'Family First' and the First Family

We think this was just an unkind thing to say to a man who told America that he believed there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Dr. Phil soldiered on with his advice: You've got to teach them to love themselves.

First lady: "Mm-hmmm."

Dr. Phil: "And to feel love. To me, with our boys, we've said we have hit the home run ball if we can get Jay to discover his authentic self."

First lady, whose eyes appear to be glazing over: "Mm-hmmm."

Dr. Phil: "What's his gift? What's his skill?"

First lady, presumably having no idea what Dr. Phil's son's gift is, played it safe: "Mm-hmmm."

President of the United States, picking up on his wife's lead: "Yeah."

Dr. Phil: "What's his talent? And embrace that, whatever it is . . . and the same way with Jordan. And do you think Jenna and Barbara know who they are and -- "

First lady, recognizing that this is an actual question she can answer, interrupts Dr. Phil: "Yes I think they definitely are -- "

Dr. Phil, realizing he's made the mistake of asking an actual question, giving the first lady the opportunity to interrupt him, interrupts her: "What they're intended to be in this life? Their gifts and skills that God has given them?"

First lady: "That's right. I think they are."

She went on to explain that they intuitively knew what their daughters were good at, adding that once they bought Barbara a sewing machine for Christmas because they realized she had "fine motor skills" and though they never talked about the sewing machine and didn't tell her to go to her room and use the sewing machine, she did in fact use the sewing machine.

And right about now this viewer was praying that Dr. Phil would start jumping up and down and screaming:

You get a car!

You get a car!

You get a car!

Alas, that did not happen. On the other hand, we did get to see yet another president of the United States take a question that included the words "oral sex."

Dr. Phil: "If there was something you could say to the parents of America to give them the strength to hang in and go on; we've got epidemic levels of oral sex in the middle schools, we've got alcohol and 40 percent of eighth graders say they have access to drugs and alcohol if they want it. You used to go to the bad part of town, buy drugs on the corner; you get them now on the Internet with Mom sitting at the kitchen table with you and not knowing what you're doing. There are so many struggles. What we're hearing in music today, all of these things. So many parents don't know that there's a radio version and a non-radio version of some of this music. The first time I popped in one of those CDs that I'd heard on TV, it was just astounding . . . so what do you -- what's the advice you give them to hang on?"

There was just no way the first lady was going to let her husband answer a question that had the phrase "oral sex" in it and she jumped right in.

"I think that's the really hard part of parenting now and that is, how can you plan your life so that your children have the strength to make the right choices and to not choose the drugs or the alcohol?" she said.

Despite her best efforts, the president did take a whack at the question, noting that when he ran for governor of Texas in 1994, "one of the issues that I campaigned on . . . we were going to go after deadbeat dads and to make sure that they complied with their responsibility as a father, we were going to suspend their hunting and fishing licenses in the state of Texas."