Ranger Games by Ben Blum

Author:Ben Blum
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2017-09-12T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 16

THE PHABULOUS PHILS

There’s a certain useful fiction one tells oneself when watching a show like Dr. Phil’s: every person onscreen knows exactly what they signed up for. They too have watched their share of American television. They too have chuckled at the vast divide between the genre of “reality” and capital R Reality. No one expects a television psychologist to actually solve their problems. Right?

Dr. Phil McGraw used to be a middle linebacker for the University of Tulsa Golden Hurricane. After receiving a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of North Texas, he got his start in show business on The Oprah Winfrey Show, where his six-foot-four-inch frame, bald dome, squirrel-tail mustache, baby-blue eyes, and tough-love Texan advice regularly had Oprah leaping out of her chair to cry such things as, “Oooh, that’s good, Phil! That’s a good Phil-ism! Somebody write that down!” His own show spun off in 2002. McGraw turned out to be even better at tackling deep clinical pathologies in hour-long time slots than quarterbacks on passing plays. In the episode that aired the week after I learned that Alex would soon be a guest, Brandon, the former drug addict for whom six years before Phil had orchestrated “one of the first interventions on national television,” reappeared to help intervene with a new addict, Nick.

“Let’s start with you,” Dr. Phil said to Nick’s mother. “You are an enabler. You got that, right? You have no idea how many thousands of letters we get here. But we chose yours. We chose Nick. And so we come to you, we do this intervention, we provide the rehab for him at what I believe is the singular best facility in the globe.” Phil held up one beefy forefinger for emphasis as Nick’s mother wept and nodded. “And you’ve been to two meetings in two weeks. You’ve got no sponsor. What the hell are you doing? What the hell are you thinking? I just have to tell you the truth, ’cause this ain’t my first rodeo.”

“This ain’t my first rodeo” is one of Dr. Phil’s favorite catchphrases. He has a lot of catchphrases. It is possible to confuse yourself by thinking too hard about some of them, like “No dog ever peed on a moving car” or “No matter how flat you make a pancake, it’s got two sides,” but Dr. Phil’s favorite catchphrase of all is fantastically simple: “Get real.”

I have no doubt this is good advice. Millions of people have found it valuable enough to purchase McGraw’s best-selling book, Dr. Phil Getting Real: Lessons in Life, Marriage, and Family. But let’s imagine, just for the sake of argument, that you are a convicted felon who believes that he was capable of committing armed bank robbery only because he didn’t think it was real. And let’s imagine that Dr. Phil McGraw, a wealthy, famous, six-foot-four-inch former linebacker who happens to be seated two feet away from you on the stage of his very own studio, filmed by the

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