Moonwolf's Lair

It’s amazing just how low some TV “celebrities” will sink to exploit controversy in order to boost ratings. The question is, where do we draw the line between the “entertainment” of covering such controversies, and potentially creating those controversies by encouraging people?

Once upon a time, the Jerry Springer¹ TV show was the last word in “trailer trash”, with most viewers tuning in just to watch the fights, and bouncer Steve jumping in to separate the combatants (Steve himself managed to get his own show).

Then you have “Dr Phil”².

The main purpose of his show, as far as I can see at least, is to launch into paternalistic, condescending, egotistic judgmental tirades designed to beat down and humiliate the targets of his moralistic rants with the most arrogant and holier-than-thou attitude he can muster, on national TV.

His desire for the chance to be the center of attention has reached new depths however. Not content with wandering into Britney Spears’ hospital room, then exploiting her misery to the media with his pontifications, it seems he now wants to hold court on the behaviour of those florida teens facing felony kidnapping charges as a result of their YouTube-destined ambush of one of their “friends”.

What

The

Fuck??

Those teenage terrorists searched for publicity, a “YouTube” moment – so what does this pompous asshole’s staffers do? His producers post bail for one of the teenagers, because the show wants to do a segment about them.

So now not only will teenagers be looking for the notoriety of YouTube exposure of their crimes, they can look forwards to getting on national TV??

What the hell is this guy thinking??

After the rightful outrage of one of the girls’ bail being posted, the show announced it wasn’t going to run the segment – not because giving the brats even more exposure might possibly be the dumbest idea since the Sinclair C5, but rather because posting bail violated the show’s “guidelines”.

It turns out that there’s now been another ambush by teenage terrorists against some hapless victim, again potentially with posting the video online being a strong motivator.

My question is: Will we now start to hear cries of “This is a Dr Phil video!” in the background of criminal assaults by teens replacing “This is a YouTube video!”?

Lots of people have been blaming YouTube for encouraging such attacks, by giving the perpetrators a forum to gain notoriety – but are strangely silent on the possibility this hideously bad judgment call in the quest for ratings by Dr Phil will do even more to encourage such criminality?

Dr Phil likes to pontificate about social responsibility, his catchphrase of “Get Real!” punctuates his indignant browbeating and berating of the hapless sods that appear on his show. I guess this is a case of “Take my advice – I’m not using it”?

I’m just waiting to hear Dr Phil has booked members of the FLDS.

So to paraphrase one of your own exclamations, Dr Phil – What in the hell were you thinking? Are there any populist bandwagons you won’t jump onto in order to boost your own ego?

1. Warning: Badly designed site that requires Flash to view it [↩]
2. Warning: Badly designed site that requires Flash to view it [↩]