In this March 4, 2009 file photo, Dr. Phil McGraw arrives for a taping of The Late Show with David Letterman in New York.Charles Sykes/The Associated Press
What were you thinking, Dr. Phil?
The folksy TV shrink stirred up a ruckus yesterday with a shocking tweet that was deleted shortly after it was posted – but not before Salon.com took a screenshot.
In the remarkably blunt tweet, Dr. Phil (real name Phil McGraw) decided to crowdsource with the following query: "If a girl is drunk, is it OK to have sex with her?"
Dr. Phil has more than 1.1.-million followers and was obviously trolling Twitter for topics for his daytime syndicated talk show, which launches its 12th season in two weeks.
Other Dr. Phil tweets in recent days have included the queries: "How young is too young to have 'the talk' with your kids?" and "Have you ever felt alienated from one parent by your other parent?"
But on this occasion, Dr. Phil clearly crossed a line in asking whether it was permissible to have sex with an inebriated female and the Twitterverse let him know about his transgression post haste.
Most of the feedback from Twitter followers indicated outright disgust that Dr. Phil would even ask such a question.
"You know good and goddamn well that 'asking' when a girl 'deserves' to be raped is a destructive question itself," tweeted Rad-Femme Lawyer (@femme_esq).
Several Twitter users answered Dr. Phil's question with their own question. From Jarrah Hodge (@jarrahpenguin): "Is it okay to exploit people's emotional issues in public under the guise of helping them?"
From Harold Itzkowitz (@HaroldItz): "If Dr. Phil asks a hateful misogynistic question, is it okay to rename him Dr Landphil?"
Following the vitriolic response, a representative for Dr. Phil told buzzfeed.com that the original question had been misinterpreted and was only posted in hopes of gathering public feedback for an upcoming TV show.
"This tweet was intended to evoke discussion leading into a very serious show topic," said the spokesperson.
But so far, no word of apology or effort toward damage control from the big man himself, either in terms of a public statement regarding the controversy or on his Twitter account.
In the immortal words of Dr. Phil: "You can't change what you don't acknowledge."