Sunday, August 18, 2013
In further news, Oprah continues to show us who she really is: a woman, who despite her immense success and fortune, is bitter, ugly, childless, and single.
I have always found her to be disingenuous at best, but her willingness to throw a Swiss purse store clerk to the jackals in the media over what seems to me questionable reasons at best in order to help promote her new movie, The Butler, is really what we should all be focusing on.
I wasn't there and I don't know what that clerk feels in her heart.
And I don't care.
The best I can suss out based on Oprah's and the clerk's comments, is that Oprah didn't get the treatment to which she felt entitled.
Poor Oprah.
Her comments on national TV went something like this: This movie is entirely relevant because African Americans are still suffering from racism. Let me tell you about the atrocious treatment I, Queen of Everything, Oprah Winfrey, received at the hands of a common clerk in a luxury hand bag store in a resort town in Switzerland, where I had gone for Tina Turner's wedding.
If I, Oprah Winfrey, The Magnificent, still suffer from racism, even while on vacation in the country that has made it's entire being about not asking or caring where the money came from under any and all circumstances, the country that refused to take sides in World War II, how can any common African American man or woman ever expect to get treated fairly, even if they're on vacation in Switzerland and shopping for luxury handbags?
Indeed.
She goes on to make further statements while being interviewed by Anderson Cooper, who nods thoughtfully throughout.
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On Thursday, CNN’s Anderson Cooper interviewed Oprah Winfrey and Forest Whitaker, stars of Oscar-bait The Butler. During the interview, in which Cooper thoughtfully nodded as Winfrey and Whitaker race-baited, Oprah suggested Emmitt Till and Trayvon Martin were equivalent symbols, and that Americans were racist even if they didn’t have ill will toward black people. When Cooper cited polls showing that black Americans were upset about Trayvon Martin and whites thought too much had been made of the case, Oprah sighed, “Oh, I know, I know. That’s why I love the film in light of this discussion is because it brings context to this discussion. I mean, look at the film, beginning with that lynching scene and ending with walking into Obama’s office, look at what has happened in the span of one man’s lifetime.”
Whitaker chimed in, “This movie reminds us of the circular motion of things still trying working themselves is going on, as in Emmitt Till, and we’re looking at Trayvon, we’re looking at Oscar Grant, we’re looking at all these situations and recognizing we have to move ourselves forward with this change.” Oprah said, “Emmitt Till became a symbol for those times as Emmitt Till has become a symbol for this time. I mean, there are multiple Trayvon Martins whose names never make the newspapers or the headlines. The circumstances surrounding that allowed that to be. There were multiple Emmitt Tills, there were multiple lynchings, there were multiple young black boys whose names are not remembered and often not even recorded.”
Cooper asked, “It’s amazing to me how people from different backgrounds see this.” He then talked about a juror “who did not understand, did not feel linked to Trayvon Martin, felt connected to George Zimmerman in a way, but not Trayvon Martin, she felt race was not part of this case at all.” Oprah couldn’t wait to jump in, blurting, “People don’t feel it’s race because people don’t call it race…A lot of people think if they think they’re not using the n-word themselves, they physically aren’t using the n-word themselves, and do not harbor ill will towards black people that it’s not racist. But to me it’s ridiculous to look at that case and not to think that race was involved.”
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The notion that Emmett Till and Trayvon Martin are equivalent is preposterous and only sympathetic moral relativists like Cooper would let such a statement go unchallenged.
Emmett Till was tortured and murdered for whistling at a white woman in 1955.
Trayvon Martin was shot and killed because he attacked George Zimmerman.
If Martin had not attacked Zimmerman he would still be alive.
These are not equivalent.
Also, George Zimmerman is not white. He is Hispanic. That is how he sees himself.
Not half white, not white/Hispanic. Just Hispanic.
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