Dr. Phil Was Once My Guilty Pleasure, But He's Lost Me and His Moral Ground

If there is any guilty pleasure more delightfully mundane than the double-dip of playing hooky from work and taking in an afternoon episode of Dr. Phil, I have yet to discover it. Truly, the man is all things too all people -- broad shouldered and overtly manly, charmingly southern yet somehow affably patrician, shockingly blunt yet delightfully helpful. Yes, the "tell-it-like-it-is," "get real" Doc is my favourite talking head, dropped in our living rooms by the golden talons of Oprah herself, his ring of receding hair a crown signifying both wisdom and omnipotence.

Though he first appeared on Oprah in 1998 (following his involvement in her legal battle with Texas cattlemen), the Good Doctor has, in fact, only had his own syndicated eponymous program since 2002. Think about that: ubiquity in less than five years. My kingdom for a talk show. Guiltily yet frequently, I've watched him since then, baffled by my interest but not alone. Along with middle America, I tune in to Dr. Phil with many others who should know better: friends who hate TV, educated, media-savvy colleagues -- hell even my own mother, who despite a psych degree, admits to watching with her hands over her eyes. But this week, I'm tuning out for good.

Like others, I blanched at his show originally. Dr. Phil McGraw's social-Darwinist, ostensibly behaviorist psychology, was premised on the fact (few of us remember this, now) that too many families get divorced. There seemed to be something stiflingly right wing about him and his show, preaching predominately old-fashioned family values to white, upper-middle-class housewives. And the show has, as R. Danielle Egan and

Stephen D. Papson, professors of sociology at New York's St. Lawrence University have noted in their study "You Either Get It Or You Don't," all the hallmarks of televangelism: confession, rebuking of evil and, at last, redemption and salvation via Philip Calvin McGraw. Whether the ails are physical (obesity, alcohol addiction) or emotional (cheating, spousal abuse), there is always the pop-psychological hand on the forehead of guests, with Phil healing them of their troubles before walking off into the glowing graces of domestic bliss with his wife Robin. To that end, it's no wonder Phil came along when he did -- in the irony-averse times following 9/11, Phil and his wisdom were a panacea to a troubled nation too disabused of religion to turn to the gods, yet searching enough to need a sermon on the Mount.

Big hunk of compassionate man-meat

But Dr. Phil won the audience over -- that big hunk of compassionate man-meat -- partly because he didn't appear to have patience for the trifling indulgences of the women he preached to. He seemed, if marketing ploys were to be believed, to be both high-brow and low trash, a welcome, caring voice with little time for spectacle or nonsense. Dr. Phil was the afternoon appointment with voyeurism you could feel good about. Even with the undertones of Republican family values and moral rigidity, Dr. Phil was and is the pop-cultural equivalent of Diet Coke: if you consumed enough and avoided his junkier counterparts, you could actually convince yourself it was good for you.

Lately, though, Phil has taken a turn. Last year, Phil dropped from the number two spot in syndicated afternoon show ratings, second only to Oprah to a regular placing of fifth or sixth. The show doesn't seem to be drawing the crowds it used to, and the desperation of a waning cult is evident. Since her passing earlier this year, Dr. Phil has had not one but three shows dedicated to the life trials of Anna Nicole Smith, including one that firmly encroached on the baby-daddy detecting turf of one Mr. Maury Povich.

Last fall, Dr. Phil created "The Dr. Phil House" in Wilshire Hills, L.A., and vowed to lock truly spectacular guests -- racists and counter-racists, fatists and fatties, homophobes and angry lesbians -- up together in a temple of confrontational mental health. Later, when the house had been relocated to a sound studio due to neighbours' complaints, Phil took meth-addicted prostitute twins, aged them with the help of computer software, confronted them with the image, and then remarked in his trademark twang: "that's a scary-ass crack ho right there!" (that Don Imus' head was placed on a pike for using the word "ho" just months later speaks to Phil's gospel of meritocracy-- hos deserve to be called hos, after all, and only deserve to be treated with respect once they've converted to the right-living ways Dr. Phil proselytizes). Yes, watch Dr. Phil these days and you will see a new show -- less spend-aholic suburban moms, more cross-dressing husbands and drunken sluts in need of a righteous debasement courtesy America's de facto moral authority. You half expect to tune in and see a witch-burning.