September 6, 2005, - 4:33 pm
Drivel: HOprah’s Nauseating N’Awlins Death Crypt Show
By Debbie Schlussel
You’ve heard of Blaxploitation movies? Well, Oprah Winfrey has started a whole new sister industry: Hurricane Blaxploitation.
Today’s huckstering “Oprah” show, shot atop the dead bodies and suffering of her key demographic, was –and worse.
Some highlights:
* Most sickening: Oprah’s bud Dr. Mehmet Oz films an old, dying person under a foil cover and asks the person to open his/her eyes. Is this dying person in a condition to give consent to this disgusting Oprah display? Was he/she even asked for consent? Doubtful. Ditto for the multiple dead people close-ups this insensitive doctor gave to the camera. Then this creep, Oz, and Oprah have the gall to complain that these people “are not being allowed to die in dignity.” Hmmm…I think a glimpse in the mirror is in order for Big O and Oz.
* One of Oprah’s “Gorgeous Men of Decorating”–the “Oprah” show’s interior decorator, Nate Berkus, reported from the scene. Yes, skilled journalists like Shepard Smith and Brian Williams were okay. But we really needed the superior journalistic insights into the Hurricane damage that only a man skilled in furniture, wallpaper and carpets could provide. Thanks, Oprah.
* As the resident PETA activist/interior decorator/catastrophe reporter for the Oprah show, Berkus whines that people can’t take their pets and that there is the absurd policy of people first. We can’t have that. Berkus saves the man’s pet for him and houses the pet in the house at which he’s staying. G-d forbid, they saved a human in the house at which Berkus is staying.
* Lisa Ling, Oprah’s resident Let’s-understand-HAMAS-female-suicide-bombers-and-the-great-life-of-Cuba reporteratrix, repeats the BS (which she believes) about the delay in helping is because the people are not White. Is this Lisa Ling or Kanye West? Hard to tell.
Ling also repeats the obvious. Gee, I haven’t seen this for a week on CNN/FOX News/MSNBC/NBC/CBS/ABC–you know that stuff about people living on the streets for days, starving, and losing everything they have. Thanks for repeating for the gazillionth time what real reporters already covered. You’re a week late.
* New Orleans’ Police Chief crying; Mayor Nagin crying; Oprah fake-crying, saying, “This makes me so MAAAAAD. This makes me MAAAD.” (Not mad enough to not bring her make-up artist, though. Tons of make-up on.) At last, I understand why Queen Oprah didn’t get an Oscar, and her acting career went bust.
* Oprah pretend-bullies Mayor Nagin to let her in to the Superdome to see for herself–because she didn’t see it on FOX News/CNN/NBC/MSNBC/CNN, etc. (and because we didn’t see it either, living in the Oprah vacuum as we do). “I want to see it,” she demands. “Why can’t I see it, if so many people spent so many days there?” Then she dons a surgical mask–my favorite Oprah fashion accessory. And we see the never before seen thing called an empty stadium. Thanks for this unique view Oprah. Now, my life is complete.
* And of course, no show could be complete without Oprah showing film of herself hugging everyone at the Astrodome and signing autographs. That Oprah. Whatta gal!
Tags: activist /interior decorator/catastrophe reporter, artist, Brian Williams, chief, CNN, Cuba, Hamas, Kanye West, Lisa Ling, Mayor, Mehmet Oz, Nagin, NBC, New Orleans, New Orleans' Police, Oprah Winfrey, Oscar, PETA, Queen, Shepard Smith
You’re assuming that Oprah helped anyone.
What was her interior decorator doing there? There was nothing to decorate. It’s like a cruel joke.
At best it was a genteel look-see, a walk about. They went touring. A glorified gawking session. The worst kind of celebrity rubber-neckers. Swoop down for the photo-op, and quickly escape back into the palace.
It actually makes things worse. I actually think those “evacuees” as she generously labeled/stigmatized them (to their faces) are smart enough to know when they are being exploited. And, unlike the barking seal studio audience regularly seen on Oprah, these people don’t even get free refrigerators, not that they’d have anywhere to put ’em.
I say first do no harm. Apparently Dr. Oz, and Dr. Oprah don’t understand the injury such blatant exploitation causes.
glamchild on September 6, 2005 at 6:24 pm