Two days ago, the NBC Today show with Matt Lauer hosted Dr. Phil via satellite for an interview to gather his response to the YouTube video I’d posted about my daughter, Hannah. To be fair to Dr. Phil, I kind of asked for it. Two days earlier I posted the following on Facebook:
Dr. Phil: You've GOT to have taken a running jump way outside the bounds of sanity
if you think I'd subject my family to your show. You've called almost EVERY day
and you're now trying to track down my wife at work? Dude... NO. I can save you
the studio expense of flying us out there. Your version is "I'm an
uneducated over-aggressive father who doesn't understand how to raise my kids
and you think my daughter simply MUST require years of intensive therapy for
being subjected to such torture as losing her laptop."
She doesn't need therapy, but she would by the time you finished with her!
Having had the chance to reflect on it a few days, I’ve decided that wasn’t the smartest thing to have said to a national media presence with the education and fan-base Dr. Phil has. Nevertheless, I seem to be learning repeatedly something I’ve been telling people forever; once it’s on Facebook, you can’t take it back. In my defense, people on national television have entire panels of people who are paid to stop them and say “No, you absolutely shouldn’t say that.” I am sans that particular advantage, so I’m just doing the best I can to muddle through.
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