Dr. Laura Exits

Advice guru Laura Schlessinger said she'd been considering ending her three-decade radio career for the last year, and the furor over racially insensitive remarks she made on-air last week was merely the tap on the shoulder she needed to leave.

Though she announced her plan to quit "The Dr. Laura Program" at the end of the year on Larry King's CNN show Tuesday night, she said she made the decision last Friday — three days after uttering the N-word and other statements about race on her show, and two days after apologizing for the same.

"I was just sitting here, looking over the ocean," Schlessinger said in an interview Wednesday morning from her Santa Barbara home. "It was sort of a peaceful wave of awareness — an inner voice just said, 'We're done with this.' The second it came over me, I felt very energized."...More

Read More

Fantasia's Not So Fantastic Fall

Fantasia Barrino's autobiography was called Life Is Not A Fairytale, and perhaps no memoir has ever been so aptly titled. Despite winning "American Idol" in Season 3 and going on to sell millions of records and earn eight Grammy nominations, she certainly hasn't lived an idyllic existence in her recent post-"Idol" years. And just when she seemed to get her life on track preparing the August 24 release of her comeback album, things went awry for the 26-year-old, as she found herself surrounded by scandal (she was accused in divorce court papers of breaking up a marriage, then was hospitalized this past Monday for overdosing on medication).

Thankfully, Fantasia's overdose was not life-threatening, but she's still proof that the "Idol" fairytale doesn't automatically lead to a happy ending. The Cinderella story behind the show is that once singers perform on what is arguably America's biggest stage, they're set for life. But for many "Idol" contestants, their troubles really begin once the show is over...More

Read More