WHY OPRAH WINFREY MATTERS

The first time I ever became aware of the word “Oprah” I was in mid-flight in 1986, reading People Magazine. Someone was quoted, outrageously predicting that Oprah Winfrey, the dynamo Chicago talk show host who was about to go national, was going to give Phil Donahue a run for his money. I was a die hard Phil Donahue devotee, so the idea of anyone outdoing him in the talk show genre was unfathomable to me. Donahue had dominated the morning airwaves for 15 years by then, tackling subjects as edgy as white supremacy, the death penalty and gay rights -- way before there was anything remotely acceptable about that. Sisters, strippers and stars had chatted live with Phil, the likable prematurely gray, Irish Catholic everyman. We loved us some Phil here in America.

But the dynamo that is Oprah did indeed end up giving our Phil a run for his money. After 29 years, Phil (left) retired, but by this time Oprah was fully immersed in the viewing public’s consciousness. At first, she seemed to be carrying on the predictable “pregnant nuns who smoke and drink” variety of talk show topics. It was entertaining, if not groundbreaking, but there was something eminently watchable about Oprah. She was eternally smiling, strong of voice and highly relatable. She was very much her own person and compelling to watch. You must understand that talk shows in the mid to late 20th century were usually along the lines of Mike Douglas, Merv Griffin or Johnny Carson. Lots of laughs, highly entertaining and light chat. Donahue invented the topical, audience participation talk show format. Oprah carried it forward.

Donahue was a white man in a white guy’s America. But Oprah was an overweight, overdressed, over coiffed black woman, on national television in white America. If her early shows were sometimes mundane in topic, she never was. She broke new ground simply by being on daily television. It took her several years to truly understand the power that came with her position on TV, and how to use it to make some changes in the world.

When I was a kid, I was repeatedly told I had good “verbal skills.” I wondered what that would do for me in the world. By the time I found Donahue, I realized one could build a whole career using his voice to address issues that mattered. But Oprah built an entire empire using words as the foundation. She gave voice to people who needed to be heard for the greater good. Of all the voices she brought forth, the one that really mattered the most to me was that of Mattie Stepanek, a young boy with Muscular Dystrophy and wisdom way beyond his tender years. Mattie, even when his age was still in single digits, was a poet, a best-selling published author, a public speaker, an ambassador for Muscular Dystrophy Association and an inspiration to many people. Mattie and Oprah became fast friends – an inspirational power couple, if you will. When Mattie died at 13, Oprah spoke at his funeral, as did President Jimmy Carter. Oprah’s interviews are proprietary material, so I can’t show them here, but here is a short tribute video Oprah did after Mattie died:

Randy Plauch was another voice Oprah amplified for the masses. Plauch was a computer science professor at Carnegie Melon University. In his 40s, Plausch was stricken with pancreatic cancer. Told by his doctors that his medical options were exhausted, Plausch, the married father of two small children decided to live a lot until the end. He became widely known for “The Last Lecture.” The real title of the speech was “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams.” Plausch reinforced my belief in the true power of words. His speech is riveting. On Oprah’s show, he delivered a abbreviated version. Please watch:
Voices like Plausch’s need wide distribution. That is what Oprah did for us. If Plausch’s words have meaning for you, you can watch the entire speech by clicking here.

There were so many others whose own life experiences taught us how to appreciate or improve our individual lives. There was the mother who lost all of her limbs to a flesh-eating bacteria, and decided to rise above it and just keep on keeping on. There was a 17-year-old boy who spent his early childhood encased in wire and locked in a closet, who told us the important thing to remember is to do good for others every day. Sounds simplistic? Not from somebody who grew up in a closet. I remember a guest who survived a plane crash in which the other passengers died. He was trapped in his seat so he actually watched people burn and die. He said he watched their “auras” leave their bodies. Some, he said, were brighter than others. He said what he learned was to live a good life, so that when his aura left his body it was as bright as possible. Oprah gave all of them, and thousands of others, a chance to use their voice to teach and inspire us.

Everybody’s voice counts. But many times when Oprah spoke, I was compelled to really listen. Over the years she said things like, “Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody’s going to know whether you did it or not.” She told us, “Luck is a matter of preparation meeting opportunity.” And this: “Surround yourself with only people who are going to lift you higher.” And one of the most important things I learned from Oprah Winfrey: “"When you undervalue what you do, the world will undervalue who you are."

We live in a cynical, skeptical culture. We often tend to resort to sarcasm rather than clearly communicate what we feel. So, many people would hear words from Oprah and dismiss them as just the ramblings of a talk show host. Their loss, I’d say. What makes Oprah valuable to the rest of us is her imperfections, her recognition of her own personal challenges, and the lessons she has taken away from all of it. Those lessons she has translated into teachings for us. You don’t have to agree with her when she says, “"Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could have been any different," but you have to admit it sure makes you think. Oprah makes us think sometimes. Count the people who truly make you think – I bet you can do so on one hand and have fingers left over.

In the coming weeks, as we count down to the end of the Oprah Winfrey Show, you will read all kinds of tributes, reviews, editorial valentines, etc. They’ll tell you how much they are going to miss her on daytime TV. Not me. Instead I am acting on one of the lessons she offered. Over the years, Oprah encouraged us to live in the moment, be the best we could be, so that the next moment(s) would be even better. That is what she is doing. At 57, hopefully she still has many productive years to expand on what she started with the talk show. She redefined broadcasting, making it into something it had never been. The important thing is that she did it, not that she is ending it.

In Time Magazine’s 2010 Time 100,none other than Phil Donahue had this to say to Oprah Winfrey: “…you leave a legacy of responsible TV stewardship, a program that brought light to dark places and made us laugh, often at ourselves.” He also called her a “once in a century woman.” I agree. Thank you, Oprah. You matter.

POWERFUL WOMEN - POWERFUL WORDS

Forbes Magazine just published its list of the 100 Most Powerful Women. The top five in media have often conveyed highly inspirational messages from their own life experience. Here is a sampling of what they have to say:



OPRAH WINFREY - Television Host, Humanitarian “Do the one thing you think you cannot do. Fail at it. Try again. Do better the second time. The only people who never tumble are those who never mount the high wire. This is your moment. Own it.”

ELLEN DEGENERES - Talk Show Host, Comedienne "You have to have funny faces and words, you can`t just have words. It is a powerful thing, and I think that`s why it`s hard for people to imagine that women can do that, be that powerful."

KATIE COURIC - Journalist “I've always tried to stay true to my authentic self. I think sometimes people project things on you, but I'm trying to handle everything that's happened to me with a certain amount of grace, dignity and good manners. You just can't necessarily win all the time.”

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON - Founder, The Huffington Post "Fearlessness is like a muscle. I know from my own life that the more I exercise it the more natural it becomes to not let my fears run me."

TINA BROWN - Founder, Editor - The Daily Beast
"Sexy brain food. Give us something to make us smarter, but for God’s sake don’t make it feel like work. People are in such a glum frame of mind they are looking for confidence, audacity, practicality, and FUN. They want to stop talking about problems and hear about solutions."

But What Will We Do at 4PM?

It’s the same old boy meets girl story. Okay, maybe it’s not. Wait. It’s more like middle-aged white Jewish guy doesn’t meet black billionaire media tycoon, but follows her career from afar. The guy would be me, and the tycoon would be our holy St. Oprah of Chicago.

Around 1983, I was on a plane reading PEOPLE magazine, when I came across a story about a Chicago talk show hostess (that’s what they called female talk show hosts in those days). There were photos of her – extremely overweight, too much makeup, too much hair, huge, strangely compelling smile. Could she be the next Phil Donahue, the writer wondered? Nah, I thought. Nobody can out-Phil Phil Donahue. At the time, I was a Donahue fanatic, always going on about how Phil had the best gig in the universe. I was so hooked on Phil that a few years earlier, when I worked at a St. Louis TV station, I used to lock my office door at 10AM so that I could watch his show, even though there was a hard and fast rule that employees were never to switch the channel from our own KPLR-TV, Channel 11 – “The Ones to Watch.” Get it? 11, the “ones” to watch. Oy.

But Phil(below, left) had invented a genre that caused the American public to switch its collective allegiance from soap operas to his talk show. One day he would have a world leader on his stage, and the next day he would have male strippers. Ku Klux Klan-ers, motion picture legends, crooked politicians, gay activists, punk rockers, atheists, life-changing scientists – if you can think of a category of human being, you saw it on Phil, sometime between 1974 and 1996, the years his syndicated program aired first from Chicago and later from New York.

As it happened, Oprah could and indeed did become “the next Phil Donahue.” Oprah took Phil’s concept, beginning with her hosting gig on AM Chicago (right), and nursed it along until it evolved into something much broader than Donahue had ever envisioned. One could safely say Oprah invented the concept of media convergence. Today, convergence is a term that is tossed around to describe various media working in harmony to convey information to a mass audience. It can be as simple as Oprah starting a book club, or as technologically advanced as Oprah using Skype, contemporary software that allows ordinary viewers to communicate remotely (sometimes from their own kitchens) in real time with Oprah, in front of a live audience. Today, Oprah’s convergence methodology extends to her “Oprah Radio,” her diverse collection of programming on XM satellite radio. It even reaches out to movie audiences, most recently through her collaboration with movie maker Tyler Perry on the film Precious. “O,” the magazine is celebrating its 10th year in print, in conjunction with the Heart Corporation. Oprah is media convergence, defined.

The evolution of Oprah is something to behold, and a lesson in “anything is possible.” Oprah was born to a coal miner and house maid in a rural Mississippi town with a population even today that doesn’t reach 8,000. If legend is accurate, Oprah was the result of a single sexual encounter between her parents. For the four of you out there who haven’t heard the story, you can Google her and read all about it, but the highlights are extreme poverty, sexual molestation, the ability to read before age three, a pregnancy at age 14 that resulted in a still birth, and an inner drive that allowed her to achieve more than her early life story would have portended. As for the molestation part, Oprah revealed over the years that she was abused by a cousin, an uncle and a family acquaintance, beginning at age nine.

Her early story is all about over-achieving. By her senior year in high school she was already working in TV news. The obvious progression, as the years added up, was to put her on air as a newscaster,(left) but Oprah could not manage the requisite poker face. If a story was funny, she looked straight in the camera and laughed that hearty Oprah laugh we know so well now. If a story was sad, her empathy fairly spilled over the airwaves, sometimes even resulting in tears. It was clear Oprah was not to be Walter Cronkite. By 1984 she had a local Chicago morning talk show. By 1986 she was nationally syndicated. The rest we’ve been watching for 25 years.

Well…almost 25 years. Recently, Oprah revealed that 25 would mark her sterling silver transition from the daytime talk arena into ownership of her own network, The Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN). It is likely Oprah will do for cable all that she did for all other media. Just as traditional network news traces its most important paradigm shift to the day John F. Kennedy was killed, cable TV will probably mark its true ascent to the moment Oprah chose cable over network syndication.

Why does it matter to you? Does it even matter? It does. It should. Oprah Winfrey is living proof that one human being can make a positive difference in the lives of millions of others. Whether it is a post-Katrina Louisiana housing development built with Oprah dollars, or a South African school for girls built with Oprah’s sheer will and determination, it matters. Everything Oprah has done in these 25 years has been geared toward enabling individuals to become their “best selves,” as she terms it. She has given a voice to individuals who otherwise may have remained involuntarily silent. She has offered a platform for individuals who could substantively contribute to the mix of ideas – individuals who had previously been unable to find the widest audience. Consider Mattie Stepanek, the self-titled “poet and peacemaker,” who suffered from a rare form of muscular dystrophy that finally claimed his life. Mattie’s words had already reached many people by the time Oprah met him, but she enabled him to reach tens of millions more. Watch: After this quarter century of everything Oprah, it is not really about whether you find her appealing or whether you even watch her show. It is about recognizing excellence; separating the glitz and glamour from the real and the important. Oprah’s steady emergence was the visual representation of the intersection of the civil rights movement and television’s grasp on popular culture. When she finally got to interview her lifelong heroes (Barbara Walters, Mary Tyler Moore, Sidney Poitier) we all got to experience the same full circle moments. Since Oprah could beat the odds she overcame, maybe we can too. If Oprah can come outside of herself and dedicate her best energy to enriching the lives of those who need it the most, maybe that can be a catalyst for us to do so, as well. Oprah has high standards in an era when standards have all but disappeared. There is a critical message in there somewhere for us all.

Oprah has given us a 23-month notice that she’s closing down The Oprah Winfrey Show. That’s plenty of time for us to recognize what she brought to the cultural table, and to understand how she found a way to use media to enrich all of our lives.

And selfishly, here’s my favorite part of Oprah’s impending departure – her last broadcast is scheduled for September 9, 2011 – my birthday!

WHEN HENRY MET CROWLEY

When Henry met Crowley, as I’m now prone to refer to the “incident” near Harvard University on July 16, the professor and the cop opened the floodgates. Those gates of cultural racism on the down low swung open to reveal a racial schism in this country so much deeper than even that of the 1960s civil rights era. Whoever says racism is obsolescent in the U.S. is either lying or self-delusional. Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Sergeant James Crowley forced a spotlight on one of the nation’s leading teachers of the black experience and a dedicated police officer who is known for teaching his own courses in racial sensitivity. Still the arrest of Gates in his own home by Crowley raised the temperature on racial division in this country to a boiling point.

Lost in the media firestorm has been any mention of Gates’s recently released book, In Search of Our Roots: How 19 Extraordinary African Americans Reclaimed Their Past (Crown Publishers, April 2009). Envision the intersection of Hollywood celebrity, traditional historical research technique and cutting edge DNA technology, and Gates’ concept starts to take shape. Herein Gates explores the genealogy of big names like Tina Turner, Don Cheadle, Maya Angelou and Morgan Freeman, among others. It’s fascinating stuff, this family tree snooping. But more than the fascination is its raison d’etre. One of Gates’ past subjects, Oprah Winfrey, has opined the true significance of Gates’ dogged pursuit of the truth about the collective black lineage. She said, “This is who you are, this is where you've come from. You've come from strength and power and endurance and pain and suffering and triumph. You've come from all of that. And so imagine now how much more you can be."

Gates now has the distinction of being an American who compels us to learn about the past and to consider the present and future of black America. And Crowley, in his own articulate fashion, steps forward now to extend his hand for reconciliation and public awareness. It is one of those moments in America when the racial divide in the country serves as the backdrop for positive change. But make no mistake; this is not a warm fuzzy moment in America. Just last week a Boston cop was suspended from the force for sending out an email that refers to Gates as a “jungle monkey.” This follows an op-ed piece in USA Today in which Chuck Canterbury, the president of the National Fraternal Order of Police flatly states, “Racial profiling is not a legitimate law enforcement tool, and there is no evidence that prejudice is a systemic problem in U.S. law enforcement.” His words were a weak shot at damage control, but of course, Canterbury and all of us know that racial profiling is indeed employed nationwide, routinely. The Gates/Crowley incident continues to be the catalyst for all manner of exclusionary expression and outright falsehoods about race in America.

Our holy St. Oprah of Chicago would call this a “teaching moment.” This is a moment when we can take the racial discussion out of the closet it has been hiding in for the past quarter century or so. You may not like everything you hear, but you’ll probably feel compelled to speak up and throw your words in the ring. That’s a good thing. Nothing moves forward that is censored, denied or otherwise thwarted. This is our chance to bring some true definition to the race issues in America. We tried in the 1960s, and the result was the Voting Rights Act. Not bad for a mid-20th century effort. This time we can go bigger and bolder. I don’t know about you, but I’m on the edge of my seat to see what happens next.

MAGAZINE SALES SLUMP? PUT OPRAH ON THE COVER

I was on a plane around 1985 or so when I read a feature in PEOPLE Magazine about a Chicago talk show host named Oprah Winfrey. She was reportedly taking Chicago by storm with her daily WLS-TV gab fest. At the time, the daytime talk show genre was inarguably ruled by Phil Donahue (below left), who also rose to national fame out of Chicago. A few years earlier, in my first job out of college, I worked for a St. Louis TV station. We had a TV in every office, and we were not allowed to turn the channel to any station other than our own. Still, every morning at 10AM, I locked my office door and switched the channel to Donahue. To me, he had the best job in the world. By the mid-1980s, Donahue was still going strong, but several others were vying for his top spot.

Around that time, TIME Magazine wrote this about Winfrey: "Few people would have bet on Oprah Winfrey's swift rise to host of the most popular talk show on TV. In a field dominated by white males, she is a black female of ample bulk. As interviewers go, she is no match for, say, Phil Donahue...What she lacks in journalistic toughness, she makes up for in plainspoken curiosity, robust humor and, above all empathy. Guests with sad stories to tell are apt to rouse a tear in Oprah's eye...They, in turn, often find themselves revealing things they would not imagine telling anyone, much less a national TV audience. It is the talk show as a group therapy session." In what seemed the blink of an eye, The Oprah Winfrey Show achieved national syndication. Fast forward to 2009: The show now airs in 140 countries around the world. I doubt anyone would call Oprah’s interviewing skills into question today. Winfrey is said to be the first black female billionaire in the world, has become her own brand, and is widely held to be a lifestyle/spiritual style guru to hundreds of millions of people.

Therein lies the problem. Every time a person achieves unprecedented success and off-the-map notoriety, it seems there is a segment of the population that needs to bring her or him down. (Think Susan Boyle, Martha Stewart, et al). Enter Newsweek Magazine, who only last week introduced their newly revamped periodical, promising a departure from breaking news and a focus on more in depth features, columns, etc. (You can read all about that here on Greenberg Rants [page left] in the blurb titled, “Whither Newsweek?”) This week’s cover story: “CRAZY TALK: Oprah Wacky Cures and You.” Evidently Newsweek is opting for a bit of sensationalism, doing whatever it takes to capture the newsstand crowd. Oprah will do that for you, you know.

The true story of Newsweek’s downhill slide is the content of the cover story. Written by two women who clearly have an agenda, the story is an abominable piece of journalism, and seems somewhat unnecessary. A good portion of the story deals with Oprah’s guest, Suzanne Somers, who appeared on the show to promote bio-identical hormones for menopausal women. The writers were severely critical of Somers, and more so of Oprah for her support of Somers. Admittedly, Oprah probably should have remained more objective on the show. She went so far as to have Somers on stage, but the doctors who disagreed with bio-identicals were seated in the audience and given minimal air time. But then the bomb hits: In parentheses, and evidently in the interest of full disclosure: “NEWSWEEK correspondent Pat Wingert, who worked on this article, and contributor Barbara Kantrowitz are coauthors of a book on menopause.” So, that’s the writers’ agenda. Oprah would call this point in the story an “Aha Moment.”

Where I come from in journalism, we would call that a conflict of interest. I can’t help wondering what they call that where Newsweek’s managing editor Jon Meacham comes from. Most discouraging is how obvious it is that the writers are not regular viewers of the show and have not closely or accurately followed Oprah’s career. I have, so I can see the inaccuracies and flaws in their reporting.

Regular Greenberg Rants readers know I am a big supporter of Oprah Winfrey. She is often kiddingly referred to herein as Our Holy St. Oprah of Chicago. I half-seriously refer to myself as the only middle-aged white guy in America who TIVOS Oprah every single day. (Although anecdotally I have found out that there is a huge, loyal contingent of male Oprah loyalists. They’re a little private society). Oprah and I are about the same age. We have some similar frames of reference. But most of all, I support Oprah because she built an empire entirely on words. She recognized the power of the spoken and written word and she became the pied piper of literacy, dialogue and an expanding mix of ideas in our culture.

Oprah gets people to think about the issues that directly affect them. She has re-energized a love of reading books in this country. She has launched the careers of authors, event planners, restaurateurs, chefs, talk show hosts, interior designers and many others. I can’t find a downside to any of that. And she did it with a positive attitude, great listening skills and a determination to lift people up, rather than pull them down. And really…aren’t there already enough forces in our culture trying to pull people down? Like the writers of the Newsweek cover story, for example. If some of Oprah’s detractors would funnel that negative energy into something akin to what she has done in her life, we would all be the better for it.

Newsweek is floundering. I’m sorry to see it happen, but I feel safe in my prediction that when the media dust settles, Newsweek will have a respectable place in the journalism history books, but Oprah will continue speaking and the masses will continue to tune in.

THE WOW FACTOR

From left, Liz Smith, Lesley Stahl, Mary Wells and Joni Evans, four founders of wowowow.com. (Photo by Joe Fornabaio)

Anybody who has known me for more than 10 minutes probably knows I am always impressed by people who do what they do better than anybody else. Since I came of age in the 1970s, many of the humans who have most impressed me are women. Those were the years when the culture was struggling to adapt to a new balance between the sexes. Author Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique dared to suggest women could find fulfillment in ways other than cooking, cleaning and child bearing. The umbrella term “Women’s Liberation” caught on. There were awkward behavioral moments, like mass bra burnings among newly minted feminists. It was quite a moment.

It had to happen so that the best and the brightest among American women could truly stand up. In my lifetime, the parade of fascinating women has been colorful and intriguing. Check out this list: Oprah Winfrey, Barbra Streisand, Barbara Walters, Lily Tomlin, Toni Morrison, Gloria Steinem, Meryl Streep, Mathilde Krim, Diane Sawyer, Maya Angelou, Sandra Day O’Connor, Jane Fonda, Betty Ford, Katherine Graham, Tina Brown --- and those are just some of the women you have heard of. There are countless others who have mightily influenced us 20th century kids.

But it was the moment that feminism met new technology that enabled wowowow.com to exist. This is a free web site for and about women, operated and written by the likes of Lesley Stahl, Peggy Noonan, Joni Evans, Mary Wells, Sheila Nevins, Joan Juliet Buck, Whoopi Goldberg (left), Julia Reed, Joan Ganz Cooney, Judith Martin, Candice Bergen, Lily Tomlin, Jane Wagner, and Marlo Thomas. And get this: just this week the New York Post announced that it will not renew the contract of legendary gossip columnist Liz Smith. Talk about your dumb decisions, right? Guess where Liz is moving her chatty franchise? Wowowow.com. Whoa. Now that’s news. (I love Liz Smith….you know she’s the one who once said, “Gossip is just news running ahead of itself in a red satin dress.")

What I like about wowowow.com is that it is not a place dedicated to convincing you or me how powerful or underrated or influential or trod upon or superior women are to men. That’s so 1975, right? Instead, wowowow.com is just a collection of smart, well-presented contemporary content. Candice Bergen (right) was dispatched to do live blogging from the Oscars. Lesley Stahl dishes on MSNBC commentator Mika Brzezinski’s controversial and “ugly” departure from the network. Brainy New Orleans wordsmith Julia Reed gives readers her take on New York’s fashion week. Wowowow is diverse, compelling and for my money, it seems to truly “get” how to use the web. Interestingly, from a journalistic standpoint, the growing list of web content entrepreneurs seems increasingly populated by women. As I have suggested to my readers before, check out Arianna Huffington’s Huffington Post, and Tina Brown’s The Daily Beast.

Hey, I like it. Go figure. I mean am I the only middle-aged white guy in America who even knows wowowow.com exists? Well, listen, I’m the guy who TIVOs Oprah and The View every single day. I’m some kind of mutant, huh? Just check out wowowow.com. You can thank me later.

END OF THE YEAR BLUNDERS, MISTAKES AND BLOOPERS

George W. Bush is tired. So weary is the Chief Executive of Bad Judgment that last week he granted a pardon to a real estate developer who defrauded poor people. Oy. And it gets worse. The pardonee in question, one Mr. Isaac Robert Toussie of Brooklyn, is just the kind of standup guy you would want your President to unleash on civil society. Toussie pleaded guilty in 2001 to using false documents to get federally insured mortgages, and in 2002 to mail fraud for selling land to Suffolk County at twice the appraised value. Still, were it not for the fact that his father Robert Toussie made the maximum contribution of $30,800 to the Republican party a few months ago, the younger Toussie might be a free man. Unfortunately, with egg – no, let’s say eggs Benedict on its short-term face, the Bush administration was forced to rescind the pardon a day after it was granted.

I’m just saying Bush & Co. are tired. So tired. So tired they forgot to check to see if pardonee Toussie’s family had donated large to the cause. (The cause would ostensibly be the Republican party, with a thinly-veiled hidden agenda to get Jr. out of hock). But here at the end of 2008, it seems everybody’s a little tired. As long as we’re talking Republican fatigue, can somebody please explain Republican National Committtee (RNC) candidate Chip Saltsman? Saltsman’s holiday greeting
to the Committee members was a CD that included a song titled, “Barack The Magic Negro,” set to the tune of “Puff The Magic Dragon.” “We Hate the USA” is a satirical collection of songs by songwriter Paul Shanklin, that also features such songs as “John Edwards’ Poverty Tour,” “Wright place, wrong pastor,” “Love Client #9,” “Ivory and Ebony” and “The Star Spanglish banner.”

Note to Chip: First, there are certain words that we deliberately eliminate from the language. We eliminated Negro about 40 years ago, and these days, when you’re trying to snag a seat on the RNC, the way to fast track yourself to oblivion is to revive “Negro.” Second, in case you forgot, people are kind of keeping a sharp eye on RNC activities since the big RNC email scandal of 2007, when it was discovered that White House officials were using RNC email addresses to conduct governmental business – which, Chip, you should know is a no-no. If the email scandal got lots of media coverage, didn’t you think maybe a CD calling Barack Obama a Negro might garner a little attention, too?

I’m telling you – it’s that end-of-the-year malaise. Maybe the tryptophan in turkey has long term effects. Even our holy St. Oprah of Chicago is tripping on tryptophan. Get this: Remember the whole James Frey debacle with the memoir that turned out to be largely fictionalized? And Oprah had to have the guy back on the show to incur her highly-incensed wrath? Well, the buzz is that there’s a Frey Redux happening, but this time the author is a holocaust survivor who claims me met his wife while he was in detention, and that she lived on the other side of the camp’s fence. Supposedly they met years later in Brooklyn and were married. Now people are questioning the veracity of the author, Herman Rosenblat.

Let me see if I have this straight: The world economy is tanking, a new U.S. President is about to say “I do,” urban crime is peaking, Americans are losing their homes and their jobs in record numbers, and we are supposed to get excited about an elderly Jewish guy whose memory of what happened in a German prison camp 70 years ago might be a little hazy. Count me out.

But add me back in when you get to the part about Chrysler reportedly spending upwards of $100,000 on full page ads in major dailies including Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, and USA Today. The ads are headlined with “Thank You America,” and include long-winded copy that thanks America for investing in Chrysler. Other than the time CEO Bob Nardelli took a private jet to D.C. to beg for a bailout, this has to be about the most thoughtless, ill-founded idea any of the Big Three automakers has drummed up this year. You go to Congress asking for some loan cash, and then you spend a big chunk of it thanking them for their “investment.” Billionaire Mark Cuban is pissed off about it, and…well…so am I.
Note to Bob Nardelli: Why not take the $100K and financially thank some workers who were laid off? Or, Nardelli, if you’re not feeling quite that benevolent, why not take the $100K and put it toward research and development of fuel-saving technology? Or here’s a novel thought: Why not spend it as it was intended to be spent, re-energizing the company so that it can once again show some muscle in the marketplace? Bob, we citizens out here are happy right now just to be able to pay the light bill. So you have to know we’re watching with eagle eyes every move you make in Detroit, since the U.S. government has spent billions bailing you out, but not a penney to ensure that we will have a roof over our heads. Don’t spend thousands saying “Thanks.” Build a better buggy, make it run on corn or soybeans or whatever, and put some people back to work. Capiche?

Listen, it's been a tough year, right? Why wouldn't it end with whacked-out Presidential pardons, tasteless holiday greetings, murky memoirs and a CEO who's got his financial head buried up his assets? I'm tired, too, aren't you? I need a drink. So do you. And put a damned umbrella in it and call it Happy New Year. Here's to ya. It's got to be cocktail hour somewhere.