abandonallhoprah:

The world understandably can’t stop talking about Oprah’s 2010 “Favorite Things” show. The world won’t shut the fuck up about it. The world is genuinely starting to freak me out. World, Jesus, please be reasonable.  

People generally fall on one of two sides of this yearly American tradition.

1. Welcome to the consumer cum guzzle with America’s favorite BBW. Don’t forget your Gallagher-brand rain slicker because the queen of all media is going to diddle her ATM until you’re all covered in cash and goo. 

2. What an amazing gesture. You do know that the audience was comprised mostly of charity workers, right?

These two people are both right (though one is clearly obsessed with semen). 

It’s right there in the title, “favorite THINGS.” This is an opportunity for Oprah to bring people together purely for the sake of worshipping (her) wealth; nothing new there. Watching her react to the howling and screeching and sobbing and wobbly knees and hands clutching hearts, you’re reminded of why she must have made it so far in the first place. So insanely proud of herself and the moment she’s created, she’s gushing and marching around like a 3 year-old who just poopied in her big-girl toilet for the first time. She has ascended so far above the atmosphere of self-awareness that she literally can’t even see people who don’t love her anymore. They don’t exist. The audience is so charmed by her haters-to-the-left obliviousness that they’re imbued with it by sharing her airspace. What a tremendous superpower, to see only what you want. And what we want to see is a skyscraper-high pile of grade-A luxury catalog shit. If we don’t buy it, what in the fuck is Wall-E going to spend 700 years stacking? 

Then again, who the fuck are you? Maybe Oprah can’t see your hatin’ ass because you don’t exist. Maybe you’re so self-righteous, so infected by envy, so confused by your own quietly festering racist impulses that you might as well be invisible. 

The audience members for this episode were cherry-picked. Oprah’s is a commercial enterprise, so why shouldn’t the guest list include members from her highest tribe, the throbbing inner core of of Planet Oprah? The super-fans have been diligently proselytizing for free all these years; it’s clearly time to collect. But the real story is the veritable who’s-who of do-gooders from around the country, laboriously hand-selected by Team Oprah. So what we’re talking about here at its worst is an hour-long commercial that results in lots of good people getting to gorge on cool stuff they could never dream of owning under normal circumstances. Who wouldn’t break their ankles running to feed at the trough of Miss Oprah’s Christmas cud? What kind of asshole would deny charity workers a winning lotto ticket? 

Or is that what makes it all feel so perverse? Watching these people go from representing the zenith of America’s oft-unsung spirit of giving to skinning themselves alive with demented glee at the sight of an edges-only brownie pan…well, it’s a fucking drag. It’s like seeing your favorite old high school teacher - the one who inspired you to play guitar or do standup comedy - scrabbling through the trash ten years later outside the class reunion. You know in your heart these things are true, and those people are only flesh and bones like you, but do we as a culture have to dress it in a tutu and shove it out the front door to dance for the neighbors? Do we have to underline it until every last vestige of goodness for the sake of goodness is crowned by a steaming dump? 

Well, yes. But you’ll be fine, so long as you save the choicest hate for yourself. Ultimately that makes all the difference.