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Madame's Nightshirt
Mrs. Peperium
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So we wake to the morning's news, the Missouri State Fair rodeo clown was droned while we slept:
"Missouri State Fair officials have now banned a clown who wore a President Obama mask during a performance that mocked the president.
"Fair officials also say they are with the Missouri Rodeo Cowboys Association, which ran the event, and that the association's personnel and performers must undergo sensitivity training if they are to work with the fair again."
-- NPR
The rodeo clown has been banned for life and his fellow rodeo clowns got sensitivity training. We've reached the point where clowns have to take sensitivity training if they ever want to hide in a barrel from a wild bull again.
Meanwhile, did you hear the latest on America's previous dronee, Paula Deen:
"A federal judge in Georgia has thrown out race discrimination claims by a former Savannah restaurant manager whose lawsuit against Paula Deen ended up causing the celebrity cook to lose a big slice of her culinary empire.
"Lisa Jackson sued Deen and her brother, Bubba Hiers, last year, saying she was subjected to sexual harassment and racist attitudes during the five years she worked at their restaurant, Uncle Bubba's Seafood and Oyster House. But U.S. District Court Judge William T. Moore Jr. ruled Monday that Jackson, who is white, has no standing to sue them for race discrimination."
Let's repeat that last bit - "Jackson, who is white, has no standing to sue them for racial discrimination."
The judge continued:
"that though others may have allegedly faced discrimination, Jackson can't sue since she was not one of the victims."
A white woman was suing Paula Deen for racial discrimination. A white woman. What's really eye-opening is that it took a judge to point out that she, as a white woman, had no standing and was, therefore, not a victim of alleged racial discrimination.
The woman's lawyer didn't point this out. Neither did the media. Meanwhile Paula was droned -losing half of her empire.
Did you hear one of America's other empires got racially profiled? Yup. Empress Oprah who made a cool 77 million last year alone got allegedly dissed in Switzerland by a shop girl. From an Entertainment Tonight interview -note the interviewer knew about the 'incident' before lobbing the softball:
Nancy O'Dell ( Entertainment Tonight) "Just a couple of weeks ago, you faced a shopping incident while you were in Switzerland attending Tina Turner's wedding."
OPRAH: I didn't have my eyelashes on, but I was in full Oprah Winfrey gear, and I go into a store -- which shall remain unnamed -- and I say to the woman, "Uh, excuse me, may I see that bag right above your head?" and she says to me, (mocking her accent) "No. It's too expensive." Uh, one more time I tried. I said, "But I really do just really want to see that one," and she said, "Oh, I don't... I don't want to hurt your feelings," and I said, "Okay. Thank you so much. You're probably right. I can't afford it," and I walked out of the store. Now why did she do that?
Oprah continued:
"There's two different ways to handle it," said Winfrey who was in town for Tina Turner's wedding. "I could've had the whole blow-up thing and thrown down the black card, but why do that?"
So Oprah didn't throw 'the black card' down in Switzerland, she merely waited and threw it down a few weeks later on Entertainment Tonight. Thankfully Switzerland is still neutral so its government wasn't able to drone the store clerk. The droning was left to The Tourist Board viaTwitter :
“This person acted terribly wrong.”
The Tourist Board also issued a formal apology:
“We are very sorry for what happened to her because we think all of our guests and clients should be treated respectfully, in a professional manner.”
It's just the citizens of Switzerland who aren't treated with respect. It's drone first, ask questions later. Thankfully the shop clerk was a woman so she wasn't immediately flattened like men are. She spoke to the press saying Oprah is lying :
Now the saleslady has hit back, stating: '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. 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. 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.'
"She emphatically denied ever saying to Winfrey: 'You don't want to see this bag. It is too expensive. You cannot afford it.'
"The saleslady went on: 'This is not true. This is absurd. I would never say something like that to a customer. Really never. Good manners and politeness are the Alpha and the Omega in this business.
''I don't know why she is making these accusations. She is so powerful and I am just a shop girl.
"'I didn't hurt anyone. I don't know why someone as great as her must cannibalize me on TV.
"'If it had all taken place as she claimed, why has she not complained the next day at the wedding of Tina Turner with Trudie Goetz, my boss? She was there also at the Turner wedding as a guest. I don't understand it.'
Ah, so the dreaded truth has come out - Oprah and the shop owner were at the same wedding the very next day. That was a perfectly appropriate opportunity time for business woman Oprah to professionally address her 'incident'. But Oprah didn't. She waited for the cameras to be rolling.
The store clerk's comments "I don't know why she is making these accusations. She is so powerful and I am just a shop girl." forced Oprah's hand. At the LA premier of 'The Butler' Oprah attempted to explain her hurt feelings. (By the way in the old days of studios and studio heads, this 'incident' would've been easily seen by the public as a publicity stunt for a movie.) Note Oprah's not addressing the store clerk's claim she could've spoken with the owner of the store at Tina's wedding, instead she doubling down on the store clerk and said Switzerland -as in the entire country doesn't need to apologize to her :
Oprah Winfrey says she's "sorry" that a media frenzy emerged after saying she experienced racism during a trip to Switzerland.
"I think that incident in Switzerland was just an incident in Switzerland. I'm really sorry that it got blown up. I purposefully did not mention the name of the store. I'm sorry that I said it was Switzerland. I was just referencing it as an example of being in a place where people don't expect that you would be able to be there. It's not an indictment against the country or even that store," she continued. "It was just one person who didn't want to offer me the opportunity to see the bag. So no apologies necessary from the country of Switzerland. If somebody makes a mistake in the United States do we apologize in front of the whole country? No!"
Instead we drone them with no apologies.
James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal sums Oprah up perfectly:
We quite like this story as a parable of race relations in 21st-century America. Whatever actually happened at Trois Pommes, it was not a systemic indignity like the Montgomery, Ala., rule that required black bus riders to give up seats when white passengers boarded (to say nothing of the entire Jim Crow system of which that rule was a part).
What Winfrey construes as a racial episode is actually a story about class–a wealthy, privileged celebrity aggrieved by a lowly saleswoman’s lack of deference. And it’s not her first brush with this sort of impertinence: “The incident comes eight years after Winfrey was turned away from a Hermes store in Paris a few minutes after closing,” the News notes. Apparently fermé is un sifflet pour chien.
It’s reminiscent of the endlessly repeated claim that criticism of Barack Obama proves racism is alive and well in America. Somehow Obama’s defenders are unable to see past the color of his skin and notice that he is president of the United States. As for Winfrey, she went all the way to Europe to discover that racism is alive in America.
-- This Is Not Rosa Parks: Oprah Winfrey’s Swiss adventure.
So where are we? We're one clown down, Oprah buys bags made of real crocodile skin (that was the newsworthy part of her story) and we're still awaiting Jennifer Aniston's statement on learning her phony croc bags aren't good enough for Oprah. Oh puh-leaze, pleaze, pleaze Jennifer - do knock that one out of the park. Have PETA stand with you.
Meanwhile, for the serious folks, African American children in America still aren't being taught to read. This being done to them by our government :
"Two recent events -- one on the east coast and one on the west coast -- raise painful questions about whether we are really serious when we say that we want better education for minority children.
"One of these events was an announcement by Dunbar High School in Washington, D.C., that it plans on August 19th to begin "an entire week of activities to celebrate the grand opening of our new $160 million state-of-the-art school building."
"The painful irony in all this is that the original Dunbar High School building, which opened in 1916, housed a school with a record of high academic achievements for generations of black students, despite the inadequacies of the building and the inadequacies of the financial support that the school received.
"By contrast, today's Dunbar High School is just another ghetto school with abysmal standards, despite Washington's record of having some of the country's highest levels of money spent per pupil -- and some of the lowest test score results.
"Housing an educational disaster in an expensive new building is all too typical of what political incentives produce.
"We pay a lot of lip service to educational excellence. But too many institutions and individuals that have produced good educational results for minority students have not only failed to get support, but have even been undermined...
-- Thomas Sowell
Madame's Nightshirt
Mrs. Peperium
.
So we wake to the morning's news, the Missouri State Fair rodeo clown was droned while we slept:
"Missouri State Fair officials have now banned a clown who wore a President Obama mask during a performance that mocked the president.
"Fair officials also say they are with the Missouri Rodeo Cowboys Association, which ran the event, and that the association's personnel and performers must undergo sensitivity training if they are to work with the fair again."
-- NPR
The rodeo clown has been banned for life and his fellow rodeo clowns got sensitivity training. We've reached the point where clowns have to take sensitivity training if they ever want to hide in a barrel from a wild bull again.
Meanwhile, did you hear the latest on America's previous dronee, Paula Deen:
"A federal judge in Georgia has thrown out race discrimination claims by a former Savannah restaurant manager whose lawsuit against Paula Deen ended up causing the celebrity cook to lose a big slice of her culinary empire.
"Lisa Jackson sued Deen and her brother, Bubba Hiers, last year, saying she was subjected to sexual harassment and racist attitudes during the five years she worked at their restaurant, Uncle Bubba's Seafood and Oyster House. But U.S. District Court Judge William T. Moore Jr. ruled Monday that Jackson, who is white, has no standing to sue them for race discrimination."
Let's repeat that last bit - "Jackson, who is white, has no standing to sue them for racial discrimination."
The judge continued:
"that though others may have allegedly faced discrimination, Jackson can't sue since she was not one of the victims."
A white woman was suing Paula Deen for racial discrimination. A white woman. What's really eye-opening is that it took a judge to point out that she, as a white woman, had no standing and was, therefore, not a victim of alleged racial discrimination.
The woman's lawyer didn't point this out. Neither did the media. Meanwhile Paula was droned -losing half of her empire.
Did you hear one of America's other empires got racially profiled? Yup. Empress Oprah who made a cool 77 million last year alone got allegedly dissed in Switzerland by a shop girl. From an Entertainment Tonight interview -note the interviewer knew about the 'incident' before lobbing the softball:
Nancy O'Dell ( Entertainment Tonight) "Just a couple of weeks ago, you faced a shopping incident while you were in Switzerland attending Tina Turner's wedding."
OPRAH: I didn't have my eyelashes on, but I was in full Oprah Winfrey gear, and I go into a store -- which shall remain unnamed -- and I say to the woman, "Uh, excuse me, may I see that bag right above your head?" and she says to me, (mocking her accent) "No. It's too expensive." Uh, one more time I tried. I said, "But I really do just really want to see that one," and she said, "Oh, I don't... I don't want to hurt your feelings," and I said, "Okay. Thank you so much. You're probably right. I can't afford it," and I walked out of the store. Now why did she do that?
Oprah continued:
"There's two different ways to handle it," said Winfrey who was in town for Tina Turner's wedding. "I could've had the whole blow-up thing and thrown down the black card, but why do that?"
So Oprah didn't throw 'the black card' down in Switzerland, she merely waited and threw it down a few weeks later on Entertainment Tonight. Thankfully Switzerland is still neutral so its government wasn't able to drone the store clerk. The droning was left to The Tourist Board viaTwitter :
“This person acted terribly wrong.”
The Tourist Board also issued a formal apology:
“We are very sorry for what happened to her because we think all of our guests and clients should be treated respectfully, in a professional manner.”
It's just the citizens of Switzerland who aren't treated with respect. It's drone first, ask questions later. Thankfully the shop clerk was a woman so she wasn't immediately flattened like men are. She spoke to the press saying Oprah is lying :
Now the saleslady has hit back, stating: '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. 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. 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.'
"She emphatically denied ever saying to Winfrey: 'You don't want to see this bag. It is too expensive. You cannot afford it.'
"The saleslady went on: 'This is not true. This is absurd. I would never say something like that to a customer. Really never. Good manners and politeness are the Alpha and the Omega in this business.
''I don't know why she is making these accusations. She is so powerful and I am just a shop girl.
"'I didn't hurt anyone. I don't know why someone as great as her must cannibalize me on TV.
"'If it had all taken place as she claimed, why has she not complained the next day at the wedding of Tina Turner with Trudie Goetz, my boss? She was there also at the Turner wedding as a guest. I don't understand it.'
Ah, so the dreaded truth has come out - Oprah and the shop owner were at the same wedding the very next day. That was a perfectly appropriate opportunity time for business woman Oprah to professionally address her 'incident'. But Oprah didn't. She waited for the cameras to be rolling.
The store clerk's comments "I don't know why she is making these accusations. She is so powerful and I am just a shop girl." forced Oprah's hand. At the LA premier of 'The Butler' Oprah attempted to explain her hurt feelings. (By the way in the old days of studios and studio heads, this 'incident' would've been easily seen by the public as a publicity stunt for a movie.) Note Oprah's not addressing the store clerk's claim she could've spoken with the owner of the store at Tina's wedding, instead she doubling down on the store clerk and said Switzerland -as in the entire country doesn't need to apologize to her :
Oprah Winfrey says she's "sorry" that a media frenzy emerged after saying she experienced racism during a trip to Switzerland.
"I think that incident in Switzerland was just an incident in Switzerland. I'm really sorry that it got blown up. I purposefully did not mention the name of the store. I'm sorry that I said it was Switzerland. I was just referencing it as an example of being in a place where people don't expect that you would be able to be there. It's not an indictment against the country or even that store," she continued. "It was just one person who didn't want to offer me the opportunity to see the bag. So no apologies necessary from the country of Switzerland. If somebody makes a mistake in the United States do we apologize in front of the whole country? No!"
Instead we drone them with no apologies.
James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal sums Oprah up perfectly:
We quite like this story as a parable of race relations in 21st-century America. Whatever actually happened at Trois Pommes, it was not a systemic indignity like the Montgomery, Ala., rule that required black bus riders to give up seats when white passengers boarded (to say nothing of the entire Jim Crow system of which that rule was a part).
What Winfrey construes as a racial episode is actually a story about class–a wealthy, privileged celebrity aggrieved by a lowly saleswoman’s lack of deference. And it’s not her first brush with this sort of impertinence: “The incident comes eight years after Winfrey was turned away from a Hermes store in Paris a few minutes after closing,” the News notes. Apparently fermé is un sifflet pour chien.
It’s reminiscent of the endlessly repeated claim that criticism of Barack Obama proves racism is alive and well in America. Somehow Obama’s defenders are unable to see past the color of his skin and notice that he is president of the United States. As for Winfrey, she went all the way to Europe to discover that racism is alive in America.
-- This Is Not Rosa Parks: Oprah Winfrey’s Swiss adventure.
So where are we? We're one clown down, Oprah buys bags made of real crocodile skin (that was the newsworthy part of her story) and we're still awaiting Jennifer Aniston's statement on learning her phony croc bags aren't good enough for Oprah. Oh puh-leaze, pleaze, pleaze Jennifer - do knock that one out of the park. Have PETA stand with you.
Meanwhile, for the serious folks, African American children in America still aren't being taught to read. This being done to them by our government :
"Two recent events -- one on the east coast and one on the west coast -- raise painful questions about whether we are really serious when we say that we want better education for minority children.
"One of these events was an announcement by Dunbar High School in Washington, D.C., that it plans on August 19th to begin "an entire week of activities to celebrate the grand opening of our new $160 million state-of-the-art school building."
"The painful irony in all this is that the original Dunbar High School building, which opened in 1916, housed a school with a record of high academic achievements for generations of black students, despite the inadequacies of the building and the inadequacies of the financial support that the school received.
"By contrast, today's Dunbar High School is just another ghetto school with abysmal standards, despite Washington's record of having some of the country's highest levels of money spent per pupil -- and some of the lowest test score results.
"Housing an educational disaster in an expensive new building is all too typical of what political incentives produce.
"We pay a lot of lip service to educational excellence. But too many institutions and individuals that have produced good educational results for minority students have not only failed to get support, but have even been undermined...
-- Thomas Sowell
Let us end with a hymn from Hillary in Selma, 2007:
"People now talk about their Obama vote in the same disbelieving tone
used when they tell you they took an Ambien and woke up naked outside."
-- Dennis Miller
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Reading this post reminded me October 9* is not too far off and I need to stock the liquor cabinet with more than Madeira.
*October 9, (2009)
Flit** the Clown announced as recipient of Nobel Peace Prize.
October 9 is now unofficially recognized as the day satire died and rose again from the dead as a lifestyle.
**flit – see Urban dictionary, not Oxford's etc.
Posted by: George Pal | August 13, 2013 at 02:27 PM
You can't make this stuff up.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2013/08/15/arts/ap-us-people-russell-simmons.html?hp
Posted by: The Ancient | August 15, 2013 at 12:35 PM