Dr. Laura Schlessinger has finally figured out (or bumbled into) the way to get us talking about her again.

She "articulated the 'n' word all the way out — more than one time." She wasn't calling anyone the epithet or adopting the word as her way of speaking, only referring to the way other people talk: "black guys use it all the time. Turn on HBO, listen to a black comic, and all you hear is n*gger, n*gger, n*gger." It was really weird to use the word on the radio, and I suspect her of doing what Rush Limbaugh calls the "Media Tweak of the Day," a remark designed to get his adversaries talking about him.

Now, Dr. Laura has apologized, both for saying the word all the way out and for not helping the caller. The caller, Jade, was a black woman married to a white man whose friends and family make "racist comments" in front of her, which her husband ignores. Voicing her suspicion that "sometimes people are hypersensitive," Dr. Laura asked Jade to giver her 2 good examples of these "racist comments." Jade says:

OK. Last night -- good example -- we had a neighbor come over, and this neighbor -- when every time he comes over, it's always a black comment. It's, "Oh, well, how do you black people like doing this?" And, "Do black people really like doing that?"

Of course, Laura didn't think that was racist, but instead of inviting Jade to contemplate why a well-meaning person might say something like that or how Jade might take a more active role to get the neighbor to stop addressing her that way, Laura opened up the stream-of-consciousness:

... Well, listen, without giving much thought, a lot of blacks voted for Obama simply 'cause he was half-black. Didn't matter what he was gonna do in office, it was a black thing. You gotta know that. That's not a surprise. Not everything that somebody says -- we had friends over the other day; we got about 35 people here -- the guys who were gonna start playing basketball. I was going to go out and play basketball. My bodyguard and my dear friend is a black man. And I said, "White men can't jump; I want you on my team." That was racist? That was funny.

Jade then says: "How about the N-word? So, the N-word's been thrown around..." Here, Laura needed to determine whether the husband's friends and family are saying the word. Laura keeps riffing about general things happening out there in the culture:

Black guys use it all the time. Turn on HBO, listen to a black comic, and all you hear is n*gger, n*gger, n*gger.

The friends and family in question aren't black guys (and neither is Jade), so what is the point? That Jade should put up with the n-word, said in her presence? People on HBO say "fuck" all the time too, but if the neighbors come to your house and say "fuck" all the time, you have a legitimate complaint. "Don't be so sensitive" is like saying "Be a doormat." But that lapse of Laura's — the failure to recognize what is special about a person's home — hardly gets any attention, because her saying the word "n*gger" was such an immense distraction. Why on earth would Laura do that? Media tweak. 

Yeah, that makes me a tweakee. But there's no tweakee defense for the blogger. We bloggers live on tweaks. Mmmm. Yum.