Dr. Phil McGraw
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Phillip Calvin McGraw (born September 1, 1950), better known as Dr. Phil, is a psychologist, author, TV personality and a dick. He is also Oprah’s bitch.
Dr. Phil works in the field of TV medicine, or “doctortainment.” Until recently, he has been a doctortainer of the highest order, along the lines of Dr. Ruth. However, experts in the field expect that he will soon fall to the category’s lowest ranks, a phenomenon known as the “Joyce Brothers effect,” of which the primary symptom is a regular appearance on Hollywood Squares.
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Early Life
Dr. Phil began his keen penetration into human cognition with his birth in Vinita, Oklahoma, a city often referred to as “the Vienna of the Lower Mid-West.” He is the son of Jerry and Joe McGraw, himself an oil equipment supplier turned psychologist and coiner of the famous aphorism “Sometimes a rotating hydraulic mud pump is just a rotating hydraulic mud pump.”
Dr. Phil attended college on athletic scholarship, playing linebacker for the University of Tulsa. On November 23, 1968, his team found itself on the losing end of a 100-6 defeat. To this day it is one of the most lopsided losses in college football history. Dr. Phil blames the team’s poor performance on “stinkin’ thinkin.”™
Like most college football players, Dr. Phil went on to pursue a PhD in clinical psychology. He eventually earned one in 1979 from the University of North Texas, and spent his first post-doc years owning and operating a construction business. Dr. Phil is not the first noted psychoanalyst to engage in this type of work. For instance, prior to devising the theory of synchronicity, Carl Jung was a vanishing-edge pool builder. Jean Piaget, in those heady days before genetic epistemology, installed custom cabinetry. Bruno Bettelheim drove a snowplow.
Career
Dr. Phil
In 1983, Dr. Phil contributed to the development of “Pathways,” a self-help seminar. The name was later changed to “Choices,” which did relatively little to dial down the cheese. Nonetheless, Dr. Phil stole many of its ideas, repackaged them as Life Strategies (his first best-selling book), and never spoke to any of his collaborators again; among them, his own father, with whom he also shared a practice.
“Dr.” Phil
Sanctioned by the Texas State Board in 1989 for an “ethical violation” involving an “inappropriate relationship” with a 19-year-old patient, “Dr.” Phil was stripped of his license to practice psychology. (To date, Dr. Phil has not completed the conditions required by the Board of Examiners of Psychologists to regain his license, and remains unlicensed to practice psychology. Anywhere.) This actually turned out to be a positive career development, as it allowed him to enter the prodigiously dickish world of legal consulting.
In 1990, he co-founded Courtroom Sciences, Inc., a firm that advised Fortune 500 companies on how to use psychology to manipulate the justice system. It is through this company that he met Oprah Winfrey, who rewarded him with a recurring segment on her show, even though he really just wanted a Pontiac G6 like she gives everyone else. Every Tuesday for the next several years, Dr. Phil appeared on Oprah as “Relationship and Life Strategy Expert,” qualified by a failed marriage he kept secret for 30 years, plus numerous moral lapses, some illegal.
Dr. Phil
In 2002, Dr. Phil spun himself off, launching his own show, Dr. Phil, which covers similar ground, but somehow doesn’t quite measure up to the original. It is the “doctortainment” equivalent of Joanie Loves Chachi to Oprah’s Happy Days.
On his show, Dr. Phil pontificates on a spate of topics with which he has little expertise and, in some cases, upon which he is legally prohibited from offering advice. Of course, anyone accepting weight-loss or financial planning tips from a disbarred psychologist who has also run afoul of the Federal Trade Commission gets what they pay for.
Over the last five years, Dr. Phil has managed to snake-oil his way into becoming America’s favorite therapist. When confronted with daily dilemmas, many use the mantra “What Would Dr. Phil Do?” or “WWDPD” or, more accurately, “WWDPPhDD.”
As such, he is the Wal-Mart of psychotherapy, dispensing cheap, flimsy advice to people who don’t know any better. His approach is marked by an over-reliance on sickeningly “quaint” sayings like “Sometimes you make the right decision, sometimes you make the decision right” and “You’re only lonely if you’re not there for you.” While hopelessly ineffectual, Dr. Phil’s advice can still be considered versatile, looking great on both T-shirts and bumper stickers.
Like any psychologist worth his salt, Dr. Phil is also an advertising shill for an online dating service.
One Great Train Wreck Deserves Another
In January 2008, Dr. Phil visited Britney Spears in her hospital room, counseled her, and then issued public statements concerning her status on E! Entertainment Television. A spokesperson for the Spears family called these statements a violation of Britney’s privacy. Of course, state medical ethics rules are inapplicable in this situation, because, once again, Dr. Phil has not been licensed to practice in California, or anywhere else, since 1989.
