I don't know. I've never watched him. So, can't really say.

People want to see that someone else has it worse than they do.
Jerry, Montel, all of em' Dr. Pill is just a master at sounding like he give two shits.


Art Brut

Of course he's really a doctor. Do you think an MD is the only kind of doctoral degree or something? If you can't be tolerant or respectful of people's choices, at least don't be ignorant.

I the hell watch him, though not as often as I used to. (The guests and scenarios are getting too dramatic for my taste.)

One of the reasons for his mass appeal and for his being still the hell on the tele, which is *not*, I submit, the same as the mass appeal of other talk-show hosts, is that the school of thought that he comes out of is very practical in its approach. You may call it giving pat and/or glib and/or self-congratulatory answers, but it is a legitimate school of thought among counselors: deal directly with the need for immediate behavioral change and forget about, or find another time and counselor to deal with, the analysis.

It's a response to the schools of thought in the mental health field (such as Freudian and Jungian) that have traditionally involved years of analysis without necessarily yielding any results in real time.

The kind of people who write to Phil McGraw are usually desperate for change and desperate for it yesterday. And an hour-long talk show--with all the commercials you tire of--really only gives about 40 minutes' worth of content. So Phil needs to cut to the chase, and that's his specialty. And people get their immediate gratification, which they generally love.

The down-home Texas-style phraseology and cockiness are all theater, but he's on solid theoretical ground with the way he approaches what he does. His credentials, which don't need your approval, are excellent by pretty much any reckoning that matters, and so is his resume. He did not, contrary to your shallow judgments, get to where he is by accident.

The style is the fad, but the show meets needs, and that won't change as long as Oprah is happy with it, because like it or not, she's one of the most powerful women in the world. She knows what she's up to, she knows whether or not she's getting it, and she'll make sure she does get it. It happens to be a wildly successful business venture, too, but money is no object for Oprah. If she believed in it badly enough, she'd finance it just because she wanted to. Who's gonna stop her? Certainly not you. Change the channel.

Jeez!

Maybe he goes well with pills?