My good buddy Mike from the train to the City is always on top of the latest Britney Spears news.  Paris Hilton, too, but that’s not important.  If Mike, who’s rather long in the tooth, thinks something is important, then it’s probably worthwhile to pay attention.  Ordinarily, things Britney are not all that fascinating to me.

Following the latest in Britney’s serial breakdowns, she was paid a visit by her dear friend and fellow entertainer, Dr. Phillip C. McGraw.  Now I have just a smidgen of envy when it comes to Dr. Phil, because he has a TV show (courtesy of Oprah) where he gets to tell people what they should do with their lives.  That’s sounds like great fun.  Who wouldn’t want a platform like that to spout?  His “tough love” approach is applauded by people who don’t have to live up to his standards.

Apparently, Dr. Phil doesn’t have to either.  This is probably old news to all you Dr. Phil aficionados, but he lost his ticket in Texas to practice psychology in 1989.  I just learned this from Jonathon Turley at Res Ipse Loquitur, so it’s new to me.

McGraw gave up his license in Texas before he completed disciplined measure meted out by the Texas State Board of Examiners of Psychologists in 1989. He was accused by a former therapy client of having an improper relationship with her. McGraw gave her a job but denied improper physical contact. He was nevertheless found guilty of violating professional rules and officially reprimanded. He then closed his practice completing the specific punishments.

But clearly that didn’t slow Dr. Phil down.  Not one bit.  On air, we think we’re watching a top of the line pop psychologist, but if that was the case, Dr. Phil would be breaking the law because, you see, he’s not licensed to shrink much of anybody’s head in California either, where he lost that ticket in 2006.  If he isn’t a psychologist, then what is he?  He is, ta da, an entertainer.

It is a felony to practicing without a license in California. McGraw previously gave up his license in 2006. Notably, when they go on his show, participants sign a contract that includes a provision that he is not medically treating them. Notably, when his show began in 2002, the Board investigated whether he was practicing without a license. In what would be an insult to most true doctors, the Board found that Dr. Phil was not in violation because he was acting as an entertainer, not as a psychiatrist.

This certainly takes a lot of wind out of the sails of the Dr. Phil show for me.

So now Dr. Phil has pushed the envelope a little too far again, this time by visiting the poor, mentally-challenged Britney, and then doing what entertainers do when they have something to say that someone wants to hear.  They talk about it.  So Dr. Phil talked, only to put another gun to his psychology-filled head.

Dr. Phil now has to worry about whether his day in the sun, riding the coattails of Britney’s issues, is going to buy him a felony.  To thwart such talk, Dr. Phil had to swallow his professional pride and claim that his visit wasn’t one of psychologist-patient, but rather one of pop-friend/pop-tart.  If his therapeutic visit, and ensuing statements, were the pontifications of one entertainer about another, then no felony follows. 

It’s bad enough to watch the self-destruction of Britney Spears, from clean-cut school-girl pop-singer to white-trash, child-endangering, out-of-control, bald-headed slut.  When she first came on my radar, in her Catholic school attire and wholesome (albeit breathy) voice, she seemed to be a great role-model for young ladies.  Well, that didn’t pan out nearly as well as I had hoped.

But for Dr. Phil to follow suit (except for the slut part, I think) is really pathetic.  This is an educated man who was engaged in a profession geared toward making more thoughtful personal decisions.  Is he really this much of an idiot, that he can impose his tough-love views on others while blinding himself to his own poor decisions?  He’s pretty glib, from what I’ve seen of him, with a pocketful of cute phrases to back up pretty much any advice he gives, but how can we take any of it seriously when he pulls such a bone-headed move?

I don’t know whether Dr. Phil has much of a future as a television entertainer of the psychological persuasion after this affair comes to an end.  Maybe, he will make the requisite mea culpas and will endear himself to the midday audience of home attendance and the chronically unemployed.  But he has clearly learned little from his mishaps with the professional licensing boards in Texas and California. 

Will he learn anything from his ‘friendship” with Britney?  This may be his best defense:  Dr. Phil failed to do much to aid his fellow entertainer, but she served to provide him no small dose of his own medicine.  And just in case the network decides that Dr. Phil is no longer viable to render tough love to the masses, I’m still available.  And I promise to stay far away from Britney.