"How's That Workin' For Ya?"

Dr. Phil is a fraud. If this is (fair & balanced) quackery, so be it.

[x New Republic]
Daddy Knows
by Michelle Cottle

It happens at some point on show after show: The eyes widen. The brows arch. The forehead wrinkles. Then the hulking man in the tall chair leans toward his anxious guest and drawls, "Do you wanna hear what I think?"

The pause for a stammered assent is unnecessary. Everyone knows the question is rhetorical. The folks who ascend the studio's stage are flat-out desperate to hear what the famously opinionated Dr. Phil has to say about whatever problem is mucking up their lives. During a representative week in November, America's favorite psychologist offered his televised counsel to a jilted bride, an aspiring bride with a marriage-phobic fiancé, a runaway bride with five broken engagements, two teenage targets of pedophiles, an engaged couple squabbling over the groom's bachelor party plans, a couple with an out-of-control weimaraner, a wife enraged by her hubby's Web chats with an ex-flame, and a bevy of "real-life 'Desperate Housewives'" harboring shady secrets ranging from alcoholism to kleptomania. Unrequited love, unfulfilled dreams, adultery, addiction, fear of commitment, fear of rejection, parents with violent kids, parents with lazy kids, parents with kids who refuse to wear anything but pajamas--no topic is too serious or too silly for dissection by Dr. Phil.

Since launching his daytime talk show two years ago, Phillip C. McGraw--Oklahoma native, Texas transplant, and self-described "country boy"--has taken the American psyche by storm. His syndicated program is watched by an estimated 6.6 million viewers. (Only Queen Oprah, his mentor, ranks higher in the pantheon of talk-show gods.) CBS/LandovIn the past five years, five of his books have hit number one on The New York Times best-seller list. He publishes an online newsletter, writes a monthly column for O magazine, and has done celebrity endorsements for weight-loss products. When he goes on speaking tours, tens of thousands of fans, mostly women, often pay upward of $100 apiece to bear witness. He is greeted like a rock star; gals have been known to mail him their undergarments. In 2001, People magazine named him one of its sexiest people--quite an achievement for a lumbering, middle-aged bald guy with a silly moustache. The following year, he made the magazine's list of "25 Most Intriguing People" as well as Barbara Walters's list of the "Ten Most Fascinating People." In the midst of this year's presidential race, McGraw scored sit-downs with both President Bush and challenger John Kerry (and their wives, of course) to discuss the joys and horrors of modern parenting. Around the same time, in an arguably more impressive display of clout, McGraw made a guest appearance on "Sesame Street" with his puppet alter ego, Dr. Feel. If having a Muppet created in your own image doesn't signal cultural dominance in America, what does?

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The foundation of Dr. Phil's multimillion-dollar success is his folksy, tell-it-like-it-is, action-oriented brand of self-help. His website commands visitors to get real. get smart. get going. Although a licensed psychologist, he disdains the touchy-feely, I'm-OK-you're-OK nonjudgmentalism associated with most therapists and talk-show hosts. ("Analysis is paralysis" is a favorite Dr. Philism.) He boasts of having failed in private practice because he had "no patience for my patients." If a guest on his show is living selfishly, self-destructively, or just plain stupidly, Dr. Phil has no problem telling them so. "What were you thinking?"--exclaimed with varying blends of dismay and disgust--has become one of his signature lines. Another, "You either get it or you don't," cleanly divides humanity into those who recognize Dr. Phil's wisdom and those who are beyond hope.

People love the doc's pull-no-punches, good ol' boy shtick. And McGraw's willingness to denounce poor life choices has earned him kudos from conservative quarters. In its spring 2004 issue, the Manhattan Institute's City Journal cheered Dr. Phil's willingness to pass judgment and pointed to his popularity as proof of Americans' "growing thirst for moral direction." Striking a blow for red-staters, the publication crowed that "the host is at his most compelling when addressing Americans' chronic unseriousness about the meaning and obligations of marriage, especially where children are concerned--in short, doing exactly what the elite media has attacked George W. Bush for doing."

But even nonconservatives get a kick out of McGraw's macho sauciness, largely because, let's face it, all but the leftiest of lefties are tired of pretending that all life choices are equally valid. (In Gallup's latest poll of most-admired celebs, McGraw received higher favorability ratings among liberals and moderates than among conservatives.) Truth be told, some folks don't need to learn to love themselves so much as they need to stop being such jackasses. On some level, the joy of watching Dr. Phil is that he does what most of us would love to do: speak truth to idiocy. Thus, when Christie, a singularly talentless Ohio housewife, whined that her husband was thwarting her dream of country music stardom by refusing to move the family to Nashville, what viewer didn't envy Dr. Phil's willingness to tell the yowling twit just how self-deluded she really was? Then there was Bonnie, the Texas pageant mom who boasted about how her four-year-old daughter had proudly worn braces at age two. Dr. Phil clearly spoke for all non-insane parents when he decreed that no tot should be subjected to that sort of creepiness.

So, while critics and other media types periodically grumble about Dr. Phil's penchant for hyping the most salacious elements of his show, they still give him points for dishing up common-sense advice and for not coddling moronic guests. (In a September 2002 editor's note justifying its gushing cover profile of McGraw, Newsweek praised his assault on "the culture of victimology" and noted, "Privately, we all know we have to take responsibility for decisions we control. It may not be revolutionary advice. ... But it's still an important message with clear resonance.") And everyone is simply gaga over his wry wit and colorful sayings. The prevailing sentiment seems to be that, even if the guy can be a bit arrogant and abrasive and bullying--a reputation McGraw clearly relishes--where is the harm?

Oh, where to begin? For starters, McGraw relies on much the same exploitative freak-show format as Jerry Springer or Jenny Jones, with everyone from drug-addicted housewives to love-starved transsexuals spinning their tales of woe for a salivating audience. But to help himself--and his audience--feel less icky about their voyeurism, Dr. Phil exposes America's dark side under the guise of inspiring hope and change. In Dr. Phil's formulation, cheating couples who air every nauseating detail of their sex lives on national television aren't shameless media whores, they are troubled souls courageous enough to seek help. Even in cases so marginal as to have no bearing on 99.9 percent of viewers--such as parents struggling with a child exhibiting homicidal tendencies--Dr. Phil reassures us that the publicity is beneficial to other families because these problems occur "on a continuum": A six-year-old with low-grade behavior problems today could, if left unchecked, turn out to be a serial killer down the road.

Luckily for anxious parents everywhere, Dr. Phil knows exactly how to save a rambunctious child from becoming the next Jeffrey Dahmer. In fact, McGraw has a blueprint for how to overcome virtually every life challenge, the more frightening and complex, the better. His books are subtitled like little flowcharts to happiness--"The seven keys to weight loss freedom"; "A seven-step strategy for reconnecting with your partner"; "Your step-by-step plan for creating a phenomenal family"--and subdivided into a dizzying array of numbered lists, bullet points, charts, and sidebars. This country boy doesn't just "tell it like it is"; he tells people what to do to get the life/love/weight/kids/self-esteem they want. The lure is irresistible: For a nervous, insecure nation, nothing is more seductive than a stern yet benevolent father figure offering to lift the burden of decision-making from our shoulders. Much like Fyodor Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor, McGraw has assumed that burden, dispensing direction, certainty, and moral clarity in an increasingly uncertain world. (Think of him as the George W. of daytime television.) The "self-help" label often applied to him is inaccurate: Dr. Phil isn't teaching people to make good decisions so much as he's teaching them to look to him for solutions. This is the real secret to--and the most disheartening aspect of--the Dr. Phil phenomenon. Forget personal responsibility, what McGraw is promoting is sweet submission to his authority. And, as his popularity grows, so do his ego and his ambitions, to the point where it is increasingly hard to tell if Dr. Phil sees himself more as America's daddy or its messiah.



Jennifer may be the quintessential Dr. Phil supplicant. A worn-down, middle-aged divorcée, Jennifer has journeyed to Los Angeles to have McGraw tell her what to do about her son, Tim, an out-of-control 16-year-old who is heavy into pot and porn and has a long history of stealing to support his drug habit.

Like most segments, Jennifer's begins with a pretaped video outlining the basics of her predicament. These "video diaries" include narration by guests, interviews with friends and family members, melodramatic reenactments, and, most disturbing, grainy footage from unmanned cameras that the show installs in people's homes to capture the unguarded "reality" of their daily lives. (As if most Americans could forget for a moment that they're being filmed for television.) Many of the diaries conclude with a guest's plea: "Dr. Phil, can you please help me [insert appeal to fix tawdry, silly, or sad personal problem here]?" Jennifer's ends more dramatically, as she drops her face into her hands and sobs at the thought of her son's grim future.

Next, we flash to Jennifer and Dr. Phil sitting close together in tall, red chairs at the center of his round stage. McGraw runs down a laundry list of Tim's misdeeds--which include slipping a 13-year-old girl into his bedroom and getting arrested the night before the show's crew showed up for taping--and Jennifer's parental failures. As usual, when a particularly juicy tidbit is revealed--such as the fact that Jennifer's last beau liked to knock Tim around--the camera cuts to a visibly shocked member of the studio audience (which tends to be overwhelmingly female and blindingly white). Eventually, McGraw shifts into judgment mode: "You can't be in that denial anymore!" "It isn't about meeting your emotional needs!" "You are in over your head!" As he scolds and dispenses his Solomonic ruling on what must be done--"I can tell you, that kid needs to be in a supportive and therapeutic environment before the sun sets today"--a cow-eyed Jennifer nods obediently, interjecting her acquiescence to McGraw's verdict: "Yes. Yes." "That's exactly it." "I know." "That's exactly what he needs." And, just to ensure that no one misses the import of this TV moment, McGraw repeatedly stresses that "we are fighting to save this young man's life." ("I truly believe that the decisions we make in the next little bit of time here are going to be determinative," he intones.) Don't touch that dial, people! Springer may have strippers and dwarves, but Dr. Phil is saving lives!

Ever the savvy host, McGraw likes to go to commercial with a stay-tuned teaser. ("The question becomes: Is it too late? Can Jennifer's son be saved?") Jennifer's case provides an extra dash of suspense: Unbeknownst to Tim, who is sequestered in the studio's green room, McGraw has arranged to have the boy enrolled in a wilderness-therapy program in North Carolina--by force if necessary. "I'm gonna try to help him see the wisdom of this," McGraw tells Mom. But, if he resists, the program's "transport agent" is "standing by." How exciting! Viewers may experience the thrill of seeing an unruly adolescent, whose every sin they now know by heart, hauled away in restraints--and they can feel good about watching, because this is all being done in the name of helping others.

Toward the end of the segment, the host physically propels his clinging guest toward the moment of truth. The doctor holds Jennifer's hand. He wraps an arm around her shoulder. He leads her (and the cameras, of course) backstage to the waiting Tim, but only after issuing a stern warning: You've shown courage coming this far, he comforts the trembling Jennifer. But, if you can't handle whatever happens next, he chides, "I don't even want you to go back there with me."



Now seems like a good time to pause and address Dr. Phil's particularly disturbing tendency to drag children into the cesspool of daytime television. Despite his oft-professed obsession with protecting kids from adult realities, McGraw is constantly spotlighting the little darlings on his very adult show, frequently featuring them in pretaped or even in-studio interviews about all the yucky things that go on at home. Often, the youngsters are nothing more than props used to up the emotional stakes in parental dramas. Beleaguered wife Kandi, for instance, wanted Dr. Phil's help with a breathtakingly selfish husband, Ed, who had managed to impregnate his mistress/co-worker. Installing cameras in the family's home, Dr. Phil recorded Ed and Kandi shrieking about the affair in front of their three kids; one particularly heart-warming moment featured a small boy running around the house demanding to know what an STD was.

Lest anyone accuse him of exploiting innocents, McGraw justifies such footage as an instructional tool: evidence that parents need to learn to keep the kids out of it. Stressing its sensitivity, the show digitally blurs the faces of most minors shown in the video diaries. But this only applies to full-face frontal shots. These same children are shown in profile, from behind, and in segmented shots (e.g., from the nose up, from the nose down), and their unaltered voices are heard discussing all manner of domestic seediness. Then there's the fact that everyone these children has ever met--friends, teachers, classmates, ministers, scout leaders, grocery clerks--will see (or hear about) their disgusting, pathetic parents on national television, talking about, for instance, how Ed liked to do it with his mistress on his and Kandi's bed when poor Kandi was off tending to her dying father. With that kind of exposure thrust upon youngsters, digital blurring seems beyond pointless.

For children whose problems are featured on the show, the spotlight is even hotter, such as when 14-year-old Chris came in to chat about why he wanted to pursue a relationship with a 28-year-old pedophile. In addition to revealing horrifying sexual details about Chris's childhood, the segment included Dr. Phil's playing a flirty phone conversation between the boy and his sicko suitor that had been secretly taped by Chris's adoptive dad, who happens to be the original "Survivor" winner, pseudo-celebrity Richard Hatch (a man clearly itching for 15 more minutes of fame). Then there was Dr. Phil's now-infamous prime-time special, a parenting-themed program that aired in September in conjunction with the release of McGraw's latest book, Family First. Featured in this two-hour extravaganza was Eric, an out-of-control nine-year-old who, we learned, liked to smear his own feces on the walls and punch his sister in the lip just to see her bleed. Dr. Phil informed Eric's parents that it was time to engage in "commando parenting," to be more consistent with their discipline and to arrange for the attention-starved lad to spend more time with his dad--all reasonable, if not especially inspired, advice. But McGraw also warned the couple that their son exhibited nine of the 14 characteristics associated with serial killers--and that Jeffrey Dahmer had exhibited only seven. (Cue the ominous background music.) Driving the point home, a picture of young Eric appeared on the screen next to a mug shot of Dahmer. How's that for "keeping the kids out of it"?

But back to Jennifer. In the green room, Dr. Phil talks with Tim about his hideous behavior. When Tim admits that he's terrified of going to prison, Jennifer meekly suggests that maybe that won't have to happen. McGraw lunges, berating the now cowering woman for having "rewritten the code" and for "minimizing the situation." "Are you kidding me?" he demands, scolding her like a naughty child. "What are you thinking?" Jennifer is reduced to babbling apologetically, head bowed, eyes downcast in the face of McGraw's scorn--effectively destroying whatever shred of respect Tim might have had for her parental authority. "Well, you can listen to me, or you can listen to your mother," McGraw snaps at the teen. "But you are in a lot of trouble."

And therein lies the core message of Dr. Phil: If you know what's good for you, you'll listen to me. When preparing to voice his opinion, McGraw often self-deprecatingly insists, "I don't expect you to substitute my judgment for yours." But that is precisely what he expects. It is the premise of his entire show. In fact, perhaps the most honest episodes don't involve McGraw giving "advice" so much as simply doling out rewards or threats to get people to clean up their acts. In a segment featuring a compulsive shopper, McGraw offered the young woman a gigantic diamond ring if she would agree not to buy any frivolous items for 30 days. In a more serious vein, he personally arranges for people with drug addictions or emotional problems or eating disorders to be admitted to top-notch treatment facilities that they could otherwise never afford. He often sends these people off with a good-natured warning that, if they "don't do their homework," they'll have him to answer to--the therapeutic equivalent of your dad telling you to clean your room or he'll whip your butt. Hopefully the individuals receiving such intense assistance wind up healthy. But, whatever else they achieve, Dr. Phil's grand interventions sell the idea that what we all really need is a rich, well-connected fairy godfather to swoop in, reorder our lives, and keep us in line--perhaps not the best message for most adults to internalize.



The Dr. Phil phenomenon began humbly enough. McGraw was born "dirt poor" in Vinita, Oklahoma, in 1950. His mother, Terri, was a clerk; his dad, Joe, was a high school football coach turned oil-equipment salesman who went on to earn a psychology degree in his forties. Joe was also an alcoholic, making childhood less than idyllic for Phil and his three sisters. Taking solace in sports, McGraw managed to win a football scholarship to his dad's alma mater, the University of Tulsa. But injury prompted him to transfer to Midwestern State University in northern Texas, from which he graduated in 1975. The following year, McGraw--who had married and divorced young--married his current wife of 28 years, Robin, with whom he fathered sons Jay and Jordon. In 1979, McGraw received his doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of North Texas and went into psychology practice with his dad.

McGraw often talks about how frustrating he found private practice, largely because of his lack of patience with the process. But, in 1988, his career hit a more concrete bump. The Texas State Board of Examiners of Psychologists formally reprimanded McGraw for carrying on an inappropriate relationship with a 19-year-old therapy client. The young woman, whom McGraw had not only counseled but also hired to work in his office (a no-no according to the board), alleged that their relationship had been controlling and, at times, sexually inappropriate. McGraw denied the charges and settled with the board, but, according to the unauthorized biography The Making of Dr. Phil, the board's disciplinary actions included requiring McGraw to take an ethics class and undergo a year of supervision by a licensed psychologist. A year later, McGraw abandoned his practice.

Divorced from psychology, McGraw contracted acute career ADD, fluttering from one field to the next. He ran a pain clinic. He worked in management training. He consulted for airlines. Having frequently testified in court as an expert on the human brain and behavior, in 1989, McGraw co-founded Courtroom Sciences Inc. (CSI) to help prep witnesses for trial. When, in 1996, Oprah Winfrey found herself in legal trouble with Texas cattlemen because of her on-air statements about mad cow disease, she was referred to CSI. As McGraw tells the story in his first book, Life Strategies, the daytime diva was wasting precious time and energy obsessing about why this was happening until, one day, he took her by the hand and commanded, "Oprah, look at me, right now. ... You'd better get over it and get in the game, or these good ol' boys are going to hand you your ass on a platter."

Emerging triumphant, Oprah decided to introduce the world to her new guru, whom she nicknamed Dr. Tell-It-Like-It-Is Phil. McGraw first appeared on Winfrey's show in April 1998. He was soon a regular, and wildly popular, Tuesday feature. At Oprah's urging, McGraw began entertaining offers for a spin-off show, and, in September 2002, "Dr. Phil" debuted on NBC affiliates across the nation, scoring higher ratings that year than any show of its genre since Oprah's freshman season in 1986. The subsequent chapters of McGraw's story read like the turbo-charged fantasy of some dirt-poor kid from rural Oklahoma.

By now, Dr. Phil has gotten so big that he no longer confines his "life makeovers" to individual families. Earlier this year, McGraw adopted the entire town of Elgin, Texas, located a few miles east of Austin. He chose Elgin not because its citizens are so screwed up, but because they are a painfully normal representation of, as the show has labeled it, "Anywhere, USA." But that hasn't stopped Dr. Phil from moving in and lecturing the entire citizenry on how their lives and families are going down the tubes. And it hasn't stopped him from overhyping social problems (the school system was outraged when McGraw inflated teen pregnancy stats) and airing individuals' dirty little secrets--often to the distress of their friends and neighbors. (The episode in which the high school soccer coach admitted to being a wife-beater and a Web porn-cruiser reportedly came as a particular shock to some parents.) More than a few Elginites are annoyed by McGraw's efforts, as one local put it to the Dallas press, "to save us from ourselves." In fact, a recent Web poll by the Elgin Courier found that around half the town would like Dr. Phil to take his salvation services elsewhere. But, to McGraw, such unenlightened grumbling will likely only serve as further proof of how much the town--and all of America, really--needs him.

Perhaps my favorite Dr. Phil guest was Heather, who wanted to know what to do about the fact that her two-and-a-half-year-old son, Connor, was having recurring nightmares in which Dr. Phil crept into his bedroom and put him "in headlocks." The adorable tot was shown on tape (blur-free), recounting the details of how he actually dreams of two Dr. Phils (quelle horreure!): The good Dr. Phil, who is brown and lives in a little house at the local Wal-Mart, and the bad, headlock-prone Dr. Phil, who is blue.

Since Connor's nightmares began around the time his baby sister was born, McGraw posited that the little guy feels threatened by the family newcomer. (What insight!) And since, in addition to spending so much time with the new baby, Heather spends an hour each day glued to the "Dr. Phil" show--which Connor is allowed to watch but during which he must remain appropriately quiet--McGraw ventured that Connor sees him as yet another drain on Mommy's attention. He cautioned Heather and her husband against coddling Connor (allowing him, for instance, to crawl into their bed after a nightmare) but assured them that the dreams will dissipate as Connor adjusts to his new sister.

Perfectly sound advice. Of course, the even more obvious advice would have been to ask what kind of moron lets her two-year-old watch a show that pokes and prods America's nasty underbelly graphically enough to give the average adult nightmares. To quote the good ol' boy himself, "What in the hell is this gal thinking?"

It's a question more of us should be asking about our national surrender to Dr. Phil.

Michelle Cottle is a senior editor at TNR.

Copyright © 2004 The New Republic