How would one live the ultimate life? Is it a moral thing (Jesus or at least say Paul Newman or Bono)? An accomplishments thing (Shakespeare)? A fun thing (Hugh Hefner)? A toys thing (Mark Cuban)? Do you tear into it like a party (Motley Crue)? Do you live a tortuous stifling existence of art and nothing else (Emily Dickenson, who I’m convinced wouldn’t have been a good time anywhere at anytime in history)? Or do you balance it all like an artist and make people tread in your wake, yes, there really is only one Oprah.
Here’s the real question? Who convinced all of us sad losers desperately trying to tread water and survive that Oprah’s life was more important than our own. Are we that desperate for a fantasy life that we can’t help but wonder about an overweight, ambivalently sexual woman? Of course we are! We’ve been brain washed since we were born that we were meant for better than this. Everyone was promised at least one visit on the Tonight Show, hopefully as a celebrity, hopefully not as near senile oddities who make bird calls.
What the United States did wasn’t make a stand for democracy, what it really did was kill monarchies. They then replaced them with celebrities. It was a genius move.
1.) Unlike the monarchy, where you had to be born into it. Everyone supposedly has a lotto chance of becoming a celebrity. Celebrity, with the exception of Jerry Lee Lewis, has also been much easier on the inbreeding. It helps that you be rich, talented or at least beautiful, but if Oprah can turn into Oprah, there’s a shot out there for you to at least become Byron Allen, a dude no one really knows how became a celebrity, but he never seems to go away so he must be doing something right.
2.) Celebrities are willing to sell things. Sometimes it’s the only way for them to remain a Celebrity. It’s really an ingenious little trap they’ve set for you (they being the super rich people who run everything who don’t care about celebrity and are laughing their asses off 24-7 while servants wash their nastier areas – you know the one’s that Chris Rock said would commit suicide if they wound up with Oprah’s bank statement. Never forget that we are not Democrats, we’re not Republicans, we are capitalists once and for all – and to even discuss otherwise would be seditious.
All Cower Before the great almighty Oprah
Myth: Poor sexually abused African American woman – sorry Mr. Louganis, you don’t need to dive, because someone just scored a perfect ten with a difficulty rating of INFINITY.
I mean if Oprah can become Oprah, you and me have to at least be capable enough of becoming one of those rich (well they claim to be rich) twin midget real estate developers. When my life got rough my mother would always point out that things could be worse, that I could be paralyzed like Christopher Reeve. When Chris Reeve’s was depressed his wife would point out Oprah as the possibility that he might someday star in a Superman sequel without the wheelchair as plausible, because sadly enough a Superman with a wheel chair seems as unlikely as one where he marries Jimmy Olson.
Really Oprah is a Government plot to make you think that you too could someday live the good life and if not that it is your own damn, ugly, lazy, poor fault. That’s also why The Pursuit of Happyness got made.
Name: Like Elvis and Jesus, one that no one else had when she hit. Laugh all you want at Jermaine Jackson naming his son Jermajesty, but the next messiah will not be named Alfred or Bill.
Wealth: Ignore Chris Rock’s taunts for a second. Oprah is buck wild rich. She has exactly enough money to use 10 dollar bills as paper towels and bathroom tissue for the rest of her life, but no more, because more than that would be gaudy and it would tarnish her image.
Looks: More twisted genius. She’s made them a non-issue. Capitalizing on the 99% of us that hate the way we look, she carries our cross every day. Of course, she’s been thin and fabulous for a long time now, feeding our love of struggle with variously sized body suits. “Look Oprah is only a hefty right now!” Really the only reason that the woman was ever overweight was to make a statement against anorexia and the heroin chic of Calvin Klein.
Influence: I used to say with utmost seriousness that she could run for president and probably win, but Oprah is smarter than that, she’s going to run someone else for President and definitely win. C’mon you have to know that the real power lies in the kingmakers and not their dancing puppets! Oprah’s followers make the Manson Family look non-committal, even the people in Jonestown were fair weather friends by comparison. Who looks more entranced, the people at the Hitler speech or the women receiving new cars in the Oprah audience? Oprah, has taken the most crapped on crippled sector of American life and rallied them to a force that could forever change the world as we know it. Oprah gets people to buy books. That’s infinitely more impressive than curing lepers. She’s like the Utopian answer to Fahrenheit 451.
A Force for Capitalism
Watch the faces of women in Oprah’s audience when she gives away some piece of garbage donated by her sponsors. It’s like they’re orgasming in materialistic ecstasy.
So yes, Oprah is this generation’s Jesus. She has integrity, political clout, she’s on TV 24-7 in doses that Goebbles would consider to be tastelessly overdone, and she’s rich and spends money like it leaves a rash if it stays in her hand for to long.
Face it according the United States as it approaches its 250th year, Oprah has knocked the bell off of the top of the muscles indicator at the carnival into orbit somewhere out past Jupiter. She may be the illegitimate daughter of Martin Luther King and Jacqueline Kennedy, we can only hope that she never uses her powers for more evil causes than enslaving us like mice so we can afford minivans and write thoughtful letters to our district’s representative after he’s caught trying to fondle the neighborhood cat.
Of course we can’t all glide through life effortlessly like Oprah, so there is plenty of room in People Magazine for those who struggle mightily to stay somewhat relevant like Donald Trump and Rosie O’Donnell. Believe me Rosie didn’t spend that much time being Madonna’s ugly friend without learning something about manipulating the media. The media, after all is the heroin dealer of celebrity, where you are more strung out if they ignore you rather than deplore you.
Rosie’s done her best to follow the Oprah M.O., but she isn’t quite Oprah, so her audience is a little less compliant, her magazine failed, she couldn’t keep her sexuality a secret so she cashed it in for some celebrity. Essentially, she’s made due well with the hand she has been dealt. Unlike Oprah, she sweats.
Still, she conned us into thinking she wanted to bang Tom Cruise for years and was smart enough to jump off that train, seconds before Oprah made his head explode in one of her more petty public displays, probably just to remind Rosie that she’s Rosie and not Oprah. To retaliate Rosie would have to get Barack Obama drunk enough to have sex with Steadman Graham live on the internet and not use protection.
Donald Trump struggles even harder to remain relevant. Rich, almost despite himself, but not ever as rich as he somehow convinced us he was in a Faustian deal with Phil Donohue in the mid 80’s, his fame and power ride entirely on our belief that he has fame and power. Damn right that comb over looks ridiculous, but if you can’t look like Brad Pitt you might as well look as ridiculous as possible so you can flaunt your degradation of similarly fame craving beautiful young women. Any woman would go down on Brad Pitt, you have to really have achieved something if they’re willing to do so on a guy who looks like Donald Trump.
So Rosie and Donald fight thereby ensuring that they remain on TV, which in reality is far more important to both than whose life is a more decadent example of the world coming to an end.
So as we end 2007, here is the score card.
Oprah gliding effortlessly along as George Orwell sadly decomposes somewhere in England.
Rosie and Donald using each other in a way that makes hard core pornography seem puritanical.
You and I, completely staring at the wrong ball, as we pout over our relative insignificance.
Never forget that the man who wrote
Here we are now entertain us/I feel stupid and contagious
blew his brains out.
We all deserve Paris Hilton and that’s what we have. Now if the people blowing things up could tune in and co-operate, we could all relax and walk like zombies off into the horizon, because maybe at this point it’s the best we can hope for.
