Stern blasts Dr. Laura, glad she's ending radio show

Laura Schlessinger says her desire to talk freely without having her affiliates and sponsors attacked led to her decision to end her "Dr. Laura" radio show later this year.

Schlessinger said she is leaving a week after apologizing for saying a racial slur 11 times on the air while talking to a black woman with a white husband.

One person who wasn't buying Schlessinger's decision was shock jock Howard Stern. "I'm so glad she's leaving," Stern said on his Sirius/XM show. "But she won't leave. You'll see." He added, "I don't care that she used that [slur] . . . I want her to leave for other reasons, everything other than the [slur]."

He scoffed at Schlessinger's claim that she made on "Larry King Live" Tuesday night that she was quitting "to regain my First Amendment rights," calling it "the most self-serving statement I've ever heard. . . . 'I want to be free, Larry, to say the [slur] . . . She hasn't lost any rights. Some people didn't like what she had to say."

Ari Rabin-Havt of the group Media Matters for America, which has called for her removal from the airwaves, similarly told The Associated Press Wednesday that Schlessinger should not portray herself as a First Amendment "martyr."

"She has the constitutional right to make her statements, and I have the same right to assemble people to challenge the statements," Rabin-Havt said.

Corinne Baldassano, an executive with Schlessinger's production company, Take on the Day LLC, said the talk show host plans to pursue opportunities through her website, books, podcasts and a YouTube channel.

Mark Masters, head of the Talk Radio Network, which distributes Schlessinger's show, did not immediately return a telephone call for comment. - With AP