Dr. Phil Beat My Inner Child

I can't stand Dr. Phil. Please make him go away. Preferably to some celebrity sanitarium where he is forced to spend eternity administering therapeutic brain douches to Courtney Love and Michael Jackson. I don't watch his TV show; yet I'm still confronted with his smirking countenance on a daily basis. In bookstore windows; at the end of supermarket aisles; wherever I go, there his picture is, plastered on his latest guide to emotional rescue, "I'm Rich Because You're Fucked Up", or whatever.

He's even written a diet book, "The Ultimate Weight Solution: The Seven Keys To Weight Loss Freedom". Judging by the good doctor's appearance, apparently a couple of those "keys" unlock the freedom to sport walrus jowls and man boobs. Just who the hell would take Dr. Phil's dietary advice, anyway? He's not a medical doctor. He's not a nutritionist. And I seem to have missed whatever nanosecond he was all cut and buff. Just because someone has the word "doctor" in front of his name doesn't necessarily mean he is an expert on nutrition. Kevorkian, Mengele, and Frankenstein were doctors, but I wouldn't take dietary advice from any of them, either.

I've seen some of the doctor's show and I'm even less impressed with his therapeutic wizardry. While for most of us, effective psychological counseling is a long and involved process; for Dr. Phil it's evidently more like Clinical Jiffy Lube. He'll analyze your traumas and change lifelong dirty habits in a mere 42 minutes plus commercials. And he always renders his cure with some hokey homespun homily, such as "I'd really like to see you take control of your inner child." Gee thanks, Doctor, but my inner child is presently locked in a dimly lit room where he constantly rocks back and forth, obsessively twisting the tops off Oreo Cookies while giggling the word "boobies" over and over. I'm not too sure I should bother him.

What I would really like see is Dr. Phil himself, locked in a No Holds Barred, Steel Cage Death Match with his therapeutic antithesis, Tom Cruise. Certainly, society would be well served by forcing these two compulsive blowhards to fight to the death, armed only with their annoying smirks, condescending attitudes, and a couple of rusty shivs smuggled out of prison in Martha Stewart's butt. You could even put it on his show. Then I'd watch.