SUPRISED BY JOY
Listen up, babycakes.
Talk radio's little darling is in the house.
By Bill Kirtz
Is it okay to hate her husband's sometime mistress? wonders Tammy from
Ontario.
"That's classic displacement," erupts Dr. Joy. "Blame
him, not her. Listen to me-this is important: Sit down, and figure out
what you want."
What does Joy Browne want? To be the airwaves' leading therapist, nudging
listeners relentlessly toward reality.
"I have a firm grasp of the obvious," says the feisty self-styled
"relationship doc," who was translating the abstruse into English
even as she worked toward her doctorate at Northeastern. "A large
percentage of time, people know the answer before they call. They hope
I'll blame someone else or give them an out. But there's a huge amount
of space between knowing and doing."
Battling with Dr. Laura Schlessinger for pop-shrink supremacy, Browne
believes common sense, not preaching, trumps confusion, that encouragement
goes further than a slap upside the head.
Some of her counsel-like her dating mantra (repeat: "I'm a fun,
interesting, worthy person. I deserve success and happiness")-may,
to some ears, fall into the "duh" category. Still, repetition
can breed conviction. And truisms like "If he hits you, you have to
leave" can help untangle a confused mind.
Browne developed her belief in praise and a kind word-and her notion
that everything is fixable given time-while growing up in New Orleans (its
accents still honey her voice) and Denver. Raised among women, with a mostly
absent father she's described as cold, strict, and demanding, she learned
to both rely on herself and accept other people's failings.
These days, her primary soapbox is her syndicated radio show, based
in New York City. An even bigger platform-a syndicated television show-was
a short-lived endeavor, pulled from distribution last year.
Bob from South Carolina says his girlfriend prefers phone sex and weekend
dates to a wedding ring.
"She wants to be single. You want to be married," Dr. Joy
replies. "There's no halfway point. Take a six-month break from seeing
her."
Browne, who calls herself "the little darling of talk radio,"
hasn't taken a break herself since 1972, when she earned her PhD at Northeastern
and turned her thesis into a book titled The Used Car Game.
Having completed her undergraduate studies at Houston's Rice University
(majoring in behavioral science, minoring in engineering), she enrolled
in graduate psychology and sociology courses at Northeastern while working
in Sperry Rand's research optics department.
Browne remains grateful for the mentoring of the late Northeastern professor
Blanche Geer, an influential figure in the sociology of medicine, as well
as for the efforts of the administrator (name now forgotten) who let her
enroll at the university three weeks late. Finding psychology too narrow
("It was either clinical or working with rats"), she concentrated
on sociology.
And on challenging her instructors. Browne recalls that her quick tongue
got her into academic trouble. "I always asked rude questions,"
she says, annoying pedants whose attitude was "'I'm the professor,
and who the [expletive] are you?' I got kicked out of class when a professor
said the therapist is responsible for orienting the patient toward reality,
and I asked, 'Whose reality?'"
When her reality required the completion of a doctoral thesis, she abandoned
traditional scholarly citations for the gritty world of used-car sales.
For an up-close look at the tire-kicking ritual's "situational paranoia,"
she haunted showrooms to observe "geese" (customers who can be
pushed around) and "hawks" (hard bargainers).
In decidedly nonacademic chapters with titles like "Ya can't cheat
an honest man" and "Through a windshield
darkly," she concluded that used-car salespeople succeed because
they personalize their interactions, maintain a sense of humor, and make
sure that both parties to the transaction save face.
Her moral? Social scientists should study how these tactics might apply
to other kinds of negotiations.
Radio days
Browne's frenetic weekday begins at 8 a.m., when she hustles into her
Broadway radio headquarters to tape her daily three hours, which air at
different lengths and times over some 300 U.S. and Canadian stations.
The announcer at Dr. Joy's Boston outlet (WMEX-AM, noon to 2 p.m.)
exhorts its listeners to heed "a real doctor, not that slut on the
other station." Nevertheless, across the nation Dr. Laura attracts
14.25 million weekly listeners, compared with Browne's 6.25 million.
And in many markets, the demise of Browne's television show was quickly
followed by the TV debut of her more judgmental rival-though Schlessinger's
on-camera scoldings have to date drawn both low ratings and protests from
gay activists and other critics.
The other heavyweights of talk radio remain the dulcet-toned scourge
of left-wingers, Rush Limbaugh (who tops all yakkers, with 14.5 million
weekly listeners), and trash-talking Howard Stern (who pulls in about 9.75
million).
Still, fourth place in the exploding talk-radio arena-1,400 stations
compared with the 50 or so around in 1978, when Browne started counseling
listeners on air-ain't chopped liver.
Or poorly compensated. Browne makes an estimated $2 million a year from
her syndicated program and her self-help books (Dating for Dummies and
It's a Jungle Out There, Jane: Understanding the Male Animal, among others).
That's more than enough for a comfortable apartment in Manhattan's fashionable
Chelsea district, tea at the Plaza, membership at a health club, and, on
this day, a sleek black outfit that defies her chilly, tiny, dingy twenty-second-floor
office. (Radio stars, however luminous, endure office squalor that would
send even part-time professors running for Prozac.)
In WOR's grimy 40th Street talkers' paradise-also home to conservative
icon Bob Grant and gossip maven Joan Rivers-Browne's office resembles a
1970s dorm room. Lava lamps abut the huge block letters J-O-Y piled on
top of one another. Promotional posters and dolls jostle for space with
tomes like The Physicians' Desk Reference, Guerilla Dating Tactics, and
1001 Sex Secrets Every Male Should Know.
Joy de vivre
Browne rushes into the office's kitschy clutter about a half-hour before
the morning's taping. This divorced mother of a grown daughter looks trim
and toned in sleeveless sweater, boots, and tight leather pants. ("Are
leather pants too butch? Is it decent to go out to dinner in leather pants?"
she asks nobody in particular.)
A consummate multitasker, she autographs a picture for a Tuxedo Park
matron who swears by Dr. Joy's advice to never, but never, comment on your
son's girlfriend, acknowledges accolades from a woman she cured of agoraphobia,
and returns phone messages scribbled on paper scraps. Unnecessarily describing
herself as high-energy, she works in spurts and reads four or five books
a week.
Should she contact her ex-boyfriend? wonders Kim from Idaho, married
and expecting her second child.
"This isn't Barbie Doll school," declares Dr. Joy. "You're
in love with the idea of what the past was, but it's gone. Don't seduce
yourself. Deal with what is. This is Life 101."
Right now, Life 101 means five minutes to airtime. "Let's boogie,"
she says, slaloming through the narrow corridors, filled with a cacophony
of sound from live and taped talkers, to her large, dark studio. A guest
can come in and kibitz, but all off-mike chat must cease when the commercial
break ends, signaled by a chop wave of the host's manicured hand.
As the morning goes on, callers-identified by first name, age, and problem
("Son exposes himself," "Lesbian's daughter hates galpal")-pile
up in green blips on her screen monitor, like planes circling Logan Airport.
While a block of ads runs, Browne unwraps a perfume bottle, listens
stoically as her assistant offers a somewhat lame excuse for tardiness
("I need a new assistant," she later mutters), and outlines the
rules of the call-in road: "Young before old, because older callers
will wait longer. Men before women, for the same reason. Sex sells: It's
interesting. I'm one of the few who'll put children and the elderly on
the air. Accents are okay if you can understand them."
Patient on-air, Browne can bristle when the mike is off. Al takes four-plus
minutes-a talk-radio eternity-to wonder whether his buddy's wife gained
235 pounds just from taking birth-control pills. Browne delivers an elaborate
medical response. Afterward she exclaims, "What a scumbag."
Cathy from New Jersey kvetches that she doesn't like the house her husband
has picked out. "Go out, and find another," Browne suggests.
Off-mike, she predicts, "She won't do it. She just likes to whine."
Browne can be equally hard on herself. Just before the doc's hourly
six-minute "pee break," Nancy from New Hampshire frets about
her son's separation anxiety. Browne briskly advises her to "bribe
him to go to school," but later says, "I didn't have enough time
to deal with that very well."
Sylvia from Toronto says her long-term therapist is her only friend.
Muttering "kill the therapist" before she answers on-air,
Dr. Joy tells her that shrinks are mere "friends for hire. A therapist
is a hammer, but you don't need a hammer twenty-four hours a day, seven
days a week. Wind down your therapy, and wind up friendships."
Huntington Avenue scholars have mixed views of Browne and her teleshrinkery.
Communication studies professor Joanne Morreale, who studies media as persuasion,
is skeptical about airwaves therapy.
Quick-fix solutions
Morreale calls it "an example of the quick-fix society, where people
opt for instant solutions to problems rather than the more difficult and
time-consuming task of dealing with problems through traditional therapy.
You also lose the entire nonverbal dimension of communication, which is
integral in any real therapeutic situation."
Frank Lee, the former NU sociology department chair who signed off on
Browne's 233-page PhD tome and now does prison ministry in New Mexico,
recalls neither Browne nor her thesis. Veteran psychology professor Harold
Zamansky remembers her as sounding and looking "very much as she does
now: bubbly, enthusiastic, verbal, bright, competent."
With regard to on-air counseling, Zamansky cautions that since "anyone
can call himself a psychotherapist, make sure you know what you're getting,"
music to the ears of Dr. Laura's opponents, who note gleefully that her
doctorate is in physiology.
And he warns against an airwaves doc's impulse to make a complicated
diagnosis after a sound bite. "You don't have a lot of information.
You need to read a person's body language, do follow-ups.
"Psychology shouldn't be entertainment," continues Zamansky,
a clinical psychologist who sees private patients and researches behavioral
problems. "It cheapens the whole thing. You have a responsibility
to let them know they have a problem, not to tell them, 'Here's what you
should do.'"
Still, he thinks radio and TV counseling that helps people realize they
should see a psychologist is "a great idea. Tell them, 'You're not
crazy,' and get them to a source of help."
Dave from Michigan wonders whether his 32-year-old wife should swim
nude with his buddy.
Dr. Joy thinks not. Put some romance into your relationship, she advises.
Have sex more than twice a month. "Nibble on her ear. Buy her flowers."
Recently, her own bouquets have contained a few condolence cards: Her
TV show didn't work very well. "Thank you for sharing" works
better on radio, where you can drop callers with the flick of a switch.
On TV, you're stuck with guests, however dull, for an hour.
And daytime couch potatoes tend to prefer confrontation to contemplation.
Who would you rather watch? Dr. Joy's polyestered couples spatting over
who does the household chores? Or Ricki Lake's trailer-parkers trading
"liar," "cheatin' dog," and "skank" endearments?
Not to mention Jerry Springer's bizarre roster of recruits from the left-hand
side of the evolution chart.
Browne says she didn't have the time, or the experience, to make a go
of her TV show. Taken off the air in New York City after only two months,
she explains her failure this way: "When you have some experience
[in radio], they hire you for that-and then have you do something else.
I didn't have the clout, the confidence, or the credibility" to succeed
on the small screen.
Meanwhile, back in the radio studio, noon signals Dr. Joy's adieu to
the still-blinking problems on her monitor.
Cindy will keep wondering whether she should let her ex-boyfriend back
into her life when he gets out of jail. Barbara will continue to ponder
why she and her steady don't have more sex. Ann, 22 and newly married,
will stay worried about her husband's pornography habit. They'll all just
have to persevere.
As does Dr. Joy. Pushing for bookings on Live with Regis and Today,
grabbing a Stella D'Oro cookie to tide her through an afternoon film screening,
planning a New Jersey hiking weekend, she whiles away her free moments
writing two more books: on surviving your worst nightmare, and saying the
right thing at the right time.
And she's not giving up on landing another TV show. Diagnosing Dr. Laura's
TV problems as stemming from the fact that "it's a lot easier to be
ugly if you're not face-to-face with someone," she believes you can
maintain a "basic level of decency" and still succeed on the
small screen.
Will she make it? Listen to her credo.
"Let's all repeat together: I'm in charge of my own life. I'm responsible."
And remember: This isn't Barbie Doll school.
Bill Kirtz, associate professor of journalism, profiled Sean Jones
in the November 2000 issue.
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