. "Sadly, they will use that space to promulgate and disseminate untrue propaganda."
MySpace is an online social network in which users link pages together through like interests and shared friendships. The Deryk Schlessinger page included nearly a dozen "friends," including a number of soldiers in Afghanistan, several of whom were linked back to Schlessinger's page and some of whom had additional photos of, and comments from, Schlessinger on their sites.
Deryk Schlessinger's Web site indicated the 21-year-old soldier is stationed in Kandahar, Afghanistan, where, the site's author writes, "godless crazy people like me," have become "a generation of apathetic killers."
The site indicated Schlessinger's team has survived numerous mortar, rocket and roadside bomb attacks. It also included several graphic cartoons. In one of the stick drawings, a top-hatted man laughs as he rapes a bound and bleeding woman in front of her family. In another depiction, a man forces a boy to perform oral sex at knifepoint as the child's mother pleads for her son's life.
It's unclear who created the cartoons, but Army spokesman Robert Tallman said the drawings "are repulsive and not anywhere near being acceptable," for a soldier's personal Web page.
The Tribune learned of the Web page earlier this week from a former schoolmate of Deryk Schlessinger. Army officials said they were unaware of the site until alerted to its presence by the newspaper Thursday.
David Accetta, public affairs director for the 82nd Airborne Division in Afghanistan, said the Army "will investigate thoroughly and impartially."
In an e-mail to 82nd commanders, Accetta asked to see "how the site is being administered and if we can shut it down." By Friday morning the site was offline, but officials didn't immediately respond to questions about who took it down.
Accetta said the pictures and writings he reviewed from the site were inconsistent with the values of Army special forces soldiers.
J.P. Borda, who administers an online index of thousands of personal military Web pages, said military guidelines and common decency are respected by "the overwhelming majority of military bloggers in Iraq and Afghanistan."
"There are a few bad apples and they have soured the whole bunch," said Borda, who began his site - www.milblogging.com - during his first tour of duty in Afghanistan in 2004.
Laura Schlessinger's appearance in Utah last week included a visit with Army families at Fort Douglas. In an interview with The Tribune, she said, "We raised our son to be a warrior."
After her Utah visit, Schlessinger received criticism for telling The Tribune that she didn't want to hear the complaints of military wives whose husbands are deployed. "He could come back without arms, legs or eyeballs, and you're bitching?" Schlessinger said. "You're not dodging bullets, so I don't want to hear any whining."
Schlessinger later wrote on her Web site - www.drlaura.com - that she was trying to communicate her belief that military spouses shouldn't complain to war-deployed family members, who have more pressing concerns. "I never whine to my son when he is able to call between missions," she wrote.
In your world is it a sin to be AMBITIOUS? Geesh.
After looking at their “coordinated” set of posts/replies, it looked like Recovering Ex-hippie & napscoordinator were working together.
Am also pretty sure Dr. Laura’s son has been framed by gays, muzzies or lefties. Too much doesn’t ring true that he is supposed to have said.
Starting with, as far as I’ve ever heard, he’s not in Afghanistan.
I hope these bottom feeders are caught - if there’s any justice someday they will have their reputations smeared by anonymous cockroaches ... well, since they don’t have any reptutations to smear, that probably won’t happen.
Thanks for the support. My grandmother’s maiden name was Riley.
answer .com and wiokipedia are sites open to ANYONE posting ANYTHING.
Pretty tough around here if you are critcizing a Sacred Cow ( yup, cow).
We DID respond to the points others made. I do not use wikipedia as a final authority. She was not licensed ..period. and I still find it repulsive when she denigrates her callers or people with serious problems and calls them ‘stupid, sluts and losers.” THAT is a clear indication that she is NOT a therapists.
Oh, wait a minute...she says she is not a therapist..no, she says she is a licensed therapist...uh, no she is not a psychologists, ...uh, yeah, she knows how to do family therapy..uh, its “DR” laura and “but I am not acting as a therapist”...uh, I write books and have opinions....
and on and on it goes. she comes off as a very angry woman who ACTS as if she is the moral authority...but don’t you dare call her on anything...after all, “I’m not perfect, just believe in a perfect Jewish (uh, no think it will now be Christian) God.
Now, are my fellow posters who hapepn to agree with me all in on this? After all, “they” are probably working together.
Ambition is a crime?
Sources please for whether or not she is licensed since that seems to be so important to you.
But why do you think someone has to be licensed to deal with morals and ethics as her show is promoted or to dispense common sense?
Oh and she mentions almost every week that she used to be a feminazi until she had an epiphany in her mid thirties. Before that time she wasn’t “any better than she had to be”. Who better to know whereof she speaks?
Feminazi?
Hardly, she has been using men for a LONG time to get to where she is today...that is pretty traditional feminine to me.Ha,.
the license thing IS important because in her state...she would not be allowed to practice therapy without it.
Now that she is done with Judaism..guess her new interest in Christianity will help her out in her ratings even more.
Just call me a conservative cynic.
Hey Chieftain, Dr Laura reminds me of a dumber but more successful ST Ashley...help me out here I am getting flamed from the Dr Laura adorers!
Not opinions.
Facts.
Dr. Laura's Education & liscense/certification for counseling
- MS, M Phil, Ph.D. (Physiology), Columbia University (College of Physicians and Surgeons), NY
- Post-Doctoral Certification in Marriage, Family and Child Counseling, Human Relations Center, University of Southern California, Los Angeles
- Licensed Marriage, Family and Child Counselor (MFCC), California, formerly in private practice for 12 years
Facts - not that you care.
More facts
Most of your talking points may be found at The Council for Secular Humanism in an article titled - Don't Listen to Dr. Laura Her advice is unsound, hypocritical, and cruel Ms. Presley is/was Executive Director of Resources for Independent Thinking a group incredibly biased against religion in general and Christianity and Judiasm in particular.
How one of those without an ax to grind responded to Dr. Laura's mis-speaking on Tourette's Syndrome can be found here.
Read it - you may learn something about kindness and courtesy. However, I doubt that is your goal with the ax you continue to grind and grind and grind and ... .
Another fact.
Dr. Laura humbled herself, exposing her current struggle with her faith in a World Net Daily Article here in August 2003.
So tell us.
Just what is your personal beef with Dr. Laura?
I ain't buying what you are selling as something impersonal.
So level with us and tell us what's really eating at you on a personal level about Dr. Laura.
Don't worry, we can take it.
We are grown ups (at least most of us).
Come on, you know you want to let us know what's on your mind.
Come on - give to us with both barrels!
Cheers!
RileyD, nwJ
I don't know if they started out 'working together', but they surely ended up doing just that.
Don't know if Dr. Laura's son has been framed or not, but the your theory makes a great deal of sense based on past experiences. Plus it is hard to believe he would pull such a stunt knowing those who would use it to attack his mother and father.
Don't know what part of the sandbox he is in, but he is in the sandbox ...
Bottom feeders? Nope, they are lower than catfish . You are right - they have no reputations to smear.
I was named after a favorite Uncle of my Dad ... people often ask which is my first name (Riley or Driver). Some continue to hear it as Wiley Driver which is always good for a laugh.
Beautiful day to celebrate Pentecost!
Cheers!
RileyD, nwJ
I enjoy listening to her advice and reading her books.
But I understand some people do not like her way of doing things and I say, "to each their own".
I just found this out and I am really shocked. I might have thought one day her son might write a tell-all book or something, but this is worse and sooner than I’d ever imagined. I really am stunned.
I am shocked. Is this normal "black humor" for Army men? I understand they face death daily. But it looks a little sick.
He seems to have gotten the tattoos between the two photos. Now he can no longer receive a full Jewish burial or be buried in a Jewish cemetary.
And common sense doesn't require a PhD
And common sense doesn't require a PhD
This is not the first time that the left has gone after Shlessinger. I’ll wait for proof that it was him.
apology for the double reply.
I KNOW....I was telling that other freeper that!
“According to Dr. Laura she’s a recovering ex feminist. During her early years she worked and did many things she’s ashamed of now.”
LOL! You did read what you posted, right? How long has her show been on the air? She “worked” then (her early years)....she “works” now. And depending on how long her show has been on the air she may have “worked” when her son was growing up. So much for her condemnation of working women. Unless of course she is using herself as a bad example.
Did my own research. According to answers.com she has had her show since 1994. That means her son was about 13 at that time. Hmmmmmmmm. It appears she chose her career and money over being a stay-at-home mom. And she is lecturing others?
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