Bhad Bhabie vs Dr Phil

I've got a soft spot for Bhad Bhabie, I really do. The first time she looked a bunch of sanctimonious judgmental middle-class folks in the eye and challenged them all to a fight, I was team Danielle Bregoli.

She's rebranded herself and won a few awards since those fighty days of 13 and now she's an adult and she's coming for the man who made her famous. This is going to be good.

Dr Phil, a man so repugnant to me that I can't even…

Oh wait, I can. If you make $60 million per year out of generating misery porn and you encourage people on the fringes of society to come onto your show with bribes of expensive treatment, then I reserve the right to call you out and infer you might be a sociopathic shitlark.

The man has dragged alcoholics, drug addicts, and people on the edge of psychosis under the glare of a judgmental studio audience. One determined to have their need for being sanctimonious twats satiated. Being on the show is still a choice and I'm still a libertarian, so no matter my own discomfort about the imbalance of power - I'll have to lump it.

Can't let my feelpinions get the better of me.

I try and draw the line at teenagers. If parents pull their parenting and brink of divorce relationships into the spotlight then they should leave the kids at home. Society shouldn't be labelling a twelve-year-old girl as a psychopath, putting a child into a face-to-face confrontation with his Mum to the point of physical violence - and it should not goad a teenager with anger issues to have an amygdala hijack.

Those are all things that have happened on the show and I refuse to link them. Children are children. If you cannot adequately guide them, seek professional help. Daytime TV is not professional help.

2000 years ago, elite members of society Roman empire would gather to watch slaves fight to the death. We've moved it from Rome to a TV studio, but it's that same voyeuristic 'at least we're not that bad are we Monica?' which fuels the daytime TV industry.

I've got a lot of problems with the ethics of a society that thinks the best route to help troubled teens is Dr Phil et al.

About Bregoli

She's like a lot of young girls I've advocated for in the British care system. She has buttons which are easily pressed. She's got a lot of pent up rage and aggression and no doubt good reason for that. Dr Phil goaded her into being the most obnoxious version of herself she could be and after hulking up, she offered to fight the entire audience.

It went viral and she capitalised on it. She leaned into the identity society had decided she deserved and she created Bhad Bhabie - the Mr Hyde of her already troubled Dr Jekyl. She did that because she's smart… or she's surrounded by smart people.

She can now apparently charge $40,000 for an Instagram post - on the one hand I'm delighted but I am also somewhat sceptical.

Society has rewarded Bregoli for her bad behaviour and I have no doubt that the underlying psychological issues that permeated her childhood have not been resolved. That much money in the hands of a young adult who has not yet integrated the most complex facets of themselves is a recipe for disaster.

Don't believe me? I raise you Britney Spears, Lindsey Lohan, Joaquin Phoenix and Amy Winehouse.

I have zero interest in Bregoli's music or her more recent and somewhat predictable move of taking her clothes off. Bregoli is a victim of the Memeocracy - the monetisation of attention. Now that her tenure as Enfant Terrible of the music industry has waned she must maintain attention somehow.

To not be the centre of attention feels like death to her. That's what attachment issues look like when they haven't been resolved and you enter adulthood.

What Bregoli needs is therapy and in theory that's what Dr Phil offered her desperate mother.

Fuckabout Ranch

The problem with Dr Phil and why there's such a constant stream of miserable people showing up at the studio is essentially it's a form of economic abuse. Therapeutic intervention offered by the TV show is outside of the means of most people.

The buy-in is public humiliation and expensive therapy is the offered salvation. And we need to talk about what that therapeutic intervention looks like

Fun fact, the US hasn't bothered to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. The other two countries who didn't ratify the rights were Somalia and Sudan, both in the middle of a civil war - but even they've managed to pull their finger out as of 2015.

This means in the US, it's perfectly possible to arrive in the middle of the night, handcuff a child, kidnap them and sequester them far from home, provided you have parental consent. I'll say that again for the people at the back… up until you're 18, you can be legally kidnapped against your will and kept in a facility provided your parents give the thumbs up.

I mean. Wtf?!

If you tried that shit here in the UK, people like me would take you to court on behalf of children. Who, in my country, also happen to be citizens of a nation and not the sole disposable property of their parents. Detaining young people can (and does) happen, but we have a lot more discussion and a lot less handcuffs and midnight-back-of-the-van shennanigans.

This kidnapping is what allegedly happened to Bregoli after the filming of the Dr Phil show. She was taken to 'Turnabout Ranch'.

Turnabout Ranch is heavily endorsed by the Dr Phil show and there are some alleged shady deals about how one gets such an endorsement. The quality of the care at Turnabout Ranch seems a little slapdash and the oversight of care quality seems lacking. I suspect it would've failed the children's home inspections that formed part of my previous job.

One day I'll write an article about the Elan School... man, when the US fucks up, it really fucks up good.

Fuckabout Ranch is subject to two lawsuits. The first by a widow whose husband was a staff member beaten to death by a teenager in his care. Accidents can and do happen - but this seems like a staffing issue.

The second lawsuit is from a previous teen resident named Hannah Archuleta who alleges she was sexually assaulted at the ranch. She's being represented by Gloria Allred and the Dr Phil show has already distanced itself. Wasn't me. Wasn't us. We weren't there guv'nor. Good try Phil, good try.

That's when Bregoli came out swinging.

She demanded an apology from Dr Phil and if he failed to do so, she promised to handle it her way. I'm interested to see what her methodology entails. Five years ago she was an impoverished thirteen-year-old girl who threatened to fight an entire audience.

Now she's an eighteen-year-old millionaire who still has zero fucks to give. She levelled up in the big game of capitalism. You can write your own metaphor about Pokemon at this point if you like.

Dr Phil's economic abuse of Danielle Bregoli engendered Bhad Bhabie into being. As a result, the whole situation might've gone full Frankenstein and come back to bite him on the ass. I think as the self-proclaimed king of the judgmental masses and a man who made a fortune from shilling misery he has plenty to answer for.

I love an underdog. I love angry teens who have a bit of something about them. This situation has all the hubris and making of a Jacobean tragedy.

And Bhad Bhabie will cash him ousside. Well… how about that? Take him down Danielle and I will cheer you every step of the way.