It's good to be the King...err Queen

Mel Brook's brilliant "History Of The World, Part 1" movie contained a vignette where he portrayed King Louis at the start of the French Revolution. As he royally stepped through a series of excesses from playing chess with live people as the pieces to overflowing a Harvey Korman held, "wait for the shake", piss bucket Brooks exemplified perfectly how out of touch the elite can be. Brooks even gave Louie his own catch phrase, "Its good to be the King" that was usually uttered during a rutting motion behind the closest bustle bound maiden.

The Queen of all Media gave the commencement speech at Duke University on Sunday where she, most likely unwittingly, paraphrased Brook's characterization of the beheaded Frenchman saying, "It's great to have a private jet"! She quickly followed what would normally be seen as a let them eat cake utterance with the advice that you've not completed the circle of success until you have helped someone reach a higher place. Easy for her to say.

I, in no way, begrudge Ms. Winfrey her success. Rather, I herald it. I would love to emulate it but that doesn't seem likely. Howie has cornered the television market for extremely attractive, funny and eloquent bald headed men and Montel is waiting in the wings for a comeback so that ship has sailed.

What irks me is that, in describing her financial, rather than physical, largess, Oprah encourages up and comers to give away their hard earned gains to others. Charity is fine and we should give a hand up where possible but too often this advice is translated into a directive to provide a hand out. More people will be helped through success and entrepreneurship providing jobs and opportunity than will ever be helped through the redistribution of wealth by government or soup kitchen inspired hope. Oprah herself has provided livelihoods for hundreds on her staff and I am sure several of her staffs hoods were very lively. In fairness, she does walk the walk and is quite philanthropic but giving a car to everyone in her studio audience pales when compared to providing a secure job with a 401K and possible stock option.

Today's college graduate has been spoon fed a diet of social awareness and citizen of the world pablum from his earliest days of napping in a circle in kindergarten to avoid anyone being single out as first in line. What they need to hear as they embark on their road to retirement is how to weather the storms of an increasingly unstable and over regulated business environment to make for themselves an oasis of success. They don't need to hear how any portion of their work is the property of someone else.

I've one other small complaint about Ms. Winfrey's private plane remark. Jetting off from Chicago for a weekend at her Southern California home in Gulfstream comfort is fine so long as you don't lecture the rest of us about our carbon footprints. It seems that when it comes to "walking this walk", she is doing so at 30,000 feet.

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