WHY WON’T OPRAH GIVE ME SOMETHING? (

I was born the son of a one legged coal miner and a mother who drove a Greyhound bus into a crowd of handicapped children when I was only a small child, thus depriving me of a mother’s warm love and a two legged father. My father would beat me every night with his good leg, kicking and spitting and yelling and gouging my eyes, until I would cry. I had no schooling. My only education was from the back of a Hostess Twinkie package and even that was out of date. My teeth rotted out when I was twelve. I went to prison for the first time when I was 14, and was brutally pushed and shoved by the other inmates. You see, I was too ugly to be raped. After prison, I wandered the country, drifting from job to job. My life, now in tatters is at a crossroads. I really think the only way out of this is to have money heaped on me. I need a heap of money, and this year, Oprah Winfrey is the nation’s top heaper.

Oprah Winfrey, living as she does in fat city is doing it up party style this season by buying off her audience, whether directly or indirectly by allowing the rest of us to shine ourselves in the reflected glory of those who actually get the cars and cash and doo-dads she’s passing out this year. Do you remember this guy (now dead) who had, maybe a fortune of twenty or thirty million? This is of course peanuts to Oprah’s elephantine providence. This man had a newspaper column where people would write in with their hard luck, or gee whiz “I’d like to go back to school” or “I need an operation for my grandmother” stories and he would dole out rather small amounts of cash depending on his mood or how low his balance was getting. By the time he died, he was so broke he was buried in a chicken bucket next to poor old Mrs. Colonel Sanders, who went through the chicken fortune left her by Harlan like a cotton candy salesman goes through whipped sugar. It was insane! At the rate Oprah plans to divest herself of her fortune (she’s one of those who thinks it’s a sin to die rich. Try dying poor, sweetheart) we could have a situation in a few years where she may have nothing left and not yet gotten to me.

That whole first paragraph (just raise your eyes a notch, you’ll see it) is a lie, but I wrote it for a specific reason. I’m not a very good writer. So I use all kinds of devices to draw attention away from the fact that I can’t write and to the point of my argument. I’m really a regular guy. I wear normal clothes, eat right and like girls, and yet I am still a poor man. That’s why I’ve come to this forum here (If you are reading the New Yorker Magazine, then good for me. If this came handwritten, in the mail, don’t be frightened. It just means I’m sending it around, hither and yon, and if you like it, you can send me a few bucks, huh?) to plead for Oprah Winfrey to PLEASE start waving some cash and prizes in my direction. I need some of that Oprah love and, as God is my witness, I’m gonna jiggle her little purse until something falls out.


I am a just regular guy here. Hath not a regular guy eyes? Hath not a regular guy hands, organs/ dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as someone lucky enough to get tickets to Oprah’s show? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge. OK, maybe pulling a Shakespeare isn’t fair, but I want her goodies so much. I want them! I’ve tried buying lottery tickets, entering bottle caps into contests and just about all the other ways there are to make fast easy money. But to no avail. And now here comes Oprah (damn her for looking so gorgeous at 50 too. If you’re reading this Oprah, I think you look really hot this year) with her purse swinging so low to the ground because it’s so gorged with money, slinging cash and prizes to everyone in the world, except me. Is there no justice? Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?



I think Oprah should realize that she could get fat again, real soon and real quick. Way back in ’93, she ballooned up over 400 pounds in the course of one season. See how much slimness you can buy then, Miss Winfrey. Giving away cars and boats and homes and beer and guns and toys and cash and all the innumerable goodies Oprah has thrown out her penthouse window in Chicago this year, like so much trash, doesn’t mean you can’t get fat again if you don’t start looking out for little plain people like me. Oprah, I never did anyone any harm and have never received a reward for it. I don’t really blame the white man too much (even though I myself am white, it is Whitey who has always kept me down). In fact, in many ways I blame myself. I was not born rich, so I guess I shouldn’t complain. I don’t have any money, but you don’t see me restructuring out the little investor, like Donald Trump, so he can hold onto his fortune.

I’m just me. Doing the best I can with the little I have to work with. And that’s not a hell of a lot. But did those baby killers who won cars and houses on your show have much to offer society? I mean, c’mon “Op”. If I can call you that? After all, I have been a fan, loyal and true, watching your show almost every week for over five years. That must count for something? For God’s sake, I just want what’s coming to me. You could shake your booty wagon in my direction once in a while.

I’ve been a poor man my entire life and I know what it’s like to beg. To get down on your hands and knees on a busy street corner and tug at business men’s legs hoping to catch a scrap of their left over lunch that may have fallen into their pants cuffs. Or pretending to be a crazy Vietnam Veteran, faking that I have no arms and begging people to put quarters on my tongue, which I would then spit into my bucket, the very same bucket I am forced to urinate in because of my poverty. I know the agony of not knowing whether or not I’d be able to pay my bookie this month, or have enough cash to go to the whorehouse. It’s a bitch being poor, and you, Miss Oprah Winfrey could change my life overnight.

So how about some stuff, huh, Oprah? I’m not hard to please. I wouldn’t care what you gave me, cash or a prize. But give me you must. To redeem your own lost soul. I don’t know if this piece will be in the New Yorker Magazine, or scrawled on the back of a potato chip bag, and then flung to your doorstep with a small brick inside to give it heave. I haven’t thought that far ahead. But Oprah, I am so tired of always being last in line, never getting what I really want and having society reject me without even trying to get used to my unique musk. I think you would like me if you got to know me. Or if you didn’t, I could easily go away if you gave me a nice car or a cash reward. Something, Oprah Winfrey! Something. I must have something! Can’t you give me a little something? It doesn’t even have to be on the show. You could send it here to my place, and no one would be the wiser. You could even hit me a little if you want to. But you would have to give me a chance to run, after giving me the prize.

And, Oprah, think of all the great things I could do to help society if you were to help me. I could leave it for example. If you sent up enough cash, I could buy one of those jobs on Lake Lucerne in Switzerland and stay there nice and quiet, with a big house and patio and you could even visit sometimes (please call first though. I could be in the tub and the house I’m looking at doesn’t have a phone in the bathroom). If you and Steadman came over, I would show you the best time! We would sit and talk and tell stories for the longest time, and then maybe take a Jacuzzi together, lounge around the pool, play some ping pong, have a nosh ( I would probably bring out the Lazy Susan and fill it with snick snacks that I know you both enjoy. Healthy, mind you, but tasty goodies). Then when you got back to your motel in town you wouldn’t have such a big appetite. I’ve heard the stories of how you can wolf it down when you haven’t eaten all day. I’ll watch out for my Oprah. I just hope you’ll watch out for me.


Now I’ll rest my weary head in my tired arms, waiting for the day when Miss Oprah Winfrey opens up her big bag and lets me dig in. Let me dig in Oprah. Please let me dig in.