Dr Phil's misery gold mine

Dear Dr Phil,

         What’s it like making money out of other people’s misery?

         Since your TV show started 10 years ago on the back of Oprah Winfrey you have made a fortune by exposing people’s most intimate shortcomings to the world.

            You have bastardised your training as a psychiatrist by practising this with the door wide open to the world when it should be dealt with in the utmost privacy.



You said it Doc

         As a result your guests, as you like to call them, are often put through a vicious and humiliating third degree for all to see, just to make money.

Their dirty deeds and most embarrassing moments are highlighted ostensibly to improve their lives, but in reality it’s so that you and Winfrey’s Harpo Studios, the producers of your show and King World Productions that distributes it can make as much money as possible.

You do your best to surround yourself with a good deed aura. But that’s rubbish.

You and your team’s main objective is clearly to find the most sensational misfits of society so that you can have the pleasure of dissecting them purely in the interests of higher and higher viewer ratings among the ghouls of this world.

As you well know nothing beats having grown women and even men in tears in front of you, not to mention children, while you piously pretend that you are only doing this for their own good.  

The philosopher

Then you have your show’s hangers on who are also there for the money. They pick up the shattered lives that you pass on to these institutions that specialise in treating drug addicts and the rest of society’s dead beats.

If your viewers read what Wikipedia has to say about Phil McGraw, which is your real name, they will realise that the squeaky-clean image that you like to promote on TV is just a charade.

Do you remember your Shape Up weight loss products that you promoted on your show? They were supposed to contain "scientifically researched ingredients that could help people change their behaviour to control their weight." The research was so scientific that when the Federal Trade Commission started investigating these wonderful claims you took the product off the market.

Did you only get real, as you always tell everybody else, when you were pushed?

And what about the time you, as the kind hearted Dr Phil, visited singer Britney Spears in hospital after she was admitted because, like a lot of stars, life in the limelight had got too much for her? You were slammed by her family for betraying her trust by making public statements about her condition.

Family First was one of your best selling books. I haven’t read it but I would be interested to know, Did you 'get real' in that? Does it mention anything about your first wife, who you divorced?

We see the points Jay

As you know a biography written about you by two journalists accused you of being abusive to her and your staff.

Is it right that you have always been an outspoken critic of pornography? If so you didn’t get real when you were the best man at the wedding of your eldest son Jay when he got hitched to Erica Dahm, one of Playboy’s famous triplets.

You don’t get into Playboy magazine without stripping down to nothing for all to see in much the same way that you strip so many of your guests of every bit of dignity.

Get real Dr Phil your show is similar to pornography in that it is designed to shock and titillate by exposing other people’s dubious morals.

Porno? No just the Dahm sister's

But who cares as long as you are making money.

I see that in one year you reached number 22 in the Forbes Celebrity 100 list with an income of $45-million.

Not a bad return from other people’s misery. But how real is that?

Regards,

Jon, a hypochondriac, who has been married five times; has had four failed businesses and who could easily become a drug addict, but who still believes he is qualified to give psychiatric advice to anyone who cares to listen.
P.S. One of your favourite sayings is: "I'm not here to put you under the bus." Then you do just that.

        

Playboy babes, you aint seen nothing yet

Dear Playboy Magazine readers,

         Since I wrote something about the South African edition (Playboy Editor with a conscience & Playboy Editor speaks out), which recently got off the ground and is hopefully busy getting into the air, I’ve had an interesting email conversation with Charl (Two-plus-three-equals-Sex) du Plessis, the new Editor-in-Chief.

         Sorry Charl if I down graded you the last time to the simple Editor.

         My wife and I live 1 000 miles (miles for my American readers) away from our only great-grand-child so we often get sent pictures of the latest edition to the family who is just 18 months old.  

         Her every move is photographed. Paige is shown in the pool, cooking, sucking her dummy and generally doing what babies do. That’s what you expect from family – people with whom you have a close relationship.

         So you can imagine my surprise when after an email conversation that only began a few weeks ago Charl and I have developed such a close relationship that he has started sending me pics of his babes.

         I didn’t like to offend Charl by telling him that as quite a few members of our family are regular church goers I wouldn’t be able to circulate his pics in the same way that Paige’s ones have been doing the rounds. But he can be sure that I’ll approve of them even if my wife won’t.

         But then we all know that wives are seldom able to appreciate the finer things in life, especially if their husbands, partners or boyfriends admire them.

         What seems to have prompted Charl to start delving into his family album to select the best ones to send me was a test email I sent out by mistake after I got a new computer. He invited me to rip loose on our new edition. Would like to get feedback from someone with strong ideas about the magazine, he said. We happily take criticism from people like yourself who evidently care about us getting it right, rather than those who wish to see us go under.

        If only I had got that kind of encouragement when I was at school it wouldn’t have been necessary for the old man to keep donating sight screens for the cricket pitch to get me moved up a class.

        Charl asked me to bring the attention of my readers (What! all three of them?) to the Harley Davidson that is up for grabs in his mag’s latest competition. Are they trying to sell magazines or bikes, I wondered. And does he realise how much it costs to advertise on my blog.

         Anyway, fishing for a free copy, I replied, Us old age pensioners born at the time of the rinderpest can’t afford your mag. In any case I usually criticise things I haven’t seen. As they say about the tabloids and magazines like yours, I went on, Big tits are their best selling points.

        That did it. He replied, As for your suggested selling points, I attach a page (Not a Paige, thank goodness) from our current edition.

         And just when I was expecting to see one of those Harley what’s names I had to hurriedly close down my computer because my wife walked into the room.

         Included in this post dear readers are pics of two delightful ladies and I will leave it to you to work out which babe is a member of our family and which one belongs to the Charl clan.

         I’m not really into the prediction business, but if I was to take a stab at it I would say that our Paige is unlikely to ever grace the pages of that best selling mag of Charl’s, let alone become the Playmate of the Month or of the Year.

That’s not a reflection of what she will look like when she grows up. It’s just that if she has to be like the babe in Charl’s pic her photograph will never fit onto a Facebook page. And as her mother is currently putting a thousand images a day on there she would have to go into rehab if she couldn’t continue doing this.

Her grandfather Erick would certainly like to have that Harley what’s name. He had one once, but due to the 1929 Wall Street crash he had to go back to driving a Merc 500 or whatever they are called. But there’s nothing like freezing to death and having your wife clinging for dear life behind you, so I’m sure he would like to get back into the saddle again.

There’s just one snag.  His religious beliefs prevent him from even glancing at any skin mags especially while riding a Harley, but I’m sure he will happily bend his convictions if I was to win that Harley on his behalf.

But then I don’t want the publishers to tell me I can’t have it because Charl has made me part of his family and the rules clearly say that those on the mag and their relatives cannot enter.

Yours goggled-eyed,

Jon.

P.S. You do catch something occasionally, apart from a cold, when you go fishing. Charl is sending me a free copy of that BEST SELLING MAGAZINE  that is usually sold out within minutes.

P.P.S. It looks as though I was right. You Playboy babes had better watch out. Paige has just been voted Miss Spring at her Johannesburg school.

Get my book "Where have all the children gone?" on   Amazon Kindle  It's a thriller with an underlying love story that defied generations of prejudice.

Playboy editor with a conscience

Dear Hugh Hefner,

          Did you know that your Playboy magazine in South Africa is a family publication that every mother would like to have around the house? It’s full of incisive, well written and informative articles that can only educate and uplift everybody especially the young.

        Anybody who mistakenly thinks that it might corrupt the youth because it is full of naked girls and that sort of thing is terribly wrong. Nobody could understand why, in the old days, under the narrow minded Afrikaans Government that ran the country according to a rigid form of Calvinism, your mag was banned.

        Of course they never mentioned then that a lot of the Government’s supporters risked imprisonment by smuggling your mag into the country. These sneaks also thought nothing of having it off with their black maids when their wives were not looking.

       I’m not sure which was the greater crime, having a copy of Playboy or sex across the colour line. It probably would have been being in possession of that mag of yours especially if it contained a nude, black Playmate of the Month, although I’m not sure if the good old US of A was that emancipated in those days.

          Lets face it your country had its own form of apartheid once. Some say it still lingers on.

          Anyway what I’m trying to get at is that I see that the straight laced editor of your South African edition that was recently re-launched after a 16 year absence has resigned. Peter Piegl has such high standards that he would have made an excellent Minister of Morals in that old South African Government I was talking about.

          According to The Times he stepped down after only three editions of this monthly had been published. His conscience would not allow him to be associated with a magazine that was going to be sold in sex shops.

          This was after the publishers had signed a three month deal with the Adult Sex Shop chain. You couldn’t get much worse than that according to our prim and proper Peter.

          "My vision is that it is a lifestyle magazine, not a skin magazine," he was quoted as saying. He added, "My reasons for resigning have nothing to do with the Playboy brand or its sustainability in South Africa."

          I see he’s got a psychology degree. You would think he would have analyzed himself a bit better before he agreed to accept the Playboy job. And judging by what he says about himself on the internet he has no experience of play at all. He hasn’t got time for it.

          He claims to have"concemptionalised, planned and established Playboy SA from the ground up; determining the look and feel of the publication." I like that feel bit. Is this something new in magazine publishing to make the nudes really come alive?

          Tell me Hugh, where did you get this fellow from, some monastery or other. Last time I took your magazine out from under the mattress when my wife was at church I’m sure I saw quite a bit of skin in it. In fact some of the pictures were skin and nothing else. And you had to be blind to think they weren’t sexy.

          Also Hugh old boy can you tell me what a lifestyle magazine is? Does that have no mention of sex in it; no alluring pictures and is only sold at Church bazaars?

          I was pleased to see Karen von Wielligh, the general manager of your SA edition, has given us the assurance that its entry into the sex shop arena will not detract from its classiness. What a relief. I was so worried that aspect might be compromised.

          I wish my mother had realised that it was classy to look at pictures of nude women when I was two. As it was I kept having to have my  eyes washed out.

          "It won’t change into something smutty," Von Wielligh promised.

          You don’t seem to be having much luck with that SA re-launch of yours. Not only has your Editor resigned but the publisher, Jeremy Lawrence has also copped out for personal reasons, whatever that means. It wasn’t because he also didn’t like that sex shop connection was it?

          Comically your managing director, Johann Botha had this to say, "We are confident Playboy South Africa will continue to be in steady editorial hands."

          Instead of hiring Peter Piegl as your editor your should rather have taken him on as your psychologist to vet the staff you employed when you started to make sure you took on no prudes and Mother Grundy’s.

          Regards,

          Jon, an avid Playboy reader in the hut at the bottom of the garden.

P.S. Hugh I know you are getting on a bit now, but don’t you think you should change out of your dressing gown now and again. But I suppose it makes hopping into someone’s bed a lot easier.

Playboy editor speaks out

Here is what the New Editor of the South African edition of Playboy Magazine had to say about my blog with my comments in red.

Hi John (Does nobody know how to spell Jon properly)

New Playboy ed here. Read some of your blog – curious about how many people follow you currently. (About 3-million on an average day and 8.5-million when I write about Playboy Editor with a conscience - they are so rare)

OK, so I am another hire with a conscience. My conscience – however - tells me that we are free under our Constitution to choose where we buy, what we buy, what we say, what we see, what we read. I am deeply perturbed by your domestic arrangements that send you down to THE HUT to read Playboy. Stand up for your rights! Mouse or Man? (You wouldn’t be so brave if you had met my wife) In the first edition I have edited, hitting streets 25 July, you will find what you have been looking for. More than what you were hoping for. And plenty to share with other adults living in your home. (What! Is there nothing in it for the kids?) 

Hey, and change the font colours on your blog. It looks like Hef's pyjamas and is tough to read. (What more could I want than a colour like Hef’s pyjamas. Every girl has seen those. In any case I don’t know how to make the change)

Seeing that you take some pleasure in researching and ripping the cv's of editors, I will save you the trouble. Law degree UNISA, MBA Yale, and PhD from Darden Graduate School of Business, University of Virginia. Thought I'll mention that PhD in Business Ethics and Governance and then take side bets that you make that joke "Business Ethics (don’t you mean Business Sexics?) – what an oxymoron." (Sorry I don’t know what oxymoron means. Journos don’t use such big words.)

Write on and push the envelope – a joy we both seem to share.

Charl du Plessis (Two plus three in your case adds up to sex)

            Thanks for your email Charl. I’m holding thumbs that your conscience doesn’t get the better of you, at least until you have beaten the record of three months in the editor’s chair that was set by your predecessor.

        Best wishes and Have Fun

       Jon

PS. If you don’t mind me saying so Charl, you seem to be far too highly educated to edit a “non smut magazine.” But your email has got that Playboy post of mine moved up to the top of the pile again so you can just imagine how sales of that first edition, with you at the helm, will rocket.

Buy my book 'Where have all the children gone?' on Amazon.com  It's a thriller with an underlying love story that defied generations of prejudice.