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Attention, leftists! Understand that someone else being rich is nothing to do with you being poor, and you’re on the road to recovery. Which brings us to the admirable example of Oprah Winfrey:
Winfrey, 52, who is reportedly worth more than $1 billion, said she doesn’t feel guilty about her wealth. “I was coming back from Africa on one of my trips,” she said. “I had taken one of my wealthy friends with me. She said, ‘Don’t you just feel guilty? Don’t you just feel terrible?’ I said, ‘No, I don’t. I do not know how me being destitute is going to help them.’ Then I said when we got home, ‘I’m going home to sleep on my Pratesi sheets right now and I’ll feel good about it.’”
(Via InstaPundit)
Wonder if there’s a place for Mick in between her sheets. That would put the prat in Pratesi, wunnit?
Posted by chinesearithmetic on 2006 04 12 at 10:43 AM • permalinkHmmm… first comment doesn’t seem to comprehend scripture too well, but has Marxist class envy down pat.
Posted by Rob Crawford on 2006 04 12 at 10:52 AM • permalinkNot sure about your point, Nuke, but the correct quote is “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” It is significantly different than “Blessed are the poor.”
I’m not an Oprah fan by any means, but I agree that if she were destitute it wouldn’t help anyone. It is the wealthy who have the money to help those in need, should they choose to. I’ll bet they’ll pass the plate at church this Easter, and it won’t be the destitute who will be able to give much money.
I smell troll droppings.
Sod off, Pukey.Posted by Pedro the Ignorant on 2006 04 12 at 11:02 AM • permalinkYet, on the other hand, there’s a world of good one can do out there with a billion dollar bank roll and still go home to Pratesi sheets. I have an idea for you, Ms. Winfrey (because it’s what I would do if I were in your Ferragamos): How about establishing a private voucher program that would get promising, motivated inner city kids out of their crappy, dangerous, failing schools and into educational venues that can offer them the opportunity to actually get an education and forge decent, productive lives for themselves? You can start with the kids in your own back yard—God knows Chicago’s Democratic machine won’t do squat for them. You, the queen of victimization, can help the innocent victims of the forty years of plantation mentality social programming foisted on them by your fellow liberals and Democrats. Whaddya say, Oprah?
(PS. I’m sure Oprah Winfrey is both charitable and generous as most of the mega wealthy are. But the beneficiaries of the bulk of their generousity are the same damn social engineers who created this mess to begin with. Like Ted Turner giving $1B and Bill Gates giving $2.2B to the United Nations—the UN for crissakes. Occasionally it would be nice to see that kind of money spent on something that would make a real difference in people’s lives. Andrew Carnegie, for example, gave the city of New York $50M—back when $50M was worth something—to establish free public libraries. Now that made a difference.)
Okay, climbing off the soap box now.
Posted by Kyda Sylvester on 2006 04 12 at 11:10 AM • permalinkI think it was the blesséd “Reverend” Ike who said, “the best way to help the poor is to not be one of them.”
My old Dad used to say “maybe money can’t buy happiness but neither can poverty.”
Posted by Bill Spencer on 2006 04 12 at 11:12 AM • permalinkThat eye of the needle “Christian stuff” is followed by the with God all things are possible “Christian stuff.
nuke everyone-a much bigger goat, you can call her Andrea, is coming. Pay no attention to us.
Well, if I had bothered to read the link first, I’d have seen that Ms. Winfrey is indeed on the right track:
The talk-show host also discussed an academy for girls that she’s building in South Africa. “I want to offer opportunities to girls who have nothing but the will to learn,” she said. “I’m going to be opening my school on January 2, and it will be one of the great days of my life to see 450 girls, most of them orphans who would not have had the opportunity for education in their lives, come to school.”
Winfrey was the featured speaker at the event, which helped raise more than $1.4 million for scholarships to Baltimore’s largest Jewish school.
Mea culpa, Ms. Winfrey.
Oh, and apparently Oprah wears Manolo Blahniks.
Posted by Kyda Sylvester on 2006 04 12 at 11:28 AM • permalinkI’ve been poor. Poor sucks. Thats why I worked my ass off and went to school. I’m not wealthy by any stoke of the imagination, but I’m not poor anymore. If you’re willing to put forth the effort (I’m speaking to Americans now), you can get out of the mess. If you choose to screw up your own life and sit and bitch about how the rich are keeping you down, you are a fool and worthy of contempt. I’ve got no time or patience for the blamers, lapping up the welfare, selling their food stamps for carck money, and looting everything in sight when a local calamity occurs, and then rave to the media that the rich aren’t doing anything to help them.
But let me tell you how I REALLY feel….
My apologies for ranting.Alex Kotlowitz wrote an excellent book on an impoverished Chicago family. Oprah read it and was able, due to her bank roll, to help these people by getting them out of The Projects.
I don’t watch her show, don’t buy into everything she says, but the woman is as generous and philanthropic as the day is long.
I would also definitely recommend the Kotlowitz book to both Right and Left inclined readers.
Short of stuffing her wealth in a mattress and sleeping on it, Oprah can’t help but help others. The earned (employee and supplier) incomes that result from the revenue her show generates, and where ever she invests her wealth creates income producing opportunities for hundreds, if not thousands, of other folks.
Why it is that the public at large believes the only way to help your fellow man is to give wealth away (welfare), rather than investing (the best way) wealth such that it results in income earning opportunities for others, is beyond my comprehension.
Why doesn’t everyone understand the parable about teaching a man to fish?
Putting aside all moral questions about someone being a billionaire, it would be interesting to know what Oprah’s net worth has generated in terms of US Federal and State taxes, employment and business investment.
Posted by JJM Ballantyne on 2006 04 12 at 05:48 PM • permalink20
... and then compare those figures to John Eff Kerry’s.Posted by Stoop Davy Dave on 2006 04 12 at 06:22 PM • permalinkEverytime I want to write off Oprah as a horribly soppy woman I’ll find out she has said something neat like this. Darn nuanced people.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 04 12 at 06:28 PM • permalinkHer fortune is pretty ill-gotten…Same as most celebs, film, pop, sport stars.
They don’t create wealth, just suck it up; every time you buy a product, money goes to its endorsers, TV ad time, etc.
Well, that’s how the world goes around.
But compared to someone, like eg. Bill Gates, who actually increases the wealth level of the world (and profits handsomely) Oprah is a parasite.
And her show is just stupid beyond belief.Posted by Honkie Hammer on 2006 04 12 at 06:41 PM • permalinkOf course, she still thinks WE don’t pay enough taxes…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 04 12 at 10:38 PM • permalink#18 I know what you mean.
Hit a man on the head with a fish and you give him a headache for a day. Teach him how to hit himself on the head with a fish and you give him a headache for life.
Posted by MentalFloss on 2006 04 12 at 11:53 PM • permalink#18 Forbes,
Because most people know diddley-squat about economics, and even some that do (lefty economists) don’t believe it.#29
I think you’ve given me a headache for life. Thanks a whole heap.Posted by Michael Lonie on 2006 04 13 at 12:24 AM • permalinkHit a man on the head with a fish and you give him a headache for a day. Teach him how to hit himself on the head with a fish and you give him a headache for life.
Give a man a fire and he’s warm for the night, set a man on fire and he’s warm for the rest of his life.
Posted by Art Vandelay on 2006 04 13 at 07:45 AM • permalinkPoor little girl works hard, makes good, gets unimaginiably wealthy & does good for others. In America - what a concept! Heartwarming. But #25 1.618, you make a superb point. I was taught to do good things for others, and that I would learn Humility by NOT BRAGGING ABOUT IT!
She does & says some things I think are sweet. Mostly I pay little or no attention.
Friends of ours struck it rich a couple of decades ago and other friends and relatives said “don’t you fee inferior now”? No, we did not feel inferior because the friends never made us feel that way. Then about five years ago their own children ripped them off and they were so said about it. We did not gloat but commiserate, the scale was much geater but the deed may wait for us yet with our own children, God forbid.
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good on ya Tim - that christian stuff about the eye of the needle and blessed are the poor needs a right old shake up with a few oprahisms and this easter I can see you are the man to do it. Off to the Stones tomorrow and let me tell you I thank god there’l lbe no riff raff in there to share the sublime expereince of my $340 tik.