Dr. Beach, Dr. Beach, Dr. Beach is back!
Stone cold sober, as a matter of fact!
Dr. Beach, Dr. Beach, why he’s better than you!
It’s the way that he moves, the things that he do!
Every year about this time, Professor Stephen Leatherman of Florida International University jacks open his clamshell and emerges with a shiny new list of the Top Ten Beaches in the U.S.A. While not quite on the level of Groundhog Day as pseudo-holidays go, this ceremonial happening is eagerly awaited by shore towns from Ogunquit to Yachats, all seeking their place in the sun. Annointment by Professor Leatherman, who now goes by the spiffier moniker “Dr. Beach,” is guaranteed to bring recognition, customers and a modicum of wealth to the Cinderella who fits the slipper. I, for one, am wondering if the delightful Dr. Beach is ever tempted to enhance his bank account in exchange for a favorable listing, but that’s just me.
This year’s top beach is Waimanolo Bay in Hawaii, where powdery white coral sand glows in the morning light, not unlike oh, say, a thousand other places. Waimanolo barely edged out Barefoot Beach in Florida by the width of a mauve nose. We’re not sure why but maybe there are fewer cigarette butts there. Dr. Beach is counting cigarette butts this year and giving extra credit for no smoking. The rest of the top ten, in order, are St. George Island State Park (Florida), Hamoa Beach (Maui), Cape Hatteras Outer Banks (N.C), Cape Florida State Park (Key Biscayne), Coast Guard Beach (Cape Cod), Beachwalker Park (S.C.), Delnor-Wiggins Pass (Florida) and East Beach (Santa Barbara). I guess the Sunshine State should be happy because, according to Leatherman, we win 4-2-1 over Hawaii and California. But hold on a minute. If we go back only to 2012, Hawaii wins, 3-2 and the overall winner is Coronado Beach in San Diego, which is not even on Dr. Beach’s current list. Whoa! What happened to poor old Coronado? Did a quadrillion dead sea monsters wash up on the shore? Did the Hell’s Angels take over the volleyball courts? Why the sudden fall from glory? Dr. Beach never tells. He just marches on with a new list for each year, dispatching the old champions willy-nilly without so much as a by-your-leave. I don’t like this one bit. How can you be champion beach in 2012, then relegated to the scrap heap a mere three years later? It smacks of callous and irresponsible beach reporting, requiring a serious inspection of the credentials of this “Dr. Beach.” Who is he? How did he get this job, anyway?
Well, turns out Stephen Leatherman is just another clodhopper like you and I, poking around the universe looking for an instrument to play. In 1989, a travel magazine writer called and asked if he’d compile a list of the top 10 U.S. beaches. Could’ve called Pee Wee Herman, could’ve called anybody, but he called Stephen Leatherman, perhaps figuring Floridians know beaches. Leatherman rattled off the ten top beaches that came to mind. The magazine printed them and the illustrious career of Dr. Beach was set in motion. From then on, everybody wanted to know what Dr. Beach thought. Professor Leatherman, no fool he, played to his rapidly growing audience, eventually developing 50 criteria to rate each beach, conducting surveys, employing assistants and developing a cottage industry. He stumbled into an opportunity and followed up on it. Now he is the uncontested Beach Guy, an “expert.” This sort of thing happens all the time.
Barefoot Beach, Florida
The Hurricane Boosters
Every year about this time, we get a sanctimonious bulletin from the hills of Colorado advising that a rough hurricane season is on the way. For the last ten years (at least), that advisory has been dead wrong. Hurricanes have been relatively harmless and infrequent and by this time the only people who pay any attention to the dire forecasts are the insurance companies. Insurance companies want to be absolutely certain never to insure anyone for something which could possibly happen, which includes Hell freezing over. Anyway, despite a hapless record of ongoing failure, each year the newspapers trot out the Colorado hurricane predictions as if they were etched on tablets handed down to Moses. Why does this happen? Well, it seems that once you have successfully sold yourself as an expert, your creditability continues for a lifetime, case in point Jean Dixon. Jean Dixon got ONE prediction in her life correct and 5,842 wrong but she is still a big hero to the supermarket intelligentsia, blessed as they are with riveting publications unafraid to explore weighty issues.
Why is anybody listening to these people out in Colorado, anyway? Well, it all started with Professor William Gray, a big student of meso-scale tropical weather phenomena, specializing in tropical cyclones. He’s been clanging around out there at Colorado State University since 1974 and somehow managed to win the Neil Frank Award, whatever that is, from the National Hurricane Conference in 1995 when he beat out a kid with a kite. Dr. Gray is said to utilize the controversial Dartboard Method of Hurricane Prediction so admired in most meteorology circles. Oh, and about those “meteorologists”—supposed experts on all things weather. Could they possibly have more expensive equipment, more bells and whistles and charts that light up in the dark—and still manage to be utterly wrong all the time? When we were kids, the weatherman came on for about thirty seconds after the news and told us whether or not it was going to rain, perhaps guessed how many inches of snow were coming. He was actually right a lot. But that wasn’t good enough for the local television people, who had to fill up an entire half-hour with important news and didn’t have much. So the weatherman’s time slowly increased to where he eventually took over the program, dropping in at the start, monopolizing a big swatch of time in the middle and reminding us again at the end. Soon enough, the “weatherman” became a fancier-sounding “meteorologist,” and, aided by zillions of dollars of improved predicting devices, began telling us what the weather would do for the next week. He also began to cheat a little, no longer simply advising his customers as to whether it would rain or not. Too easy to be mistaken. NOW, he began to tell us the percentage chance of precipitation. He could never really be wrong then, except in rare instances when he called it either zero or one-hundred percent.
Worse yet, these weather “experts” had a penchant for scaring people. They expanded the likely hurricane season from August-September all the way to June-November and if there was one of the little buggers taking a hard right just off the coast of Africa they still insisted we had to keep a wary eye on it. Hey! Felix! Just tell me if it’s going to rain on my football game.
Well, Ethel—From Up Here In The Bedroom, Looks Like The House Suffered Minimal Hurricane Damage.
Dr. Phil
Despite gross overexposure, Oprah Winfrey has always seemed a pleasant enough woman, conscientious, socially aware, disposed to contribute to her fellow man. But if she continues on for the rest of her life funneling millions to worthy charities, propping up traditionally black universities and constructing schoolhouses for impoverished African children, it may not be enough to overshadow her one monstrously inhumane act perpetrated against mankind—setting loose on the world the horrible weasel-psychologist, Dr. Phil. If Phil McGraw is an expert on anything, I am Kublai Khan, the Fifth Khagan of the Mongol Empire.
For those of you inclined to advise me that this is but one tiny mistake in an otherwise stellar career, I might remind you that but for that one little hiccup, the 1865 security at Ford’s Theater was impeccable. And to add insult to injury, Oprah’s Harpo Studios went on to produce Dr. Phil’s afternoon syndicated television show. In this bullyfest, McGraw typically corrals some trailer-park honker on the outs with his wife and bites small pieces off his psyche like the mean little tunnel rat that he is, rousing hysterical applause from his bloodthirsty audience, mainly crazed women shipped in from the bayous still wearing slippers.
Dr. Phil, by the way, holds no active license to practice psychology. His old license is currently listed by the Texas State Board of Psychology as “retired.” McGraw now says he has “retired from psychology” and does not need a license because his television show involves “entertainment” rather than psychology. In 2006, Dr. Phil was named a co-defendant in a lawsuit filed in relation to the disappearance of Natalee Holloway. The lawsuit was filed by Deepak Kalpoe and his brother, Satish, who claimed that an interview they did with McGraw which aired in September of 2005 was “manipulated and later broadcast as being accurate and which portrays Deepak Kalpoe and Satish Kalpoe ‘as engaging in criminal activity against Natalee Holloway and constitutes defamation.’” The Kalpoe brothers claimed invasion of privacy, fraud, deceit, defamation emotional distress and civil conspiracy in the suit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court.
In January, 2008, McGraw visited entertainer Britney Spears in her hospital room, drawing criticism from the Spears family and mental health professionals in an attempt to encourage the family to take part in an intervention on the Dr. Phil television show. Family spokesman Lou Taylor said McGraw had “violated the family trust. Rather than helping the family’s situation, McGraw caused additional damage.”
On April 13, 2008, a producer for the Dr. Phil show secured $30,000 bail for the ringleader of a group of eight teenage girls who viciously beat another girl and videotaped the attack. The teen had been booked at the Polk County, Florida jail on charges that included kidnapping and assault. Producers of the show had made plans to tape a one-hour program devoted to the incident and had sent a production assistant to Orlando to help book guests for the show. However, when the news broke that the Dr. Phil show producer had posted bail for the offender, the outcry caused the show to cancel its plans.
Phil McGraw has many critics, both fellow psychotherapists and laymen, who generally regard advice given by him to be at best simplistic and at worst ineffective. In a 2001 interview with a South Florida newspaper, Dr. Phil admits he never really liked traditional one-on-one counseling. “I’m not the traditional hush-puppies, pipe and ‘Let’s talk about your mother’ kind of psychologist,” he admitted.
For some people, the mantra continues: “Find a light and follow it anywhere.” For these, Dr. Phil will always have a home. But we all need experts. Cardiologists to keep the train rolling. Attorneys to hold overzealous cops at bay. Automobile mechanics to put the Porsche back in action. Choose wisely and prosper. Opt poorly and suffer death by a thousand cuts. It’s a daily task, like washing the dishes and feeding the ball python. Diligence is required. We know you’re up to the task. You have Google to help you, experienced friends, a trainer at the gym, nutrition mavens at the health stores. There’s a wealth of good advice out there, choices galore. So, whatever you decide, do yourselves a favor. Don’t ask Oprah.
That’s all, folks….
bill.killeen094@gmail.com
