Reporter
Shock Therapy
This August, talk-show psychologist Dr. Phil McGraw arrived in Elgin promising to tape a year’s worth of shows that would make the Central Texas town “a shining example on the American landscape.” Then the first episode aired—and suddenly it’s the host who has all the issues.
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Many shared that sentiment, some insisting that Dr. Phil’s show had less to do with improving the community than with creating sensational television through public humiliation. When the show’s producers called Beth Rolingson, the executive director of the only social-services center in town, she was excited, hoping that they’d be able to help find her funding for her housing and literacy programs. Instead of partnering, however, she says they wanted names. “They said Dr. Phil was a therapist,” Rolingson says, “and they wanted me to provide them with some names of people interested in going on the show, which we did not do, primarily because of confidentiality. But we didn’t recruit the people we serve to go over there, because it had the potential to be exploitative.”
The show had touched a nerve, one that the national media would have a field day with. Among other coverage, the Dr. Phil backlash received feature treatment from the Dallas Morning News and a spot on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show. Highlights included Jon Stewart’s reporter spoofing the first episode as “America’s Most F—ed-Up Town” and interviewing two guys at an Elgin bar who said Dr. Phil didn’t know how to wipe his own ass.
That September, Elgin’s city leaders called an emergency meeting. Dr. Phil’s producers flew in to meet with Dunaway, the school superintendent, and others. Some of the facts in the program had been wrong, particularly those involving the high school, and the city wanted Dr. Phil to air a correction. His people, who said they wanted to make every effort to do right by the city, were clearly surprised by the outrage.
“What did you expect?” principal Singleton asked.
ONE REASON MANY LOCALS were so incensed was that the content of the first episode was vastly different from the vision that Dr. Phil himself had seemed to promise. At a now-notorious rally held at the high school football stadium in August, the six-foot-four Dr. Phil, dressed in black from head to toe, had stood on a stage in front of five thousand spectators from all over Texas and praised the community for wanting to “get real” about the issues that face Elgin and every other town: teen pregnancy, drug use, domestic violence, rotten health, and divorce. He kept up his high energy for two hours, sweating as he paced and shouting into the microphone attached to his head: “We wanted a city that would say, ‘We’re willing . . . to do the work it takes to get right.’”
Before he concluded his speech, he told the people of Elgin that he was the man who would help them with their problems. “You may well be doing things in your life that are scarring your children,” he warned, “ruining your marriage, your family, and you don’t know it! . . . I want to make Elgin a shining example on the American landscape!”
But while many angry Elginites were still talking about the “shining example” comment when I visited in October, Dr. Phil’s production crew was already at work trying to patch things up. After the first episode aired, the Courier took an online poll and found the town split: 47 percent pro-Phil, 51 percent anti-Phil. To win back their detractors, the producers promised that future episodes would be more positive. They insisted that when Dr. Phil uncovered a problem, he also proposed a solution. For example, when he found a young boy who had been bullied at school and felt so much rage that he wanted to beat up his attackers, Dr. Phil’s son intervened and promised to start a bully program with Elgin’s students. When he discovered a high school dropout whose grandmother complained that the teenager was sleeping all day, Dr. Phil’s staff found the kid a job at a downtown cafe and enrolled him in a GED program.
On September 25 Dr. Phil’s second Elgin installment aired, this time focusing on the town’s teens. Knowing that principal Singleton was still upset from the first show, producers asked how they could regain her trust. “You’ve given us a black eye,” she said. “Now where’s the beefsteak?” The beefsteak came in the form of a $5,000 grant from Target for a parent resource center and meetings with state and national organizers of parent-teacher programs so the school could create its own group. The show even used its clout to get cable installed in the classrooms (the school had been having difficulty getting wired). Dr. Phil also clarified his facts about the high school during a taped episode to air on November 26. Though Singleton’s nostrils still flare when she discusses the Dr. Phil program, she admits that she’s coming around: “After the emergency meeting, Dr. Phil’s staff did start changing their attitude and redirecting their focus.”
A week later the weight-loss-challenge episode featuring Dunaway was aired and was well received. By October the show was in town filming an “Assets of Elgin” episode that was set to run during sweeps week in November. The installment would focus on a family voted “most phenomenal” as well as on “phenomenal teachers and students.” The teachers were rewarded with laptops, the students with iPods, the family with a trip to Disney World. Here was the “shining example” Elginites had been promised, and suddenly the buzz around town seemed to be more appreciative of Dr. Phil.
One afternoon I visited with Deborah Ostas, who was selected as one of the phenomenal teachers interviewed on the show. Tall and athletic, Ostas stared intently as I asked her about the controversy. “What happens when the spotlight is turned on a small town or a person?” she repeated. “In some ways it’s fun, and in other ways . . .” she trailed off, wincing. I asked her if she thought the recent installments featuring a more positive side of Elgin had been planned or just a last-minute switch by the show’s producers after the first episode’s fallout. (One reason I wanted to talk to Ostas was because, in addition to being “phenomenal,” she had been voted “most honest” by the student body.) “The producers have never done a show like this before,” Ostas told me, “and I think they’re amazed at the way a community can open themselves up and also shut themselves off. So they know they have to kind of step a little more softly. It’s not saying we don’t have problems or don’t look at the problems. It’s just that we want it to be gentler. I think they’re going to be more conscientious about what goes on-screen, and I think they’re generally concerned about being more positive so we’re not alienated. And I believe it’s a sincere effort.”
NO MATTER HOW THE NEXT Dr. Phil episodes play out, locals can be assured that events between now and May, when the season wraps, will be well documented as the media cover the media covering the town. Molly Alexander recently started a guest column in the Courier to address issues that surround the Dr. Phil show, and an Austin filmmaker is now working on a Dr.-Phil-meets-Elgin documentary. With six months to go, the town’s real-life version of The Truman Show has only just begun.
Indeed, by the time Elgin High School’s homecoming had arrived in late fall, meetings were once again taking place all over the city for the show’s various programs. Some groups were gathering for weight-loss support; others were assembling to discuss Dr. Phil’s book Family First. At one of the latter meetings, a group of women who have known each other since birth sat around a table in a rented room at the chamber of commerce building and talked about alienated daughters, interracial adoption, and other issues they faced in their homes. Their rapport was light but meaningful, and the women nodded as the facilitator talked about Dr. Phil’s approach to each problem. The cameramen dancing gently around the table, zooming in on the faces in soft focus, were barely noticeable.
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