In January Dr. Phil received a lot of well-deserved flack for visiting Britney Spears in the hospital when she was on a mental health hold, and planning a special on his show around her, which was ultimately canceled. Phil was lambasted in the media for revealing details of Britney’s medical condition to the press, a clear violation of patient confidentiality, and Britney’s own family said that although they did ask Phil to get involved they didn’t give him permission to make public statements about her.

Then in April Dr. Phil and his producers showed incredibly poor judgment again by bailing out the ringleader in a brutal YouTube beating in which six teen girls in Florida lured a classmate to one of their homes and beat her unconscious, recording it all and posting it online. The Dr. Phil show paid over $30,000 to free the girl in order to secure an exclusive interview with her and her family. Instead of admitting their gross error in judgment, producers at the Dr. Phil show blamed the guy they sent down to Florida with the money, saying it was all his idea and he somehow went down there on his own with a lot of cash. That special was also scrapped due to media backlash.

Phil found yet another personal tragedy to exploit - his people arranged for Mindy McCready to go to rehab in exchange for all the salacious details of her breakdown. The 32 year-old country singer has faced a string of personal problems in the past few years including an addiction to painkillers that led her to forge prescriptions, abuse by an ex boyfriend, and multiple arrests. She was jailed from September to December of last year for violating probation and most recently overdosed on Ambien and vodka in an apparent suicide attempt. But Dr. Phil planned to fix everything for McCready by paying for her to go to rehab and putting her on his show to dish out his unique brand of homespun sound bites of wisdom. Luckily that’s not going to happen, though:

Mindy McCready is going back to rehab after trying to do herself in with her favorite swiggable and pharmaceutical — vodka and Ambien — and we hear Dr. Phil’s inserting himself in the whole she-bang.

TMZ has learned the troubled McCready went off the deep end late last week after getting dumped by her boyfriend and collapsed while on the phone with her mother. She downed a bottle of vods and pills in what we’re told was a “suicide attempt.”

She’s headed to Arizona for treatment, and a source says that was all Phil’s idea. We’re told he’s taken Mindy under his wing as a “personal project.” As for whether or not she’ll be on the show, time will tell.

[From TMZ]

Like his other attempts to use stories of personal tragedy to boost ratings, Dr. Phil has backed down from putting Mindy on his show. TMZ reports that reps for the show say Mindy won’t be on and state that “Dr. Phil has not treated patients one-on-one since his show went on air. Ms. McCready’s situation is private and we respect her right to privacy in a difficult time.” It’s been a while since I saw the Dr. Phil show, but he usually treats patients in groups and by dragging their families in too. It’s likely he planned to do something like that here so the defense is pretty weak.

TMZ doesn’t pull stories out of thin air like the gossip rags and they seem to have solid sources before they run with something. I would bet this was true and that Phil’s people realized they were about to enter another PR quagmire and backed down. At least McCready got free rehab out of it.

How much longer is Dr. Phil going to stay on the air? There were all sorts of stories after the Britney debacle that he was about to get canned because he had pissed off his boss, the all mighty Oprah.

Mindy McCready is shown below at “The Queen of Hearts Team participates in the 2008 WSOP Ladies Event at the Rio Hotel and Casino” on 6/8/08. She’s also shown the day before on 6/7/08. Credit: Judy Eddy / WENN. Dr. Phil is shown on 3/20/08. Credit: WENN

Dr. Phil and his wife, Robyn, were in the front row at a George Michael concert in LA on Wednesday night when Michael took the opportunity to point him out to the crowd. He mentioned that it might be a cruel thing to do, but he went ahead and did it anyway. Michael told the crowd that Dr. Phil looked “miserable,” and people starting booing. When the TV “doctor’s” scowling face was shown on the Jumbotron the booing got louder:

About midway into the first hour of his performance, Michael took the opportunity between songs to chuckle to himself and murmur teasingly, “…No this is too mean.” He then smiled wickedly and proceeded to announce that television therapist Dr. Phil McGraw was present in the audience. After a smattering of applause some of the crowd started to boo. Only spurring the singer on, he mentioned that Dr. Phil’s wife, Robin, seemed to be having a good time but, “…in the sea of smiling faces, he’s looked miserable for the last hour.”

The house camera then managed to get an shot of Dr. Phil, indeed looking on with a scowl and more than a little bit non-plussed. The crowd proceeded to boo even louder.

With an impish look, Michael looked right at the cranky Texan and offered, “You should see someone about that!” With thunderous applause, Michael went on pleasing the rest of the ecstatic crowd for the rest of his 140-minute concert.

[From Comcast’s Popcast via D-Listed]

Dr. Phil and Robyn are featured this week on the cover of my favorite gossip magazine, The National Enquirer, which declares “Dr. Phil’s wife kicks him out!” The accompanying story isn’t that explosive though, and just says they’re having problems. Robyn is said to have kicked Phil out when they had an argument about some new plastic surgery she wanted to have. She was trying to talk to Phil about her concerns about it, but all he wanted to know was how much it was going to cost him. She kicked him out supposedly, but the story doesn’t specify for how long and he’s now back at home.

Dr. Phil is desperate to save his marriage, the Enquirer claims, and has offered Robyn a producer’s credit on “The Dr. Phil Show” along with saying he’ll do whatever it takes to make things work. It sounds like that includes sitting through George Michael concerts, although D-Listed reports that Phil and Robyn left the show soon after Michael publicly called them out.

Dr. Phil and Robyn are shown below at the Academy Of Country Music Awards on 5/18/08, thanks to PRPhotos. Also shown is the cover of The National Enquirer, available on news stands now.

If Dr. Phil didn’t have an image problem after revealing confidential details of Britney Spears’ medical condition, he sure has one now. Six teen girls lured a 16 year-old classmate to a house in Florida on March 30 and beat her, recording it all on video. They wanted to post the video on YouTube and MySpace, and had two teen males serve as lookout while they put their inexplicably cruel plan in action. The victim was beaten about the head and face and lost consciousness after her head was slammed against the wall repeatedly. She woke up and was beaten and yelled at by the gang of girls again. All but one of the 8 suspects was under 18, but they are all being charged as adults.

The suspects were charged with kidnapping, felony battery, and witness tampering, and their bail was set high, at over $30,000 each, to reflect the seriousness of the crime.

The judge issued a media gag order on Thursday to make sure that details of the case were not leaked to the press, potentially hurting the suspects’ chance at a fair trial. That didn’t stop the Dr. Phil show from trying to get an exclusive story about this sensational and terribly brutal crime. They sent one of their lackeys down to Florida to bail the ringleader, Mercades Nichols, out of jail in exchange for her story.

When Dr. Phil got called out for footing bail to the tune of $33,000 for Nichols, he issued a statement blaming an employee and saying the planned show had been canceled. He said “In this case, certain staff members went beyond our guidelines (re: the bail being paid)” But the “employee” that paid for bail was just a production assistant, he didn’t have that kind of money and it’s not like he could have come up with it without top-level approval at the Dr. Phil show.

People are saying the end is near for Dr. Phil and that this is the stunt that is going to bring his show down. It will hopefully result in an awful lot of jail time for those cruel teens too.

Here’s some coverage of this story on The Today Show, thanks to Redlasso:

Star Magazine has a huge article on Dr. Phil McGraw and the less than ethical way he’s conducted himself during his career. There are allegations of sexual abuse from a patient and a former employee who said that she was sexually fondled by Dr. when she working as a 19 year-old intern in his biofeedback lab in 1984. She said he “he’d reach into my blouse and touch by breasts. He liked to rub my legs. He loved to rub my pelvic bone.” Dr. Phil calls the allegations false and said “it was fully investigated and dismissed,” but that’s not true because Star notes that the Texas State Board issued a reprimand to Dr. Phil in 1999, a year after the complaint was filed, for an “inappropriate dual relationship” with a patient and that his practice was put on probation for 12 months. He left the practice less than a year later and moved to Dallas.

And back in the 1970s Dr. Phil ditched another business when his questionable financial handling came to light. He had a heath spa in Topeka, Kansas that he abruptly closed after he was investigated by the Attorney General’s office for fraud. He still owes tens of thousands to area banks and has never paid a penny:

In September 1973, barely two years after opening the Grecian Health Spa in Topeka, McGraw suddenly shut it down and fled to Wichita Falls, Texas, where his father, psychologist Joseph McGraw, had a private practice.

Why the sudden flight? Possible because McGraw had become the object of an intense fraud investigation by the Attorney General’s office in Topeka!

“McGraw had been pulling off a textbook example of a membership scam,” says Emery Goad, who worked on the case as lead investigator with the Attorney General’s office after it had received numerous complaints against the spa.

“He was signing up hundreds of customers to long, expensive contracts, then turning around and selling the contracts to a financial institution for a percentage of the total value up front in cash.

“He then simply shut down the spa at some point after collecting that money and left town. It was a total rip-off because the customers would still be liable for the contract payments, only now to the financial institution…”

Court papers also reveal that between September 1973 and June 1974, McGraw was sued by three different Topeka banks for $41,000 they claimed he owed.

The three banks managed to have summons served on him in Texas - but McGraw never put in a court appearance in Topeka for any of the three lawsuits and did not pay back a penny.

“It was probably by design that he went back to Texas,” says Goad. “At that time, Texas was one of only two states in the Union where you couldn’t collect on out-of-state judgments.”

[From Star Magazine, print edition, February 4, 2008]

Dr. Phil is 57 and was just 23 in 1973 when he got nabbed for running that health club scam, and he may have been in over his head. 23 seems old enough to know better, though. There are all sorts of stories that Dr. Phil, who only half-apologized for the Britney debacle, is about to get the boot from his show by Oprah Winfrey, who runs the Harpo production company responsible for inflicting us with his down-home brand of trite advice. Now that more news has come out about what a stand up guy he is, we can only hope that Oprah puts her well-heeled foot down on his big ‘ol head.

Dr. Phil and Robin McGraw are shown on 6/15/07 at the Daytime Emmy Awards, thanks to PRPhotos.

Dr. Phil and the powerful mogul who made his career, Oprah, haven’t been the best of friends recently. Oprah was reportedly mighty pissed when Dr. Phil was successfully sued for his sham diet products and is said to have snubbed him by failing to attend his son Jay’s wedding in 2006. The Britney Scandal is the last straw for Oprah, the National Enquirer declares, and she’s set to give him the boot any day now. Oprah runs the production company that puts out Dr. Phil’s show and she calls all the shots. She thinks Dr. Phil exploited Britney and she’s steamed that instead of apologizing for his obvious blunder that violated ethics he continued to milk the ineffective intervention to get publicity for his tabloid-esque show:

“Phil has been warned by Oprah about many past mistakes. This was coming for a long time,” revealed a show source.

“They’ve waged a bitter feud for several years, but as head of Harpo, which produces his show, she can tell him to jump - and how high…

But the Britney scandal is much, much worse,” said the source.

Oprah will formally deliver Dr. Phil’s pink slip in a face-to-face meeting, sources say.

Some colleagues even question whether Dr. Phil violated professional patient confidentiality standards when he announced to the world: “My meeting with Britney leaves me convinced more than ever that she is in dire need of both medical and psychological intervention.”

The TV therapist decided to go public for a second time - but not to apologize for violating confidentiality. He simply announced he was scrapping plans for a Britney-themed show.

“Oprah was livid,” said the close source. “He should have thrown himself on his sword and said he should have never spoken to the media in the first place. But instead he used the spotlight to tout his struggling show.”

[From The National Enquirer, print edition, January 28, 2007]

Dr. Phil signed a $75 million five-year contract in 2005 worth $15 million a year so he stands to lose a lot if Oprah cans his ass. There’s news today that he finally made a half-assed statement on his show about how he didn’t help Britney, but he never said that he did anything unethical by talking about her to the press. He just said that he regrets talking about it, and he could regret because it may cost him his show:

“Was it helpful to the situation? Regrettably, no,” McGraw, 57, said Thursday during a taping of the Dr. Phil Show, reports USA Today. (The show is slated to air Monday.) “I definitely think if I had it to do over again, I probably wouldn’t make any statement at all. Period.”

[From People.com]

People notes that Dr. Phil says he would do it again and that he visited Britney as a “friend… of the family” because he’s not even licensed to practice psychology in California. A psychologist in California has lodged a complaint with the California Board of Psychology saying that Dr. Phil was practicing without a license by visiting Britney in the hospital. Dr. Phil’s Texas license expired in 2006 and has not been renewed. He’s also said to be having trouble booking celebrity guests because no one wants to be associated with him now. If Oprah doesn’t get rid of him for mishandling the Britney case maybe his ratings will tank enough to make it necessary anyway.

Dr. Drew Pinsky, my favorite of all television/radio doctors, is going on the attack, and his target is Dr. Phil McGraw. Dr. Phil famously tried to use Britney Spears’ emotional breakdown last week as a vehicle to boost his own show’s ratings. The Spears family requested that he meet privately with Britney. And while Dr. Phil did technically do that, he then issued multiple press releases about it, blabbed to Entertainment Tonight about Brit’s condition, and then said he was going to have the Spears parents on his show. He eventually had to retract that, and the Spears had to issue a statement explaining that they wanted Dr. Phil’s private – not public – help. By most accounts, Dr. Phil just yammered at Britney for fifteen minutes (not the hour long conversation he originally reported) while she packed her belongs to leave the hospital.

Dr. Drew (who is a board-certified MD, an addiction-medicine specialist in full time practice, teaches at the Keck School of Medicine at USC, has been the host of radio’s Loveline since he was a med student in 1983, and is currently the host of VH1’s Celebrity Rehab) has called Dr. Phil out for his unprofessional behavior.

Celebrity doctors Drew Pinsky and Phil McGraw are sparring over the treatment of troubled superstar Britney Spears. Pinsky, who recently treated American Idol singer Jessica Sierra, has attacked the advice McGraw gave Spears when he visited her in hospital following her recent stand-off with police - and challenged the TV talk show host’s right to call himself a doctor.

The addiction specialist claims by getting involved, McGraw has made the situation worse. He says, “It’s never good for an addict when there are multiple sources getting involved. You have to have a unified front. Addicts love a split. It helps them maintain the chaos.

“He’s not a physician. I’m an MD. I went to medical school. He’s a psychologist and I don’t think he has a license in California.”

[From PR-Insider]

Britney clearly needs a specialist, not a general TV-grade psychologist who’s out for their own benefit. And it seems pretty likely that she needs someone with a medical degree, as it seems possible that she has some sort of physical problem going on, whether it’s chemical or biological. Hopefully the biggest disservice Dr. Phil did was to his own career and not to Britney or her family. There’s been a lot of speculation that his actions may have caused an irreparable rift between the Spears.

Dr. Drew made some additional points about Dr. Phil’s lack of professional responsibility.

“My concern was, I don’t know that Dr. Phil has a license in California,” Drew told Access Hollywood. “He’s not on staff at Cedars. Is he interfering with the care of another doctor’s patient? I don’t know.”

As for rumors that Britney’s family plans on having her involuntarily committed, Dr. Drew said that is unlikely to happen. “When a patient doesn’t want help, there’s sort of a fallacy that we can somehow intervene and make them get better,” he said. “It doesn’t work like that, it has to come from within them.”

Dr. Drew said in order to help a person out, sometimes a family has to cut the person off. “So what we try to do is get the family actually to actively disengage with the patient. It is their dance with the patient that allows their disease to go on,” he explained.

[From Access Hollywood]

I really feel like Dr. Phil needs some sort of professional sanctioning. Apparently it is a rule amongst those in the mental health field that one professional doesn’t treat another’s patient without consulting with them first. Otherwise the patient could get a lot of conflicting information, advice, and treatment. I used to find Dr. Phil’s show somewhat entertaining, but frankly his brand of superficial advice just isn’t appropriate in anything other than an hour-long TV format.

The predictable backlash against Dr. Phil’s Britney Spears television special has begun. Ever since news broke that the good doctor finagled his way into her hospital room at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center psych ward, people have been throwing a fit. And it seems pretty deserved. Though Dr. Phil originally said he stayed and talked with Britney for over an hour, then walked her to her car, it quickly became clear from many hospital sources that that was not the case. Dr. Phil was only there for fifteen minutes, and was a very unwelcome visitor, as far as Brit was concerned. Many sources are saying they didn’t so much have a talk as much as Dr. Phil just lectured at her in that way he has. It’s also pretty doubtful that he “escorted” her to her car, but more likely followed her out, yammering at her. Most commenters on our website and others seem to think Dr. Phil shouldn’t be associated with Spears, and that his motivations are more publicity-based than out of true concern for her. Many people have also pointed out that it’s inappropriate for a TV doctor to have gained admittance to the psych ward unless he was one of the patient’s doctors, which he isn’t. It seems like he traded on his name to get in there, and frankly I can’t blame Britney for being pissed.

Dr. Phil McGraw has canceled plans to dedicate a show to Britney Spears, calling the situation “too intense,” he announced on his Web site Monday.

“As was widely reported this weekend, at the request of concerned family members, I visited Britney Spears in the hospital. The details of that visit will, of course, remain private,” he said in a message online. We had planned to tape a Dr. Phil Now show today, focusing not on the tabloid side of Britney’s latest problems, but instead on the very serious issues surrounding this case. Clearly, it is not just Britney’s family struggling to find a way to protect adult children who cannot be ordered or compelled to seek help. Because the Spears situation is too intense at this time, and out of consideration to the family, I have made the decision not to move forward with the taping at this particular time. Britney and her family are in our prayers, and we ask that they be in yours.”

Earlier on Monday, McGraw appeared on CBS’s The Early Show and said that Spears’s family was “very frustrated” that the pop star wasn’t held for a longer period of time at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center where she was admitted last week.

[From People]

I’m embarrassed to say I used to really like Dr. Phil. Pop psychology can be dangerous, but normally I’d glean a few pearls of wisdom from his show. If nothing else it was decent entertainment that (until recently) didn’t make me feel quite as guilty as watching Jerry Springer or something. But in the last year or two his show has gotten incredibly cheesy and commercial, and every time I see that damned “Dr. Phil House” I want to light the thing on fire. I think he could have actually done some good with his popularity if he’d have kept himself – and the show’s content – in check. Truly, associating yourself so personally with Britney Spears is career suicide. If he absolutely had to talk about it, he should have 1) stayed away from Britney, as his presence could only seem self-serving and 2) do a show about mental breakdowns/bi-polar/postpartum depression or whatever it is he thinks she’s suffering from, and talk about her a bit as an example, but not actively include her family. If I were Britney Spears and my family went on Dr. Phil’s show to talk about me, I would feel incredibly betrayed, and make sure they never had the chance to be around me again. If they want to influence her positively and get her help, they need to do so privately.

I NEVER thought I’d say this, but I do feel some compassion for her, for the first time. Her thought patterns are clearly not healthy, rational, or logical. It seems pretty obvious to me that what was once self-centered, immature behavior resulting from a lack of intellect has deteriorated into severe mental illness. I really do think she’s in danger of killer herself, either on purpose or accidentally. When things spiral out of control like this, sometimes people feel there’s no other way out. She’s in pretty deep, and I hope she has some resources and people around her that will remind her that she can still turn things around if she’s truly and permanently committed to it.

A photo of Britney and Adnan from December
Britney on vacation with photographer
Britney Spears is with photographer and new boyfriend Adnan Ghalib in Palm Desert, California, where she drinking champagne for breakfast and he’s presumably getting plenty of exclusive shots of the world’s most-watched fallen celebrity. There was a story this weekend that Ghalib approached British papers with intimate photos of Britney that weren’t that revealing and wanted an astonishing $5 million for his story and the photos. The snaps were said to just show Britney on the couch with Ghalib with her hand on his knee, and he should have aimed lower or had more compromising photos. We’ve all seen Britney’s kitty on multiple occasions so it’s not like photos of her relaxing in one of the many hotels she frequents are going to bring much on the open market. There are also a ton of stories floating around about her many exploits, told by the guys who were along for the ride, so one more is not going to shock anyone.

Dr. Phil overstated his visit with Britney, violated hospital policy
Britney managed to sneak away from Cedars-Sinai hospital, where she was placed on a medical hold and released earlier than the standard 72 hour wait time, without being photographed. Dr. Phil claims to have counseled her for a full hour before she left, and will surely bring in huge ratings for having her folks on his show on Tuesday. He of course wanted to have Britney on too, but she wasn’t having any of that. TMZ has a story that contradicts Dr. Phil’s statement in which they say that Dr. Phil showed up after Britney was released, tried to talk to her for 15 minutes, and was summarily dismissed. They also say the TV psychologist didn’t walk her to her car as he claims, either. Given that it’s Britney and she won’t listen to anyone, it seems like TMZ has the right story.

Criticism of Dr. Phil for entering Britney’s room without patient permission
There’s also a story that Dr. Phil’s visit violated hospital policy in that he entered a patient’s room without it being cleared with her. TMZ consulted medical experts who say this is highly unprofessional and that Cedars-Sinai must have been starstruck by Dr. Phil, because his unannounced visit violated the patient’s rights and would typically not be allowed.

For his part Dr. Phil says that the family requested that he be involved and that he spoke to Britney’s mother, father, and her older brother before going to the hospital. Britney’s family was worried that she wasn’t going to be held longer, according to Dr. Phil.

Rumors and false stories in the case
It seems like this outrageous story is opening the floodgates for papers to make even more incredible claims about the situation in order to move copies. News of The World ran a story that would be laughable if the subject hadn’t already defied all belief. They claimed that Britney had a gun the night of the police standoff, that she offered Federline $100 million to hand over custody of the children to her, and that she took over 100 pills that night. It was also K-Fed who called the cops, not the court-appointed monitor, according to their account.

The LAPD has denied that there were any firearms involved, and I think we can safely assume that the majority of that story was fabricated.

PageSix reported that Spears’ “cousin” and assistant, Alli Sims, used a hammer to break down the bathroom door where Britney was holed up with her youngest child, Jayden James. This contradicts earlier reports that had all the staff leaving at least an hour before Britney was escorted out. Indeed, Sims denies that she broke down the door and says that she wasn’t even threre.

Was Britney’s drug test really negative and was she on something or just off the deep end?
Many of you have said that there’s no way Britney’s toxicology tests could have come back as soon as the report in Life & Style that all her drug tests were clean. Some commentors mention a rumor that Spears’ camp is leaking these false stories to the press in order to clear her name.

Courteney Love has speculated that Spears is taking too much Adderall, an ADHD prescription medication that has speed-like properties and can cause erratic behavior at high doses. Another report has her on Clenbuterol, a dangerous horse steroid that is being abused as a quick-fix diet drug.

Whatever happened to Britney, she’s dominating the news again. Surely she’s mentally ill, but she seems aware enough to realize that her episode has managed to take the focus off her young sister’s pregnancy. Many are pointing that out, while others are saying it’s just not fair to hold a mentally disturbed person to the same standards as the rest of us who just watch in disbelief.

I have a confession to make: I like Dr. Phil. I know 99% of his show is trash, but I enjoy it, and it makes me feel a little less guilty than if I were to indulge in, say, Jerry Springer. I can pretend I’m learning something useful, and then spout off phrases like, “You teach people how to treat you,” and various phrases involving cats, fertilizer, and brick walls. Obviously the guy’s a bit of a hack, but normally he can justify what he says in such a way that I’ll be nodding along with him in a few seconds flat. This is not one of those times. Apparently Dr. Phil is good friends with Lynne Spears, and has gone on the record, telling People that she’s a good mom, despite the fact that she’s about to be a grandmother for the third time… and her daughters are 26 and 16. Right on.

Ever the optimist concerning the Spears family, Dr. Phil McGraw commends matriarch Lynne Spears – despite the current controversy regarding her 16-year old daughter’s pregnancy. “We know the Spears family, particularly the parents,” he tells PEOPLE at Adrienne Maloof and Dr. 90210 Phil Nassif’s holiday party in Beverly Hills on Saturday. “An asset that Britney and Jamie Lynn both have is a great and dedicated mother.”

McGraw admits that his friend is “troubled right now” but is “really looking for the positives in this.” As her daughters live under the glare of public scrutiny and criticism, Lynne has “her feet squarely and solidly on the ground,” he says.

“They’re a very strong, close-knit family,” says Dr. Phil’s wife Robin, “They’re relying on each other.” And with her book recently put on hold, Lynne is also drawing strength from her faith. “I talked to Lynne yesterday and she said they’re turning to prayer, asked that I pray for them. That’s how they’re going to get through it.”

[From People]

I get so annoyed with people who don’t behave as if they’re religious, but then suddenly start referring to scripture right and left when they’re in trouble. Or when they win a Grammy. It just comes off as hackneyed and trite, and certainly doesn’t make me say, “Oh, well I guess I was wrong, Lynne Spears IS a good mother!” Frankly I think Jamie Lynn getting pregnant at sixteen doesn’t speak nearly as badly as to Lynne’s parenting as does Britney’s psychosis. But while Lynne’s getting a lot of negative attention lately, it’s important to remember that the girls have two parents, and their father is just as culpable. Jamie Spears has kept a pretty low profile, but he’s struggled with alcohol addiction. Probably an excellent reason that he should try being a little more involved with his daughters – maybe to help Britney with her own addiction issues. I think Dr. Phil should move the whole Spears clan into the Dr. Phil house (you have to say that with the bravado with which he says it) with the 88 cameras, lock them in, and do some intensive therapy. For a year. You know an on-camera teenage birth would make for great ratings. And Britney and Jaime Lynn fighting over who gets to/has to breast feed the baby would make for a great Dr. Phil intervention.