Vive La France

Maybe I should cut the French a little slack

After all, they just snubbed Oprah. In further proof that the functional intelligence of the country - perhaps the English speaking world - is spiraling down the shitter, I submit the current media storm of reports on the Parisian store Hermes turning Oprah away. Google hits on the words "Oprah Hermes": 157,000. With this one, make it 157,001 webpages dedicated to discussing the matter...only I'll add a bit of a spin, ‘cause really, I care only insomuch as one could ever care about watching a spent condom ride a gutter stream down a storm drain. Yes, it's amusing, but no, I don't really want to touch it, and the only folks degenerate enough to appreciate such discussion - of condoms or this matter - are you fine sick fucks.

All this I'm building on hearsay and research through a tabloid news posting or two, so don't hold me to details - the first thing to go in any form of celebrity reporting is accuracy anyway, so pick a dart and throw it in the general direction of truth. So Oprah is in Paris and wants to buy a watch; there's no place to buy a watch quite like the Hermes place to buy a watch, apparently...or Euro-Wal-Mart was closed, one of the two. I checked their website and couldn't find watches, which I'm sure is just a trivial detail, and has nothing whatsoever to do with fact-checking and finding glitches in other peoples' stories. So I priced bracelets, as they're metal and circular and go around people's wrists, much like a watch. The ugly one was $440. The uglier one was $570.

Just for shits and giggles, I clicked on a few other things. Hermes sells a baby "high chair pack" that consists of a baby bib and a baby placemat, both of embroidered linen. When I was little, my parents used the plastic tray that comes with the high chair, and wrapped me with quilted Bounty paper towel. Hell, quilted Bounty makes for some fine inexpensive, no-wash baby clothes, but I digress. When you need the finest, check out Hermes for embroidered baby linen: $160 for the set of spilled-food-and-vomit catching linen.

So into such a store Oprah tries to go, only to be turned away at the door by a salesman who states that she is fifteen minutes late - they're closed. And the salesman neglected to say "oui." This ranks on par with high treason in the upper echelons of French haute society. The rest of us call it "a salesman turning someone away at the door after the damned business is closed." This puts Oprah in a huff. A tiff, perhaps. Righteous rage? Your guess is as good as any pundit's.
She was treated like everyone else. The woman who has championed black rights, and women's rights, and all sorts of other group rights, towards the goal of having everyone everywhere treated equally (a truly noble goal), was treated equally. Don't cry, Oprah, smile: you've achieved that equality you've so longed for.

But the outrage, the shame of not being let into a store after it closes. I'm sure this has never happened to anyone else in the history of civilized society. Certainly, the convenience of one person is worth the inconvenience of, say, eight or ten store employees who have to stay late, not knowing how long the super star would take or what sort of demands she would make, they were faced with the inconvenience of the one, or the inconvenience of the many. Most philosophers agree: ‘tis better to cause the least suffering when suffering is unavoidable. Why should any store employees be forced by circumstance or arrogance to break store policy if they don't want to? How about some equality for workers' rights?

I hope some French celebrity winds up banging on the drive-thru window of a Texas burger joint fifteen minutes after quittin' time. I also really hope some loser is there, stoned and mischievous, to fire the grill back up and show how our Southland is just a bit more hospitable than some Parisian boutique.

But seriously, who cares? There are children starving in Africa, inner city schools without books, kids being kidnapped, terrorists building bombs, third world countries destabilizing...and the Oprah tabloids are getting more hits than the online World News section of the New York Times.

We see these whacked priorities...now what can we do about ‘em?