Oprah_ A Biography - Kitty Kelley [220]
The list of “Oprah’s Favorite Things” seemed to get longer and more expensive over the years, making her, as one writer noted, “The countess of ka-ching, the monarch of materialism.” When she was criticized for crass commercialism, Oprah announced that, going forward, the audiences for her “Favorite Things” shows would be deserving recipients such as underpaid teachers or Katrina volunteers.
Her most ballyhooed giveaway occurred on September 13, 2004. “That was the best year I’ve ever experienced in television with the exception of the first year,” she told the writer P. J. Bednarski. She opened the season by giving away 276 brand-new Pontiac G6s, worth more than $28,000 apiece, for a collective total of $7.8 million.
“It was not a stunt and I resent the word stunt,” she said, explaining that when a General Motors executive offered to give the cars as part of her “Favorite Things” show, she said no. “I can’t do that because that’s not my favorite car and I’m not going to say it is.” Then she remembered Jane Pauley’s new talk show was launching in September as a strong alternative to her own. Oprah’s producers pushed, saying she could not turn down the opportunity to give away cars, so they set about finding worthy souls who needed wheels. Jane Pauley’s launch show was buried under Oprah’s free cars show, which became one of the most talked-about giveaways in television history.
“My heart was palpitating [that day],” she recalled. “We had real emergency medical personnel standing by because sometimes people really do pass out in the audience.”
Revving herself and her audience into a paroxysm of ecstasy, she passed out small boxes to everyone and said that one box contained the keys to a free car. The audience opened their boxes and each found a set of keys. Oprah started yelling and jumping and pumping her arms: “You win a car! You win a car! Everybody gets the car. Everybody gets the car! Everybody gets the car!” She led her delirious audience out to the Harpo parking lot, where 276 gleaming blue Pontiac G6s had been wrapped in huge red bows. “This car is so cool,” said Oprah. “It has one of the most powerful engines on the road.”
Teachers and ministers and nurses and caregivers who had been walking to work for years or taking buses and having to transfer three times were thrilled by their life-changing gifts. However, almost immediately they learned they would have to pay taxes (approximately $7,000) on the cars, because they were considered prizes rather than gifts. Many turned to Oprah for help, and her publicist said they had three options: They could keep the car and pay the tax, sell the car and pay the tax with the profit, or forfeit the car. There was no other option from Oprah, and Pontiac already had donated the cars and paid the sales tax and licensing fees.
“Was this really a do-good event Winfrey pulled off,” asked Lewis Lazare in the Chicago Sun-Times, “or a cold-blooded publicity stunt carefully designed to make the talk show diva really look good at the expense of Pontiac, which gladly provided cars in exchange for some of Winfrey’s promotional plugging?” He added: “It’s increasingly apparent she’s … become an unabashed shill for a slew of marketing-savvy companies salivating at the prospect of getting her to back their products in the hope big sales will ensue.”
Oprah was incensed. “For all the people who say, ‘Oh, you didn’t personally pay for the cars yourself,’ which I heard, I say, ‘Well, I could have, and what difference does it make, if they get the cars? And why should I have paid for them if Pontiac was willing to do so?’ ”
By then she was surfing on high waves of spending, and sounding a trifle cavalier as she discussed her $500 mink eyelashes, her one-thousand-thread-count sheets, and FedEx-ing her horses from her farm in Indiana to her house in Hawaii. She frequently name-dropped when talking of the celebrity gifts she had received, such as the twenty-one pairs of Christian Louboutin shoes ($1,600 a pair) from Jessica Seinfeld; the