Dr. Phil Takes on the World
a NEW IMPROVED HEAD exclusive!
Tensions between the United States and North Korea were heightened this week as North Korea admitted that it had been conducting a nuclear weapons program in contravention of its agreements with the United States. And an attempted public relations exercise by the North Koreans went awry as North Korea discovered that the rest of the world isn't impressed by governments which abduct citizens of a foreign country and then hold them incommunicado for 24 years.The attempted public relations exercise was a visit to Japan by 5 Japanese who have been held prisoner in North Korea since 1978. They are the survivors of a group of 13 Japanese (if you believe North Korea) or of approximately 50 (if you believe many Japanese) who were kidnapped to be used in the training of North Korean spies in Japan. The others may well have been executed. The five abductees didn't talk much about that, though, since their Korean-born children had decided, to use the North Korean government's word, to stay in North Korea. At any rate, the world's already low confidence in the sanity of the North Korean government was shaken.
But – help is on the way! Stepping into the breach left by the refusal of world leaders to deal with this problem, Dr. Phillip C. McGraw invited U. S. President George W. Bush and North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il to appear on his program to discuss their problem and to receive some of Dr. Phil's much admired advice. Both leaders accepted – well, President Bush is from the same state as Dr. Phil, and Dear Leader Kim is still working on that PR angle.
NEW IMPROVED HEAD is privileged to be able to offer you the following transcript of the most important parts of the show, which will air next week.
Dr. Phil:Jong-Il, why don't you tell us how you see the problems you're having with George?Kim Jong-Il: Thank you, Dr. Phil. The problem is simple – it's George's high-handedness and arrogance. He's always looking down his nose at us. He's always telling us what to do. We owned up to a mistake and what did he do? He called off these really important negotiations we were having! America is always doing that to us, telling us not to develop this and not to oppress that! You'd think I was his five-year-old son or something.
Dr. Phil: Well, that's a really interesting remark, Jong-Il. But before I explain why, let's hear what George has to say. George?
George W. Bush: Thank you, Dr. Phil. We're not talking here about high-handedness. We're not talking about arrogance. We're talking about a man who gave his word that he wouldn't develop nuclear weapons, and then he developed them. Now he sits here and says it was a mistake. How could it be a mistake? Was he trying to develop new technology for dentists and it accidentally turned into nuclear weapons? If my five-year-old son did act like that, if I had a five-year-old-son, instead of the daughters I do have, who were five once, if he acted like that, I'd do more than break off negotiations with him.
Dr. Phil: Again, I find that an interesting remark. Do either of you know why?
GWB: No.
KJI: No.
Dr. Phil: You've both overlooked an important factor in your dispute. It has never occurred to either of you that you're simply a pair of overgrown daddy's boys. Jong-Il, you stepped into your father's shoes as leader of North Korea without an election, and George, you abandoned a promising career as a playboy to go into business and then to fulfil your father's dream of becoming only the second president of the United States to have a son who became president.
Your dispute is not about nuclear weapons or abducted Japanese or American imperialism but about whether my dad can beat your dad.
GWB: Say what?
KJI: No dispute – my dad could beat his dad easy.
GWB: Him and what army? That's why you want the nuclear weapons. You think they'd finally make the Kim Dynasty the equal of the Bush Dynasty. But my mama could open a whole case of Texas whupass on your daddy's sorry butt.
GWB: You ask your General MacArthur about my dad! You ask him! His butt still has the marks of Pyongyang whupass all over it!
Dr. Phil: Now, boys. I think you've proved my point. And as usual we see that 100% of people's problems in this life come from doing what other people want them to do rather than what they themselves think is right for them.
GWB: Dr. Phil, I'm the leader of a democratic country. It's my job to do what other people want me to do.
KJI: And I have been chosen by the Korean people as its Dear Leader! I cannot betray that trust!
Dr. Phil: Now, let's look at what you're both saying. You're saying that instead of being an authentic George W. Bush and an authentic Kim Jong-Il you've decided to act in accordance with other people's conceptions of how you should behave – George as Chief Executive of the United States and Jong-Il as Dear Leader of the Korean people. You've substituted fictional selves for your real selves.
Now, Jong-Il – it's clear from the interest you've taken in the movies over your life that you would much rather have been in the movie industry. It's those frustrated desires that are making you act up over nuclear weapons. Those weapons are your way of saying "If you won't let me be the real Kim Jong-Il, then this fictional Kim Jong-Il you're making me be is going to give you as much trouble as possible."
KJI: That is American imperialist claptrap!
Dr. Phil: Spoken like a chip off the old block. You've become so immersed in your role as a surrogate for your father that you can't respond honestly to criticism but have to fall back on your father's Cold War rhetoric.
And George, hasn't your life just been one long search for acceptance from your father? First there were the repeated failed attempts to succeed in the businesses your father's money got you into, then the stint as governor of Texas, then the run for the presidency.
And now you spend your time trying to please your father by finishing his unfinished business for him. What else is that business with Saddam Hussein about?
KJI: That's always coming up at the Axis of Evil meetings. What's up with that?
Dr. Phil: I'll tell you what's up with that. Saddam Hussein enrages George because he's his father's enemy but looks so much more manly than his father. Saddam is a big, hearty guy with a moustache and four wives and always has a gun in his hand, and he just seems, especially to a Texan, so much more masculine than George's father. George just can't live with the idea of having Manliness on one side and Bush on the other.
GWB: That is liberal psychobabbling claptrap.
KJI: No, you ask the audience! It's true!
GWB: Let's ask the audience about you and your daddy, Jong-Il. At least my daddy's alive to be impressed.
At this point, apparently, the show got out of hand. Dr. Phil went to commercial, and when he returned Mr. Bush and Mr. Kim had disappeared. Latest reports suggest Messrs Kim and Bush have senselessly ignored Dr. Phil's advice and returned to the familiar old neurotic ways of behaving. Tomorrow Dr. Phil tells an unemployed autoworker from Flint, Michigan that her fears about unemployment stem from her internalization of her children's unrealistic expectations that she be able to feed them.
Posted October 17, 2002
Dr. Phil Takes on the World © John FitzGerald, 2002
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