McGraw's Familiar Quotations

Tonight, Dr. Phil appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman, right after "stupid pet tricks." Dr. Phil is actually a fairly frequent guest on the Late Show, which is particularly surprising since, especially in the past, he has been the subject of considerable ridicule. Recently, when it comes to McGraw, Dave seems to have shifted his comedic technique from open mockery to Socratic irony. Practitioners of Socratic irony take on a faux naïveté to reveal the foolishness and ignorance of the person they question. In this subtler, yet still quite complex fashion, Dr. Phil gets introduced as "America's favorite t.v. mental health professional," a platitude which is in a way true, but also meaningless considering the subtextual, sarcastic implications that 1.) there are basically no other "t.v. mental health professionals" and 2.) Dr. Phil is barely a "mental health professional." While Socratic irony is often very funny, it can also expose things that are normally kept out of the dialogue, particularly here, as the questioner has become the questionee. Thus, when Letterman asked Dr. Phil about many issues that have been discussed previously on the Dr. Phil show, he got very different answers. On Britney Spears, to whom Dr. Phil recently devoted an entire episode (see "Dr. Phil Isn't a Freud of Anything"), the audience got insight into this prize quote: "you gotta not pay attention to her." It would be easy enough to say that this is simply an indication that the Dr. Phil we get on the Late Show is not the same Dr. Phil we get on the Dr. Phil Show. This is obviously partially true, yet it should not permit a complete contradiction, at least it usually doesn't. We allow dramatic actors, politicians, athletes, and other non-comedic public figures to appear on such humor-driven talk shows, often even making fun of themselves, and while this is often viewed as portraying a different side of the celebrities in question, they do not deny their other work. If we are to consider this advice good and actionable, it necessitates that we ignore not just Britney in the tabloids and Entertainment Tonight, but also as she is discussed on the Dr. Phil show. In this sense, Dr. Phil has come onto the Late Show to advertise and promote his own show and—through Socratic irony, his own precarious ideology, and lack of philosophic universality or commitment—has criticized and dismissed it instead. Similarly, we learned what Dr. Phil really thinks about the kids he so desperately tries to protect on his own show. All week, we've heard the broken reproductive futurist record: save the kids, do it for the kids, don't endanger the kids. What did Dr. Phil say about the kids tonight? "I would just turn the hose on them." That's right, when Letterman led McGraw down the road that leads to complaining about today's youth (with their loud music, lack of clothing, and "grinding") Dr. Phil responded by suggesting (in an act reminiscent of one of the status quo's best defenses against the civil rights movement) that we turn the hose on them. When Dave questioned him on the future, Phil replied: "Where does it go from here? There's nowhere else to go...I guess we're just going to all run around naked." We could interpret this in a number of ways. Again, it might simply be a joke that is Venn-diagrammatically distant from the true value of Dr. Phil's wisdom. But what sort of wisdom can be obfuscated simply by an appearance on the Letterman show? Freud holds up to comedy just fine; consider any Woody Allen movie or the ubiquitous penis joke. There seems to be deeper things at work here. Phil could also be refuting and depreciating his advice given in more serious surroundings, now admitting that all that kids-are-the-future-are-important talk is nonsense. It could also be an admission that, though he is, in reality, working and fighting for the children, it is to no avail, the future is grim, his work is not working (it is flawed and could never work, it isn't reaching the needy, et cetera). Most insidiously, one could also say Dr. Phil is, in fact, creating the problem himself. To my knowledge, very few people have championed the therapeutic possibilities of hosing children down. Perhaps the problem itself did not address until Dr. Phil chose to find it. Indeed, many people probably do not find these "problems" harmful in any way, including the deplorable—wait, I mean vulnerable—children committing such despicable—wait, I mean helpless—acts. It seems Dr. Phil is an unruptured personality with a split philosophy. To use Lee Edelman's binary of the sinthomosexual and the reproductive futurist (see "The Queerest Dr. Phil Yet") we could say Dr. Phil embodies both, fighting for and against the children depending on the situation. He demands neither jouissance nor an endlessly delayed realization of an impossible end, but instead seeks to continually create problems which make possible their own solutions which make possible their own problems, this is the true child he's fighting for, the child named "America's favorite t.v. mental health professional."

The Phil in Pedophile

Today we were bestowed with another generous helping of Dr. Phil Now, where the singular psychologist gave us his 9 ½ cents worth on an important issue: pedophilia. Examining the case of Chester Stiles—a recently apprehended fugitive accused of raping (and video recording) a 3 year old girl—we heard from a variety of guests including the victim’s mother, her lawyer, a relevant district attorney, and the son of the woman who may have unintentionally facilitated the contact. What is so outrageous about this outrageous current event? The rape? Most certainly not. Rape is obviously a horrendous act, but unfortunately it is far too prevalent an occurrence to elicit such shock and condemnation by itself. It would be safe to assume that, instead, the answer lies in the 3 year old victim’s youth. It matters more that the victim was a child than that there was a lack of consent. This socially promulgated act of fetishization in the form of reproductive futurism has been addressed in previous essays, and it will likely be discussed in further detail again. In this situation, however, it seems completely inadequate to give up here. There was a strange subtext to today’s episode that seemed to suggest that—on an atavistic level of psychological relics and symptoms—we were not actually discussing the righteousness of pedophilia. Philosophically, we have only one appropriate source to turn to, Socrates, the “father” of moral and political philosophy. Socrates was also accused, tried, and eventually executed for “corrupt[ing] the youth” and “not believ[ing] in the gods of the state” (Plato’s Apologia, trans. Benjamin Jowett). Pederasty was a very real (and generally accepted) part of Socrates’s Greece, so it is an equally real (though often bowdlerized) possibility that the great philosopher was actually being accused of a crime similar to the one outlined here by McGraw^*. It is curious then that Socrates’s defense does not address such a possibility, nor does it respond to Plato’s (more Platonic) version of an ethical pederastic relationship or even the abstract idea of corruption in terms of Athenian youth. Instead, Socrates uses the important platform to defend wisdom and philosophy and, by association, one could easily interpret this as Dr. Phil’s true target. On the first take, it seems absurd to conflate pedophilia with philosophy and the death of one of the most celebrated philosophers. Yet even on the show pedophiles, and Mr. Stiles, were not characterized as the usual lot of ruffians and hoodlums. Instead, the various guests and Dr. Phil described the classic pedophile as “calculated and cunning,” “charming individuals,” “and intellectualizers.” It seems like a great many of our finest thinkers then, our philosophers par excellence, all fit the profile of the pedophile. Dr. Phil, in his aversion to pedophilia, echoes exactly the Athenian prosecutors who warn the public: “guard and [do] not allow yourselves to be deceived by the force of [Socrates’s] eloquence” (Apologia). Socrates’s defense, his articulation of his own wisdom is simple though considerably counterintuitive. Unlike most men (and I see no need to exclude Dr. Phil) who claim to be wise without really knowing themselves or the world, as Socrates says: “I know but little of the world [and] I do not suppose that I know” (Ibid). A constant, deep, and serious inquiry is therefore required, a philosophical delving into the nature of existence, ethics, society, the self, et cetera. Dr. Phil, on the other hand, inheriting the role of the prosecutor, is content to rest on “oration duly ornamented with words and phrases” in lieu of seeking out serious questions of truth. In his possibly well-intentioned efforts to eliminate pedophilia, Dr. Phil has also, through his sophistry-laden methodology and motivations, also placed himself in the position of prosecuting philosophers (regardless of whether their “corrupt[ion] of the youth” is ultimately for good or evil, physical or psychic) (Ibid). Socrates’s prophecy that the Athenian public (who voted to convict and punish him to death) and prosecutors will be reviled through history did seem to come true. Dr. Phil reveals another way the prosecutor injures himself more than the accused in the event that truth is not actually on trial: if no one is beyond suspicion and those most interested in getting to know and manipulate children are pedophiles, we might easily conclude that—in a philosophic sense—there is something of a pedophile in Dr. Phil and a part of Dr. Phil in every pedophile.


^*It seems necessary, before the argument continues any further, to point out a few facts that are quite pertinent, though perhaps not essential: 1.) Socrates’ trial is not, of course, retold by Socrates himself. In fact, Socrates has left no works extant (leading many to conclude that he didn’t even exist) and this particular reading comes from Plato’s Apologia. 2.) While the word "apologia" looks and sounds like the etymologically similar “apology” it means something somewhat different: a defense or explanation of one’s beliefs.