Oprah and her refrigerator

It’s been about a week since I watched Oprah’s Show from Macon, Georgia. Being from the North of the US myself, I fell in love with southern hospitality when, as the Beach Boys say, ‘I’m there’. As the world gets smaller, faster, and more and more alike, one can’t help but hope that Southern charm, manners, and yes, even chivalry will survive. Being a big, fit man, I had never been offered a seat on the city bus before a trip to New Orleans.

The fact that this particular Oprah show was taped in Macon is probably irrelevant. And perhaps so is the fact that Macon is Queen Oprah’s most supportive market. Actually, as far as resilient women making their money off the backing of housewives go, Oprah’s doing fine, very fine. She’s not stupid, heck, she blew former daytime talk host Phil Donahue right out of the water. I know, I know, good old Phil, not to be confused with today’s version of Dr. Phil, actually retired. But tell me, what would you do if you had enough bankroll to last two lifetimes and you were dethroned by a great black woman? There isn’t much more to it than the average white American male ego can take. Oprah even had the brains and guts to start her own production company, she owns her own show, take that Phil.

Enough of criticizing Phil, I actually thought he was fine too, even though that episode where he wore the pregnancy suit happened during my ex-wife’s first pregnancy, and nothing I went through physically or emotionally could lead to sympathy or empathy, because after all she had never been pregnant. Phil couldn’t take it for an hour, imagine nine months. Phil, even the ladies can see the blatant complacency. Except apparently my ex-wife.

So this particular episode of Oprah was apparently an annual event where Oprah gives away all of her favorite things. She gives them away to every member of the studio audience, and there sure was a fair amount. There were cupcakes, mixing bowls, kitchen mixers, and a DVD of Planet Earth. These were Oprah’s favorite things of the year? A Target gift certificate? Or were these sponsors of the show? Was it just the major retailers and manufacturers trying to buy into some of that Oprah clout? Who wouldn’t pay tidy sums for the reward of having Oprah love her products and her minions for thirty seconds?

One thing’s for sure: Oprah’s seal of approval is worth something. She is tasteful. Oprah’s Book Club Picks provide immediate sales. Being featured in her magazine does, too, and usually even I can appreciate her picks while standing in line at the checkout.

Which brings me to my perplexity, a certain element I can’t get out of my head, and it’s lowering my estimation of Oprah. There was a refrigerator with a TV in its doors. When I think of my kitchen layouts I can’t think of a worse place to put a TV, I suppose if I wanted to sit at the counter in front of the fridge that might work, but since the TV seemed to be waist high I guess that would be too high. I suppose I could pull out the huge side by side and turn it toward the dining room table, but that seems like a lot of effort, considering that from the dining room table I can clearly see my big screen.

Then I thought of past kitchens, and in none of them would this thing be very useful either. Not even the nice four thousand square foot house, with the custom kitchen, which is now the sole property of my ex-wife. Not even there would this device be of much use. In that spacious kitchen there was plenty of room to have a tabletop television, or to hang one of the cabinets. The fridge was actually in the corner and didn’t provide much in the way of square footage you could see.

But oh, the audience loved it. They danced, hugged, cheered, cried and clutched their hearts. They trembled like revivalists who had seen the Lord. I really thought a woman was going to need an ambulance, the guys wiped tears from their eyes as they hugged their wives. I know you were thinking tonight that you might finally get something. In short, the entire studio was ecstatic. And I thought, uh, can all these people have kitchens set up for this? All your home architects thought, you know we need to build the kitchen for a side-by-side refrigerator, and we need to position it for optimal TV viewing. How were they to know that it was going to be one of Oprah’s favorite things in 2007?

I consider myself a good predictor of human behavior. I can see why the Ipod is so popular. Or why mobile phones are never far from human hands. But I never would have imagined TV in a side by side was going to take off, it was going to be in such high demand, I just never saw it coming.

But wait a minute, maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s only popular in Macon, maybe it’s a geographical thing. Which would be nice, because that would mean the South keeps its charming ways. I mean, there’s nothing very charming about this appliance, but if only the South has it, then the South will only have other things, like pretty bartenders calling me ‘baby’.