Friday, October 05, 2007

See why I am sick of Oprah?


Oprah's Great Escape
(from Radar magazine)

It's hard out there for an empathetic billionaire—like TV's top earner Oprah, who raked in a cool $260 million last year alone.
On that note, she has some inspiring words of wisdom for readers of her eponymous mag's October issue: Take a month off! You deserve it. "I decided to give myself July," Oprah writes. "Yes, the whole month—dedicated to myself, for myself. To regroup. Rejuvenate. Restore my soul." (Yeah, that show on the O.J. book was pretty soul-crushing.)
If the missive, which runs on the back page of the autumnal Oprah, comes off as a little tone deaf, well too bad for all of you who didn't top Forbes's latest rich list. In it Oprah describes how the past season of her show left her feeling a little drained: "I was so exhausted, I was numb." And then she breaks into an envy-inducing ramble about the monthlong break she took from everything because, as she reminds us, "making the decision to look after yourself is the ultimate in healthcare."
Of course, we don't all have a private chef to ensure that we "munched on golden flaxseed ... ate only fresh foods: grilled fish ... mangoes from my neighbors' tree" during our monthlong summer retreats. Nor do we all have a Hawaiian estate to escape to and watch "28 consecutive sunsets." Before she signs off, Oprah reminds us: "As I write this, I'm wrapped in a blanket on the back of a friend's boat off Vancouver Island sipping a glass of wine ... watching the whales swim by." And indeed, the photo accompanying her letter shows Oprah swathed in a blanket while sitting on what can only be described as a multimillion-dollar floating palace.
For some reason, she didn't mention that she and Maya Angelou then shared a Methuselah of vintage Veuve before conference calling Nelson Mandela from the sat phone. Which is all very inspiring, unless of course, you're a single mom from Oklahoma for whom paying the phone bill on time is the "ultimate in healthcare."

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