"It is absolutely not true that I declined to show her the bag on racist grounds."

"I even asked her if she wanted to look at the bag," said the Swiss sales clerk who incurred the wrath of Oprah.

"I wasn't sure what I should present to her when she came in on the afternoon of Saturday July 20 so I showed her some bags from the Jennifer Aniston collection. I explained to her the bags came in different sizes and materials, like I always do. She looked at a frame behind me. Far above there was the 35,000 Swiss franc crocodile leather bag.

"I simply told her that it was like the one I held in my hand, only much more expensive, and that I could show her similar bags.... She looked around the store again but didn't say anything else. Then she went with her companion to the lower floor. My colleague saw them to the door. They were not even in the store for five minutes."

Now, I think this relationship got off on the wrong track when the sales clerk read the customer as best suited for the Jennifer Aniston collection. This would annoy me. You're steering me toward the Jennifer Aniston?! Why! But Oprah can't go to the press with that, because it doesn't say I was racially typecast. What does it say? You look like a middle class American. That's annoying, but not a topic for outrage. So Oprah points at the most out-of-reach item, figuring it's super-expensive, which it is.


The sales lady stays on track with her original guess that you look like you'd go for something Jennifer Aniston selected to put her name on. Arguably, that's the opposite of racist — looking at a black woman and thinking she's the Jennifer Aniston type? Oprah's outrage seems like what would rankle a white woman: I look merely middle class.

Oh, but isn't it a burden to be black and thus to need to wonder whether any given failure to genuflect is because of race? Even though Oprah's quite different from virtually every other black person who's troubled by that burden, she may feel the call to represent those burden-bearers... especially since she's starring in the latest medicinal movie about race and she'd like you to look at her character and think of her as stereotypically black and not as the huge celebrity Oprah, which is to say, she'd like you to see her as she claims that shop lady saw her. So could you please show her something in crocodile?

From the (unlinkable) Oxford English Dictionary:

The crocodile was fabulously said to weep, either to allure a man for the purpose of devouring him, or while (or after) devouring him; hence many allusions in literature. (See also crocodile tears...)...

1590   Spenser Faerie Queene i. v. sig. E2,   A cruell craftie Crocodile, Which in false griefe hyding his harmefull guile,..Sheddeth tender teares....
a1616   Shakespeare Othello (1622) iv. i. 246   If that the earth could teeme with womens teares Each drop she falls, would proue a Crocadile....
1677   T. D'Urfey Madam Fickle iii. 36   More false than Crocodills, that mourn the slain, and yet delight to kill 'em.

"We are fuming - this person acted terribly wrong. We are sorry this happened to @oprah!."

So tweets the Swiss Tourism office after Oprah cries racism when a shopgirl deems a $38,000 handbag "too expensive" and steers her toward other merchandise. Racism has many manifestations, some terribly subtle. Who can tell the difference between a rich lady in don't-you-know-who-I-am mode crushing a humble retail employee and a woman imbued with racial memory vindicating centuries of suffering by perceiving the last nuance of insult?

Sarah Palin could be the next Oprah.

That's what reality-show maestro Mark Burnett thought, but Sarah said no.

Burnett has insisted that Palin do the show from either New York or Los Angeles, which would require her to move for a significant portion of the year from her residence in Alaska where she lives with husband Todd.

Whether that was really the basis for the no or not, it's great PR. She's devoted to Alaska and her husband Todd. That's the kind of thing that gives women — some women — chills of feeling, I say — experiencing this bodily chills, even as I'm am typing out the skepticism toward PR that reigns over my rational mind.

IN THE COMMENTS: prairie wind said:

Sarah doesn't strike me as someone who wants to be an Oprah. She won't be pushed into "women's TV"... not when men are a huge percentage of her supporters. And not when her Facebook page has more political clout than Oprah's tv show ever had. 

Speaking of Presidents and nightmares...

I had a dream last night that I woke up, looked at my iPhone, and saw a terrible headline in Drudge. I tried really hard to yell it out to Meade, who was asleep. It was impossible to yell, which should have tipped me off that it was a dream, but it was so realistic — the dream of waking up in bed and doing something that you tend to do while still in bed — that later, when I really did wake up, I grabbed my iPhone, went right to Drudge, and I was so relieved to see the same headline that was there when I went to bed Friday night.

It's a particularly cheerful headline — "Stocks Hit 5 Year High" — with a picture of wine glasses splashily clinking, angled together in a position that parallels Oprah's hands in a picture just above and to the left. Oprah looks alarmed/outraged, but only because "He even lied — to Oprah?!" And how reassuring that is. The outrage of the day is Lance Armstrong, doping and lying, the same old thing, and it's something that only vaguely affects us. Thank God.

What was the headline I saw in my dream? I won't tell you. It's not that I'm superstitious, but ideas affect minds, and it's an image I won't put out there.

"Armstrong did not delve into the details of his doping, and Winfrey never asked."

"He did not explain how it was done, who helped him do it or how, exactly, he perpetuated his myth for so long. He said he was not comfortable talking about other people.... Not once did he look into the camera and say, without qualification, 'I’m sorry.'"

Oprah, too, should have looked into the camera and said "I'm sorry." What a terrible interview! The part I watched, anyway, before deciding it was a big waste of time. Oprah looked and sounded tired and uncomfortable, as if she'd forgotten how to be Oprah. Or they'd had some dispute off camera and she knew this was going to be a robotic exercise in nothingness that wasn't going to save her network. She was going to get zero warmth, zero psychodrama, just a dull little man. Little in every way, including the way that made Oprah look huge.

Oh! If only a second Oprah could have been there interviewing Oprah about what she thought and how she felt about the wee interviewee.

There's still Part 2 — and maybe Lance will look right into the camera and say, without qualification, "I'm sorry" — but will anyone watch? Did anyone, other than journalists covering the "story," stick with Part 1 all the way through? Or did you all snap it off, like we did, after about the third time he prefaced an answer with I know I'm not the most believable guy in the world?

"Lance Armstrong will offer more than the sporting world’s most long-awaited confession..."

"He’s expected to counter the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency’s portrayal of him as the mastermind of what it called the most sophisticated, professional doping program in the history of sports by saying that doping was endemic to cycling...."