Sexes: The Munchkin of the Bedroom

Wanda: It's 10 o'clock, Ralph. Do you want the news or the Ruth Westheimer show?

Ralph: One vote here for prurience, my sweet. Who wants to watch death- dealing hurricanes when you can switch to radio and hear Debbie from Manitoba describing her low clitoral sensitivity? How can soccer riots compare with Rosalie of Omaha asking Dr. Ruth which porno films to flash on the ceiling while locked in the clumsy embrace of Husband Bob, the rapid-fire mortician?

Wanda: No need to be so sarcastic, Ralph. Ruth is good at what she does. I take it you don't like her.

Ralph: Far from it, light of my life. She's my favorite sex munchkin. Who else would tackle the tough question of whether a devout Catholic like Bruce from Dubuque shows disrespect for his church by doing it dressed as a nun? These are the very issues they duck all the time on Face the Nation and Meet the Press.

Wanda: Try to subside, dearest. Dr. Ruth must be doing something right. Sexually Speaking, her radio call-in show, has been on the air for five years. It went nationwide last September, reaching hundreds of thousands of listeners over some 60 stations. Good Sex, her six-nightsa-week cable TV show with guest stars, is just as big a hit. Every night about 3,000 callers try to get through. She's got a book out, Dr. Ruth's Guide to Good Sex, with three more in the works. She's a great success.

Ralph: And no wonder, my pet. Chicken soup and voyeurism are a dynamic combination. You could spend a decade peering into the neighbors' bedroom windows and not get half the kick of a Westheimer show. You sit mesmerized as Ruth soothingly points out, "Normalcy is hard to define," and "There is no one right size for the penis." You get to look down on all the bumpkins who call in wondering whether Ben-Gay makes them sterile. In fact, everything's such a mess out there, it makes your own sex life seem pretty good. Ours is superb, by the way. Best of all, my beloved one, when you listen to Dr. Ruth, you feel a surge of therapeutic uplift that many of us find to be missing from your average porno film. So you don't have to feel slimy at all when you hear what Yvonne of Tucson does with the Cool Whip. What more can you ask from a talk show?

Wanda: I'm surprised you don't have a bit more sympathy for her, Ralph. Actually, she's rather conservative. She doesn't think married people should fool around. She says people should keep the rules of their religion and should feel guilty when they do rotten things. That's enough to set her apart from a good many people in the sex-advice business. She doesn't even think people should have sex on the first date.

Ralph: A sexual conservative who dispenses soft-core porn will never go broke in America, dearest.