I have been stewing over this story for days. Brittany Spears is in extreme danger of becoming the next Anna Nichole Smith and Dr. Phil, the television psychologist tried to make hay out of it for his personal aggrandizement and headline generation. First, he goes to visit her in the hospital. But rather than keep his intervention quiet, he issues a press release, and the story ends up breathlessly in People:
Dr. Phil McGraw is telling Britney Spears that she is not too far gone to turn her life around. “You can make this okay,” the TV therapist, who at the request of her family briefly visited Spears while she was in the hospital, says in a message to the pop star that is posted on ETonline.com. “Your family loves you. You may not always agree with what they say, with what they do but they’ve loved you when you weren’t lovable. Turn to the people that love you and listen. You have two children and you are the one in this world to protect them. There is no sacrifice that [your mother Lynne] won’t make for you, and there is no sacrifice that your father won’t make. They are the people that want nothing from you, and everything for you.”
Disgusting. Then, he planned a show around her total meltdown. And now he has backed off under criticism and issued yet another press release:
Television’s “Dr. Phil” McGraw has pulled the plug on plans for a one-hour show that was to examine Britney Spears’ latest public meltdown.In a statement posted Monday on his Web site, McGraw said the 26-year-old pop star’s situation was “too intense” for him to go forward with the show. He didn’t say whether he planned to reschedule.
The only reason this isn’t unethical behavior is that Spears was never technically McGraw’s patient. But his behavior was as slimy as it gets, an attempt to boost himself into the news at the expense of a very sick young woman.
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