Saturday, April 22, 2006

[Roy] Tom Knows Psychiatry!

[Guest blogger here, Roy]: I don't know how many of you watch Keith "keep your knees loose" Olbermann's Countdown on MSNBC, but he tends to deliver news with an edge. For example, every night he has a segment titled, "Worst Person in the World." I think a recent one was about Phillip Winikoff, a 76yo man in a white lab coat going door-to-door saying that he was from the health department providing free, in-home screening breast exams. What a boob! [sorry--I can't resist a bad pun]

Keith Olbermann has recently focussed his lens on Tom Cruise. Before Mr. Cruise and Katie Holmes had their baby, Suri, this week, Keith was pondering whether he required Katie to have a "silent birth", as prescribed by his, umm, religion. My understanding is that the newborn must experience extreme quiet -- no touching, no noise -- for some period of time, I guess to let it chill out... you know, provide a little stress innoculation to protect it from future psychopathology, lest it be taken advantage of by unscrupulous psychiatric quacks who would push mind-altering drugs on to the would-be maladjusted, unsuspecting, little alien Thetan channeler, rather than the much more appropriate method of clearing one's bad karma by being audited by a specially trained, well, auditor, who uses some high-tech E-meter device to slowly but surely remove each and every last of the two-thousand-some galactic Thetan spirits which inhabit each of us when we are born. ::taking a deep breath::

Where am I going with this? Oh, yeah. Keith Olbermann pointed out that little Suri just happens to have been born on the same date that Brooke Shield's baby was born. You may recall that Mr. Cruise ridiculed Ms. Shields for seeking treatment for her postpartum depression, rather than handling it his way. Mr. Olbermann wondered what will happen if Ms. Shields also develops a postpartum depression (up to 10% of women develop postpartum depression after giving birth). We can guess she won't take medication or see a psychiatrist. I figure Tom will treat her. After all, he knows Psychiatry. Then, "Doctor" Phillip Winikoff can provide him a free examination.

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