Open Letter to Dr. Oz

Dear Dr. Oz:

In recent years, I have defended you, often, not because I knew you were innocent of the accusations made against you but because I knew the people making them did not have sufficient information to make them. I'm embarrassed.

I did not watch your program today because I don't watch anyone who interviews Donald Trump. He is so offensive that it makes makes me physically and emotionally sick. I waited to read about it. Since you managed to make headlines, and those headlines said absolutely nothing about you recommending that Donald Trump undergo and release a thorough psychiatric evaluation, I know now that your target audience has to be people who care nothing about having sufficient information with which to make important decisions. So, I will no longer defend you. I will probably join the people you obviously appreciate. 

There is no doubt to lay people that Trump has demonstrated the need for psychiatric evaluation so why would you, with your M.D., not recognize and point this out? The word quack has been thrown at you often and I really hate that this is one of the the things I rejected most vocally. Self-serving is one thing that I don’t recall hearing used against you but I will suggest it. Maybe your ratings were that bad? You needed to entertain the loose-hinged, unqualified, racist misogynist for attention? Whatever your reason, it reduced you to pathetic and not worth defending ever again.

Sandy

p.s. If this is true, you are no better than he is.

Really, Dr. Phil? Ten of Sixty Minutes Spent With Burke Ramsey?

Most people who know me know that I am a big fan of the Dr. Phil show (as well as his 20/20 diet book). I looked forward to the season opening with a long-awaited, first and only, Burke Ramsey interview. It was set to record in case I forgot or something came up.  Ahem – daughter who often calls during Dr. Phil. 

All that hype – and, well, all that hype only led to a major let down. I feel a bit ashamed of myself for feeling this way because, honestly, much of it was put together well. But, much of what was put together well was reruns of programs that other people put together very well in the past. 

I suppose there are a few people aged twenty-five and younger who didn’t see all of those Ramsey story clips twenty years ago and spattered again throughout the years that followed, repeatedly, until they were embedded in their memory so deeply they would never be forgotten or escaped. But, I’m wondering if they are Dr. Phil’s regular audience. (Seriously, I am wondering. I think it would be a good thing if his audience is that young but not I’m not feeling confident that this is true. Please, surprise me if you have this information.) 

Turns out, the program today (this is three-part, I now know) was twenty minutes of ads (some ads for the Dr. Phil show that I was watching but mostly regular ads), twenty-one minutes of face-to-face interview with Burke, half of which was reruns of those old clips, and nineteen minutes of Dr. Phil setting things up with old clips and no Burke involvement. 

Did I fail to notice and criticize something? Are all programs one third ads now that we have to pay to watch network television?

(If I knew how to segue, I would go into a bit right here about when cable first came out and the selling point was that we would have to pay for television channels but there would be no ads. I remember this clearly. What suckers we were. Now, many of the channels we pay for are nothing but ads.)

I hope this isn’t a preview of how the entire season will be. Twenty minutes or more of ads (and I swear I cannot tell you what one of them was even after watching again to time them) might cure my Dr. Phil addiction. And that would be a shame.