Oprah Stomps Her Way to an Ass Hat of the Moment Award

WEST CHESTER, Pa.–Oprah Winfrey gave away a car on Jimmy Kimmel’s show last night in a transparent attempt to deflect attention from her failed transparent attempt to draw attention to her new movie, something or other about some butler. As an exercise in hey-look-at-me tone deafness . . .

. . . it was among The Large One’s worst, and there have been some doozies. Thus she is the unanimous winner of an Ass Hat of the Moment award.

Some black story first: The Large One was shopping for a $37,000 bag at an exclusive shoppe in Zurich, Switzerland, sometime before BFF Tina Turner’s wedding, which took place in a modest ceremony on July 21. While in the shoppe, The Large One claims, she was subjected to the worst example of racism since the murder of Medgar Evers fifty years ago.

Ms. Large made this claim when she appeared on Entertainment Tonight on August 5, where she was asked if she had personally experienced racism. Yes, she replied, a racist clerk at a shop in Zurich had refused to show Ms. Oprah an expensive bag, even though she had asked several times to see it.

“That one will cost too much, you won’t be able to afford that,” Ms. Winfrey claimed the racist clerk had told her.

If this incident was so monumental, we have to wonder why Ms. Oprah did not talk about it until the Entertainment Tonight interview more than two weeks later. Perhaps because that interview was conveniently closer to the August 12 premier of that movie about a butler?

Ms. Oprah later claimed in a newspaper interview that she was not being overly sensitive about the Affair in Zurich, but as her lips were moving when she made the claim, she was at least being overly grandiose.

To wit: “Believe me, normally people are excited when I come to their stores. It’s very unusual when I’m not practically dragged into a boutique. Dozens of people will be pressing their noses against the windows to get a look at me shopping.”

We are too fine a person to speculate on the number of people it would take to drag Ms. Oprah into a boutique, but about the rest of her statement, are you fucking kidding me? Peasants with their noses pressed against the glass to watch this clown shop? Next thing you know she’ll be claiming that dozens of people crowd around the restroom door just for the privilege of listening to her pee.

That bullshit alone would nave been enough to earn The Large One a special fitting for a Lane Bryant ass hat, but Ms. Winfrey wasn’t done yet: she further revealed that she had even considered calling up the designer of the bag and/or the actress for whom it was made.

“The woman at the shop said that it was the Jennifer Aniston bag that Tom Ford had created especially for Jennifer,” said The Great One. “It crossed my mind that maybe I should give Jennifer or Tom a call. I know both of them very well.”

Meanwhile, the poor clerk at the shoppe in Zurich has been receiving nasty missives from the low- to middle-brow women—most of them white—who have made Ms. Industrial Size the insufferable ass hat that she is.

“I don’t know why someone as great as her must cannibalize me on TV,” said the unfortunate clerk.

Uh-oh. Did she say cannibalize? Wait until Oprah hears that.

Now, about the car giveaway on Jimmy Kimmel’s show. It was a typical Ms. Oprah stunt: gaudy, gauche, and self-referential. Her O-ness, you may recall, once gave every member in her talk-show audience, all 276 of them, a brand new Pontiac G-Six, never stopping to think about the potential tax burdens that stunt might impose on the receivers of those Trojan cars.

Turns out the tax on a G-Six went as high as $7,000, depending on the recipient’s tax bracket. Lucky recipients, therefore, had three options: keep the car and pay the tax, sell the car and pay the tax with the profits from the sale, or forfeit the car. The gift that keeps on taking.