The Daily News
1 Ah, nice to be right back into the pattern.
2 Wake up, work, come home, collapse, sleep, wake up at some odd hour, write the DN, collapse.
3 Sound familiar?
4 Yesterday I actually broke through and managed to stay awake into the early part of the evening.
5 Soon thereafter, I swiftly crashed, the DN turning the whole room blue when I awakened at half past one a.m.
6 Oprah blared some show that evidently involved white people talking about steering children through hard times.
7 She had some chipper gal chittering away about how lovely hard times are for families and homes.
8 This lady clearly hasn't worked a day in her life, and was SO annoyingly "hockey mom" that I wanted to throw a brick through the teevee.
9 Her name was Susie.
10 Oy.
11 It was sponsored by some white girl whose parents bought her a "fuel-efficient" Ford focus.
12 It also had commercials for Casio cameras, which had all white people with Osmond teeth taking pictures of each other smiling and laughing.
13 Some black lady finally asked Susie if it would be a good idea to give her daughter a credit card.
14 She interrupted, "Well GIRLFRIEND, be careful...!"
15 I got the shakes, I swear to you.
16 This lady LOVED smiling and telling everyone how tough times are, and how spoiled all the children are nowadays.
17 I look at my own daughters, and I don't see too much "spoiled" at all.
18 They both work their butts off and try with every ounce of strength to fight through modern times.
19 I'm proud of my daughters, Caitlin and Nicole.
20 Maybe it's because we always struggled.
21 By and large, I've tried hard to steer clear of credit cards. In my earlier days I made the credit card idiocy mistakes.
22 In my college days, I lived through a mini-depression when my dad's work went on strike.
23 I literally had to grow my own food and live on a shoestring. I wish I could tell people that I became thrifty and amazing with money, but I really never did.
24 What I did learn was how to peel potatoes, to buy powdered milk, to shop at cannery outlets, and to make complete meals out of the same food for three days running.
25 I managed to bicycle to school and work.
26 So the sense of "entitlement", while slightly there from my teenage years, never really moved into the realities of college life and subsequent younger years.
27 One guy talked about how credit cards given to young people give a sense of free money.
28 Yep.
29 Every commercial involved spoiled white people going out to eat, playing Nintendo games, and eating Yoplait with tiny spoons.
30 Huh?
31 Hard times?
32 Some spoiled white girl came on in front of an antique chair and a vase of daffodils, and answered all of Oprah's questions with statements? That sound like questions?
33 It was downright surreal.
34 The entire show was how white people with no struggles were managing. "Lexie", the girl from Oxford, looked scrubbed and clean, and bragged about working hard all summer at her job by a pool. Her sandy-haired, blue-eyed dad watched proudly as every statement? Was a question?
35 Out of ten commercials, I saw two black faces, one of whom was a happy, smiling successful gal, another being that of a doctor, followed immediately by a commercial for Whirlpool appliances.
36 Buy a washer/dryer and new fridge.
37 Hard times. Some lady came on talking about the dangers of West Nile, implying that now might be a good time to have your pool cleaned.
38 Coming back from commercial, some mom was concerned that her child couldn't go on a field trip to Puerto Rico. This gal was $20,000 in credit card debt, and the woman was worried her kid might get scarred for life if he missed this field trip.
39 "He can't go. Right audience?" Oprah chided. Applause by design.
40 Yeesh.
41 In many ways, I wish I had those sorts of issues.
42 Amazing.
43 I don't know about any of you, but that's a world that is light years away from my own reality.
44 Even the news went to scrubbed white people going to a clown convention in Mexico.
45 I'm not sure where this was all going, but it was sure weird. The song "Everybody Loves a Clown" played under the segue, only it was in Spanish.
46 Gary Lewis and the Playboys. How I knew that is beyond me, although I have no idea who did the Spanish version.
47 I decided it might be good to report all this, and then conk out.
48 If I'm going to hang out in dreamland, I'm probably better off getting some sleep.
49 Work hard, and take care of things. Soup is good food. Don't charge stuff.
50 Accept all of this boushit as a challenge.
51 I'm out. Sarah Palin just came on in a place she called "Glad City" and entered wearing millionaire clothing, with Queen's "We Will Rock You" blaring through the speakers. Oy. Are these people remotely in touch?
52 I ran out the door and to 7-11 to charge a bag of chips.
53 This DN is brought to you by Country First, which I think is a powdered lemonade.
54 Peace.
~H~
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