fracas

If you ever likened the guy to a real mental health professional, here’s your wake-up call. I don’t doubt he was one… it’s just that fracas thinks he isn’t one any longer.

You see, staffers on the Dr. Phil show were responsible for bailing Mercades Nichol out of jail. Nichol is the teen who had befriended Victoria Lindsay, the teen who was attacked and beaten by six other teens at the home of Nichols’ grandmother. While staying with Nichols, Lindsay had returned to the home to be confronted by the other teens who beat her to the point of her suffering damage to one of her eyes and her hearing in one ear. Nichols was one of eight teens held on bail and eventually charged as an adult.

Enter the Dr. Phil show, and a report from Hollywood Today.

“For about a day, it appeared one of the six teens accused of videotaping themselves beating a fellow cheerleader in Polk County, Fla. had a friend in “Dr. Phil” McGraw. Members of his staff bailed the girl, 17-year-old Mercades Nichols, out of jail Friday night with the understanding she would be featured on McGraw’s talk show, but a rep for the TV guru is condemning the deal, claiming it was a violation of the program’s ethical guidelines.

Even besides the nastiness of trying for a story by getting people out of jail — it has never led to to happy ending. From Norman Mailer to Truman Capote’s famed escapades, one of which ended in a murder, media figures getting prisoners out of jail has often led to disaster.”

Seems this kind of thing is old hat for these media types; bail out the criminal in order to scoop your competition with the story. What makes Dr. Phil’s show rival those “upstanding” men who get caught up in all those Dateline NBC pedophilia stings, is that in reading the numerous reports, we learn that as of Saturday night, April 12th, not all of the eight teens are actually out on bail. Two remained jailed Saturday evening and as of approximately 6:00 pm Sunday evening, one remains in jail. Eighteen-year-old Stephen Schumaker is still in jail April 13th.  

I’m not upset they remained in jail, for such is the unfortunate lessons they’re learning about what this kind of behaviour can do not just to their victim but to their own families who have to come up with the bail because they made a choice to behave in such a reckless, inhumane way. What I’m upset about, is that the Dr. Phil show saw fit to bail out one, but not all of the teens.

Why not bail out all of them Dr, Phil?  Why not?  

Is it because Nichol appeared to be the one who’d do best on your show? Perhaps between she and her speakswithforkedtongue mother, they’d make a rousing good show about a “poor” teen being railroaded into a life in prison? I guess some help from Dr. Phil might just have the public forgetting how following the attack, Nichols posted on her (since deleted) MySpace account, ““F*CK YALL! ID DO IT AGAIN!!”

Of course mommie on the Today show helps too.

Sure… the media seems to be rallying around D. Phil, quick to report that it was a lowly staffer “overstepping authority” who bailed her out, and has now been “spoken to” but come on… I wasn’t found under the cabbage patch yesterday. After the Britney Spears fiasco, does anyone really think he didn’t know what was going down?

Whatever the reason Dr. Phil, it stinks. It reeks of the same kind of using of young people that we’d see on, well… MySpace. If you cared about the actual welfare of any of those teens, you’d have bailed them all out, not just Nichol. As it appears, the caring stops at the feet of whomever is the one that will garner the best ratings. Maybe you think that’s ok Dr. Phil, but you know… in this case I think you’re going to find that the world suddenly sees you as someone who has crossed that line between “used to be a good guy” and “Excuse me, I’m from Dateline NBC. Did you think you’d get caught trying to use that teen, or did you think you’d get away with it?”