I picked up the NY Daily News yesterday. I don't know why. Waiting for the clock to tick towards 9:15, so I could have an obscene dry raspy whirring, taunting me from behind the steering column, heard by my mechanic, I grabbed a print copy after shuffling through the Boston Globe, the Herald, The Urine Leaker and a coffee stained leftover of Sporting News.
Perhaps it was the picture of "O'bama" raising a glass of Guinness draught on the cover, rediscovering his Eirie whiteness. Or the lede to the page two story: "Le Perv DNA on Maid's Clothes."
I dunno.
Thing is, I read it. Any opportunity to present myself as enlightened, intelligent or possessed of good sense and ennobling pudeur has now official passed.
And I got nothing for it.
The writing is awful.
None moreso than David Hinckley's paean to Oprah:
"...Rich folks, even those that we nonrich folks like and admire, do things that set their lives apart. Big houses and St. Tropez vacations are reminders that F. Scott Fitzgerald was right. The rich are different, or at least lead different lives, and there are moments when those lives look better.
However Oprah lives, whatever she does, she's somehow always conveyed the sense that she can simultaneously be our queen and one of us. She reads the same books, she talks to her best friend on the phone every day, she struggles with extra slices of cake. So good, so bad for you..."
Rich people are different, maybe even better. We can tell because their lives are worth living. More than ours. They do rare and rarefied things. Oprah has all that, but she's awesome and our queen, no fucking less, because she eats cake, talks poop with Dr. Oz and reads Franzen. I see. I gets it now. Oprah is no sister to the dandy emperor of Hapsburg Austria. Oprah is not Marie Antoinette.
I'm glad that's settled. I can finally learn to love her and shit.
Fuck. I don't understand the Oprah phenomenon. Nothing about her is credible. She can't even fake faking it. She makes Zooey Deschanel look like an actress with the range, intensity and attention to detail and nuance of Judi Dench, Helen Mirren or Joan Allen.
And she's a bore.
With that kind of loot, why not try the occasional courage of a rococo decadence?
(later, RTDN: Richard Cohen)
Crow's Eye: Maintaining a commitment to Pointless Acrimony™ and Hate Filled Invective™! Also available in corvid mischief and traditional sly dog's mistrust.
10 comments:
FAUX Nooze is loving the president and his 40s.
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reminders that F. Scott Fitzgerald was right. The rich are different, or at least lead different lives, and there are moments when those lives look better.
Yeah this is exactly the message I get from The Great Gatsby.
What's an Oprah?
I wish I could get The Urine Leaker at my local news-stand. Instead we get The Truffle Hunter and The Eco-Professional 50 copies deep.
And hey, thanks for the listing on the right!
The proof of Oprah's queen-ness is found in my mother's & step-father's admiration for The Oprah, while both parental units are generally bigoted against Black folks. Both parents regularly ask me if I am reading what Oprah's Book Group is reading, their assumption being that I would have to admire Oprah's choices. Have to.
In fact, over the years, they've sent me several books from Oprah's list and not a one of them was worth finishing.
Sounds royal to me.
What's an Oprah
A long song-play sung in a weird voice to symphonic music?
I used to love Errol Louis' columns, and I listed to him on the radi-adi-o in the morning, but he ditched both gigs for a "New York One" T.V. job.
I've always found Oprah pretentious, sanctimonious and obnoxious, with an underlying rightist, self-help ethos. I can't watch her on television for more than 10 seconds. And that book club, thing? Does anyone really believe that she read any of those books? OK, maybe 2 or 3.
Every word out of O's mouth is scripted, as is every gesture and guffaw and gasp and O'gasm (TM mine). Have you seen the size of her staff?
They research. They read. They write the questions. She sells it.
Don't get me wrong: she's the boss. And she has the final say so. But all that good old girl schtick is just that—schtick.
I've never seen more than 5 minutes of her show, no more than a total of 1/2 an hour over 25 years. But I recognize when I'm being sold an image, however homey.
Thanks, too, for the listing on the left.
she's so absurdly uninteresting i feel guilty for even wasting this many words.
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