I don’t watch Oprah on a daily basis, but I did happen to catch it on Friday. The topic was “Class in America.” Great topic, but the show really sucked. The producer should be fired.
She had on Clinton’s Secretary of Labor Robert Reich (looking very gnomish by the way). Oprah kept him in an audience chair. He told us what we all know. 80-90% of this country’s wealth is in the hands of 1% of the people. The middle class is shrinking. More poor in America. “The American Dream” is no longer attainable for everyone.
So instead of a good discussion, the show highlighted three or four vapid women who said that they generalized the “lower class” were people with non-designer bags, dressly poorly and had dirty fingernails. One wailed that people looked down on her even though she drove a BMW because she was a hostess in a high-end restaurant. Waaaaaaaaa. Big fucking deal.
I was waiting for Miss Oprah to say, “Hey! Wait a second. There are many many people out there with dirty ingernails who are honest, hard working and have great character. But she didn’t say a word.
There was one lower working class black guy who said that he felt invisible. The only legitimate comment of the show.
Some snot-nosed heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune was on hawking his film, and he admitted that, yes, he would be disappointed if he was cut out of his father’s will. SHOCKER.
Also Warren Buffet’s granddaughter was on (both she and the Johnson kid got to sit by Oprah, btw.) She told the harrowing tale of not getting a penny from her grandfather. (Although he paid her way through college so she could do whatever she wanted.)
What could have been an interesting and informative show was a real mess.
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Perhaps Oprah has forgotten that she rose from relative poverty to her current status and success through hard work, determination, and whatever other personal skills she had.
On the whole class topic: nobody paid my way through college but me. I applied myself in my younger years, knowing that with 3 kids and a very modest income (sometimes at or below the poverty line depending on how dad's business was doing in the later years) my parents would not be able to give us any money for college. My two sisters and I all received scholarships, grants, and took out student loans. We knew that a college education was necessary to achieve in life the level of success we wanted to achieve. So when people of lower classes or poorer homes whine about it, it quite frankly pisses me off. A person almost always has the power to change their situation -- to improve their life.
My older sister has a PhD. and a very nice job and family, my younger sister is graduating in May with her second bachelor's degree and has been working the whole time while her boss pays for her classes, and I paid off my student loans last November.
Class this, class that. Boo hoo, poor little me. If you want something better, make it happen. If you want more money, go out and make more money. Don't whine to me about it. You want the American dream? Guess what...it's still available. But you're gonna have to plan for it and work to get it, like most other people. No one is going to 'will' it to you.
Hey Mr./Ms. Whiney Person out there -- Make your own success. Don't tell me why you can't; tell me what you're doing to get it.
did you remind her we are still all pissed she took away our shelf?
Yeah, you poor black students! So what if you don't have up to date textbooks, or computers, or even a ride to school, let alone breakfast. Get off your lazy butts and apply yourself. Just ignore that classmate holding a knife next to you. You can still learn from your teachers, even though they aren't considered highly qualified, and class is cancelled once a day due to fights, or fire alarms. You can still go to the library and teach yourself. So what if your library doesn't have anything published in this decade? Just hop on a bus and drive to the library in the 'burbs. If you keep your eyes lowered, and politely "yes ma'am" everyone you see, you might not get arrested. With all that affirmative action bullshit, you can easily steal some average white student's placement at college, and before you know it, you too can pull yourself up out of that whiney lower class.
you have class in america?
whine whine whine whine whine...
If you don't like your life, change it.
I agree, to some extent, that people who are determined can change their lives for the better. I've seen and read stories about people like one woman who was the mother of two and on welfare and got into and through medical school and is now a doctor; Ben Carson, who was heading down the path to no good when his mother took control and restricted his tv watching and forced him and his brother to read two books a week and write book reports even though, unknown to them, she was illiterate – he is now a leading brain surgeon and his brother is an attorney; and a local woman here who was also a mother on welfare when she decided to start getting into organic foods, etc., and now owns a couple of successful restaurants in the area; etc., but . . . not everyone can.
Reality is somewhere in the middle. Not everyone who remains in poverty is there because they’ve done nothing to change it. In this world of extreme variables it is true that some who are comfortable there, some want more but don’t have the means and opportunity to achieve more, and some have the opportunity and drive and can overcome their circumstances and everything in between.
You can have all the drive and determination in the world but sometimes circumstances just get in the way. They may not have supportive parents who allow them to do the things they can to pull themselves out, further their education, etc. They may have to support the family and give up on dreams, etc., so it’s not as easy as saying if they want to, they can.
And they may not be smart enough ,not everyone has the brain to be a surgeon or a lawyer ,or the talent to be a singer or an actor ,some of Us are born to be drones
Even though she's a Republican, I wholeheartedly agree with Urban. It's easier to change your circumstances if you have a supportive family and are in an environment that supports that change.
P, excellent comments. Urb, I agree totally with you, as I so often do, even though I'm Dem. and you're Rep. I really suspect if I'd grown up in SF and you'd grown up in TX, though, you'd be Dem. and I'd be Republican.
I don't even know what to say to you, Res. Maybe try reading "The Working Poor: Invisible in America" by David Shipler.
res has no idea HOW lucky she was to even be able to consider college or even to see that a college education was a necessity.
Where I teach now, I see and work with many people who are trying to improve their situations. I also know that for many of them, they are 30+ and the first people to go to college in their family--and they are going to school and trying to raise and mantain a family. Sometimes they are the first person in their WHOLE TOWN to go to college. So when something goes wrong, they often don't have support systems or family resources to help them.
I've had students whose families were so against their getting a college education that they had to hide their books and study in their cars. Unfortunately, that's not an uncommon situation in POOR communities. In many poor communities, the very idea of going to college is simply an impossibility because the family needs the income immediately.
The problem is that there are more of those poor communities, but less of the jobs that those communities used to have. Factories and processing plants and such have closed and gone elsewhere. When a poor community loses a factory that is the main employer, then those members of the community have to find immediate ways of survival--this often does not mean being able to attend college.
Luck to be born into a family and community where college is even an option plays such a factor in our world.
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