Don't cry for Oprah

By now you’ve heard of the Oprah Winfrey flap in Zurich, Switzerland.  Oprah alleges she dropped into a chic boutique to have a look around.  When she asked to see a $42,000 handbag behind the counter, according to Oprah, the clerk told her she couldn’t afford it.  The clerk has gone public with her side of the story saying she actually offered to show Oprah the bag but she didn’t want to see it.

The insinuation is that Oprah was discriminated against not only because she’s black but because she’s a plus-size woman.  The incident has brought to the fore once more the issue of discrimination.  Oprah has a history of sort of playing the victim.  It’s rather hard to swallow from a woman who’s worth over $3 billion.

It does raise another issue, however.  Regardless of what really happened in Zurich, people do still judge other people by appearances.  It’s a fact of life that’s not likely to change anytime soon.  The question is really not how you change it but how you respond to it.

I’ve actually been in a black bar where I found it hard to get service.  I suppose I could play the victim but I find such a role unbecoming.  As we stood at the bar watching the bartender take orders from other patrons acting as if we were invisible, my brother asked, “Can a white man get a drink in here?”  I felt as though I was in the nightclub scene from “Animal House” but that simple statement broke the ice and the bartender, who moments before acted as if he’d rather we not be there, was in stitches.  The other black patrons around us broke up laughing and from then on everything was fine.

My point is a lot of people will face discrimination in their lives.  The real test is in how you react to it.  I find it odd that Oprah sat on her alleged discrimination story for almost a month until the week of the premiere of her new movie, “Lee Daniels: The Butler.”  Coincidence?

There’s no doubt that black folks in this country have been subjected to ungodly discrimination and worse throughout the history of this nation.  There’s also little doubt that this is no longer 1955.  I would suspect if I dropped into that little boutique in Zurich wearing my usual garb of Diamond Gusset Jeans and Polo shirt the lady behind the counter would probably assume I couldn’t afford a $42,000 handbag either.  In my case she’d be right.

In an interview with “Entertainment Tonight,” Oprah said the Zurich sales clerk didn’t “obviously know that I carry the black card,” referring to the American Express Centurion Card.  AmEx is mum on the exact number of people who have one but rumor is you have to charge at least $250,000 a year to get one.  Needless to say, that leaves most of us out of the club.

It’s really hard to feel sorry for a woman who’s listed by Forbes as the richest celebrity in the world.  Not to take anything away from Oprah.  She is 100 percent self made and that’s something to be celebrated.  Regardless of inferior service in Zurich, she’s certainly not to be pitied.

Oprah has lived the American dream like few others ever have.  Whatever discrimination she’s had to endure in her life has obviously not held her back.  That’s the teachable moment in all of this.  Oprah had a chance to make the point that you can’t let other people, no matter how bigoted, stand in your way.  She blew it.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

Latest terrorist scare should be a wake-up call

It’s obvious from the recent events at our diplomatic outposts in parts of the world that the war on terrorism is far from over.  Notice that we did not close embassies in predominantly Christian countries or predominantly Jewish countries.  We closed embassies in Muslim countries.  Perhaps a bit of unintended profiling from an administration that keeps trying to sell us on the idea that we’re not really at war with Muslim terrorists.

Make no mistake about it.  We’re at war with radical Islam.  We can pretend that’s not the case but it doesn’t change the facts.  When a nation is at war with a certain people it just makes sense to look at people who fit the profile a little more closely.  It was that head-in-the-sand approach that got us killed on 9/11.  Then Secretary of Transportation Norm Mineta strictly forbade any type of profiling.  One airline ticket agent said he checked a man in at his counter and a chill ran down his spine.  He said everything about the man told him he was a terrorist but he had to “mentally slap” himself and process the ticket anyway.  That man turned out to be Mohamed Atta, the ringleader of the 9/11 hijackers.

It’s this continued naiveté that continually makes us vulnerable.  The Fort Hood terrorist attack by Maj. Nidal Hasan is still officially logged as a “workplace shooting.”  The mainstream media, in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing when we knew the suspects were Muslim, continued to caution us not to jump to conclusions.  It’s conclusion-jumping that makes us safer.

Apparently, the Obama administration jumped to a conclusion when it closed embassies in Muslim countries.  They had intelligence indicating another “9/11-style” terrorist attack and, to their credit, they acted accordingly.  Which raises the interesting question of why we still allow people who fit the profile from countries known to sponsor or encourage terrorism into our country?  We can debate the NSA snooping and its merits in keeping us safe but much of it would be totally unnecessary were we to simply take some common sense steps to ensure that those most likely to kill us aren’t allowed into the country.

That’s not even counting the possibly hundreds of thousands of people from terrorist-sponsored nations who have slipped into this country under the cover of darkness across our southern border.  While Congress is fixated on an amnesty program they are completely ignoring the biggest threat to our country.

Hopefully, the all-out alert recently at our embassies will be a wake-up call to the nation.  We cannot let our guard down.  And we cannot tip-toe around the political correctness of the threat.  Not all Muslims are terrorists but most of the terrorists these days are Muslim.  To ignore that fact is to leave us wide open to another attack.

We need to, first and foremost, secure our borders and stop this nonsense about amnesty.  We also need to cancel visas from anyone who might fit the profile of a terrorist.  The risk is just too great. It’s time we got serious about this terrorist threat.  We’re never going to kill it completely, especially overseas, but we certainly need to be taking every precaution here in the U.S.  Closing embassies is one thing but what about the threat that’s already here?  What do we do about that?  In some senses it’s already too late.  The back door has been left open for too long. Sleeper cells are already here.  At the very least we should be profiling those who might already be members.

We ignore the truth at our own peril.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

Curing American poverty

The Associated Press recently conducted a study based on all manner of government statistics and national surveys and determined that Americans’ economic security is low compared to prior decades.  They based their determination on how many Americans have either lived below the poverty level, taken government assistance or been unemployed or a combination of the three.  Aside from the government assistance, I’ve been there.  Many of us have.

The point of the study was to try and figure out how to make Americans more economically secure but they sidestepped a major factor.  Many Americans are economically insecure for the very reason that they’re trapped on public assistance.

We hear the president and others complain about a shrinking middle class.  If the middle class is shrinking it’s because some are moving up, not down.  The poverty rate was arrested by LBJ’s Great Society.  After a decade of decline in the poverty rate prior to the big social programs the poverty rate has remained pretty much steady since the mid-‘60s.  It fluctuates a point or two depending on whether or not we’re in a recession but the percentage of people in poverty hovers between 12 and 15 percent.  From 1959 until the Great Society the poverty rate dropped from around 22 percent to 14 percent.  Since then we’ve sort of been locked in a holding pattern.

Before I make this next point I want you to suspend your emotions and think logically.  Poverty, by and large, is the product of bad choices.  Yes, I know there are some exceptions but the vast number of poor people are poor because of the choices they’ve made in life.  Whether or not you’re poor is based largely on whether or not you can find and hold a job.  The recession notwithstanding, many people can’t hold a job either because of their personal habits – i.e.: drugs and/or alcohol – because they don’t show up for work or because of their attitudes while they’re at work.

Plenty of people show up for a job interview ill-prepared, improperly dressed and lacking basic personal hygiene.  These are easy fixes but for reasons unknown some people don’t want to be told what to do.  But a major culprit of cyclical poverty is the very Great Society that was designed to lift people out of it.  You know the drill.  We have people now in third generation dependence because that’s the way they were raised.  Living free of government shackles is not even an option for too many Americans.  It should be.

Conservatives judge success of their policies by how many people are off welfare.  Liberals judge their success by how many people are on it.  Take the food stamp program, for example.  The number of people on food stamps has exploded during the Obama administration and they crow about it.  It’s a national disgrace.  Abuse is rampant and Obama made it even easier to get on the program.  He justified that by saying he needed to do it because of the recession but think about that for a moment.  If there’s a level at which one needs public assistance then hard times will bring more people to that level.  We don’t need to go out to the street to greet them.

We also need to come to terms with the fact that plenty of people are poor and happy.  Elitists love to look down their noses at poor people and assume they can’t be happy unless they surround themselves with the trappings of wealth.

I’m all about showing poor people a way out but first they have to want to go.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

Can Detroit be saved?

You wanna hear something hysterical?  Ed Schultz and the rest of the talking heads over at BSNBC are blaming Republicans for the bankruptcy of Detroit.  Here’s their rationale.  Republicans out-sourced jobs, cut public services and attacked the unions.  Actually, Ed, it was the unions that caused the out-sourcing with their unreasonable demands which led to Detroit’s population dropping in half since 1950 which led to fewer taxpayers thus less government services.

The problems plaguing Detroit are obvious.  They killed the proverbial goose that laid the golden egg.  Let’s face it.  Detroit automakers made some stupid mistakes over the years.  They scoffed at the Japanese and European imports in the ‘70s thinking they were invincible.  Bad design coupled with horribly-built cars led to a steep decline in American-made automobiles.  The unions convinced their membership that the car companies existed to provide them a job.  In fact, they came to believe that it was their job, not the company’s.

In the meantime, the Democrat machine took over Detroit politics.  The last Republican mayor was in the late ‘50s.  Since 1970 there’s been just one Republican on the city council.  For the last 50 years Detroit has been a one-party town.  Guess what?  The party’s over.

In typical fashion, the liberals who have run Detroit for the last half-century demonized the rich and exploited the poor.  Inflated wages and unreasonable pensions drove industry south or completely out of the country.  The city instituted a wage tax – on top of the state and federal income taxes – in 1962.  Detroit also tacks on an extra corporate tax.  You couldn’t ask for a less hospitable place for business.  Couple the high taxes with artificially-inflated union wages and it’s a wonder Detroit lasted this long without going broke.

I was reading a newspaper report that said nearly $6 billion of Detroit’s $20 billion debt is due to health insurance obligations to retired city employees.  The article lamented that Detroit may push those people off on the Obamacare exchanges.  Now, understand that these ex-employees are eligible for Medicare at age 65.  That means that $6 billion is for people who are retired but not yet at retirement age.  Here’s a thought.  Go back to work!

That’s symptomatic of the problem.  Too many sweetheart union deals were negotiated.  The companies that made that mistake either closed down or moved but the city was stuck.  At this point all bets should be off.  I hate it for those folks who thought they could retire at 45 and live off the taxpayers but the bulk of the taxpayers are gone.

Which leads to the next point.  It never occurred to these liberals when they were waging class warfare that once they ran the rich people off there would be no money left to pay for city services.  They may still have 700,000 residents but those who stayed behind are disproportionately poor and disproportionately unemployed.  If Detroit is ever going to come back they’re going to have to eliminate the city wage and corporate taxes.  They’re going to have to welcome rich folks back with open arms instead of demonizing them.

Now that Michigan is a right-to-work state there’s hope.  The unions that ran industry away in the first place need to be dissolved and good, old-fashioned capitalism needs to be reintroduced to Detroit.  The moochers and looters have run the city into the ground.  The producers are what built it and they can rebuild it but in order for that to happen those running the city have to stop listening to the likes of Ed Schultz.  Or all hope is lost.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

Blaming everyone but themselves

I have long preached about the virtues of personal responsibility.  Far too many people expect someone else – oftentimes the government – to assume responsibility for their actions.  I had a caller to my show several years ago who was a second-grade teacher.  A little girl in her class didn’t know her colors and the teacher was concerned the child might have a learning disability. She scheduled a parent/teacher conference with the child’s mother and asked her if she had ever taught the child her colors.  The mother responded, “That’s what Head Start is for.”

Because the government has swooped in and taken responsibility for so many things too many people have shirked personal responsibility assuming if they fail it’s someone else’s fault.  Take the case of a 36-year-old Tennessee man who’s suing Apple Computers.  Why?  Because he says he’s addicted to pornography which led to his wife leaving him and taking his child.  He’s suing Apple because he said his MacBook wasn’t equipped with a filter that kept him from viewing pornography.  “The Plaintiff became depressed and despondent, unable to work as a result of observing porn on his MacBook,” the complaint reads.

Let me just say right up front that I believe claims of sex addiction are bogus.  Some psychiatrists claim that sex addicts suffer from neurochemical changes similar to adrenaline rushes which cause the addiction.  I suspect similar neurochemical changes can be observed in people who ride roller coasters but they haven’t come out with a roller coaster addiction.  At least, not yet.  I can’t wait for the first meeting of Roller Coasters Anonymous.

I was in Vegas recently.  A guys trip.  We took in a show, relaxed and did a bit of gambling.  I always take a set amount of cash in my pocket for gambling.  Inevitably, I always lose it but I build it into the cost of the trip.  My goal is to make the money last the whole weekend so I can enjoy the challenge of the game and camaraderie with friends.  There are ATMs all over the casinos.  I don’t use them.  Not that I haven’t been tempted to but I have something that’s called “self-restraint.”

Same thing with my computer.  I can access the very same porn sites as the guy who’s suing Apple.  I just choose not to.  We live in an instant gratification society.  With that comes certain responsibilities.  You have to know when to say no or, at least, no more.  The guy suing Apple is looking for someone to blame.  He wants to shift the responsibility for losing his family onto someone else when he is solely to blame.

Here’s the funny part.  The dude claims he accidentally accessed pornography when he mistyped Facebook.  Instead of typing the a-c-e he says he typed u-c-k.  Sure you did, pal.  He also claimed he had never seen pornography before.  He’s 36!  He says once he did, he preferred the women he saw on the screen to his own wife.  Sounds like he had a real solid marriage.

His wife better be darn glad she got away from this idiot.  The sad thing is he’s not alone.  Millions of people are blaming someone else right now for the situations they’re in.  Life hasn’t always gone my way but I’m man enough to admit when it’s my fault.  Sitting around and looking at dirty pictures all day is no one’s fault but his.  If he’s that weak-minded did it ever occur to him to just get rid of the laptop? 

Moral of the story?  Sometimes an Apple a day keeps the wife away.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

My e-mail to Eric Holder

Attorney General Eric Holder is asking for tips to go after George Zimmerman on Civil Rights charges.  I felt compelled to send my own tip to Mr. Holder.  Below is my e-mail to Eric Holder.

Subject: Zimmerman Tip

Eric,

For the love of God, man, this case is closed.  The FBI has determined there was no racial motivation.  The only racist involved was Trayvon Martin who referred to Zimmerman as a "creepy-ass cracker."  Why don't you concentrate on something useful like addressing black-on-black crime.  Over 90 percent of black victims were killed by other black folks.  It might have something to do with nearly 75 percent of black babies born today being born out of wedlock.

You keep looking for a white person to blame.  Look in the mirror.  You and Obama continue the denial in this country.  Racism is not the problem with Black America today.  These are self-inflicted wounds and you do nothing to heal them by diverting attention away from them.

Sincerely,

Phil Valentine
Host, The Phil Valentine Show
http://PhilValentine.com

Stop encouraging laziness

A story came across the news wire and my senior research analyst brought it to me in the studio while I was on the air.  It was an AP story out of Atwood, Mich. about how farmers were complaining they wouldn’t be able to bring in the cherry and apple crops without illegal aliens.  American workers, they claimed, were either not available or not willing to work.

George W. Bush was fond of saying that illegals are doing the jobs Americans just won’t do.  The truth is illegals are simply doing some of the jobs Americans won’t do for the money.  Americans won’t live 15 to a room just so they can find employment.  There’s not a job in America that Americans didn’t used to do before the illegal aliens came in, undercut them and stole their jobs.

That’s not to say that the American worker is blameless.  Atwood, Mich. is about four-and-a-half hours from Detroit where the unemployment rate is 16 percent, more than double the national rate.  One would think that Detroit and Atwood might be a great match.  Farmers are looking for workers and Detroiters are looking for work.  So why are farmers in Atwood still resorting to hiring illegal aliens?

Part of the problem is some of the farmers are lying.  The unemployment rate in Michigan is 8.4 percent.  Detroit may be driving that number higher than it would normally be but there’s no doubt that workers are available for the farmers of Atwood.  Some farmers would rather deal with illegals because they can pay them low wages or even lower wages if they pay cash under the table.  But part of the blame should be placed on the shoulders of the workers themselves, or, should I say, the government that encourages them not to work.

Before the sequester, unemployment benefits had been extended so that many unemployed workers could draw unemployment benefits for 99 weeks.  That’s nearly two years!  As a result of the sequester the number of weeks was cut back.  Total benefits vary by state but in Michigan you can still conceivably stay on unemployment for 67 weeks.  That’s almost 16 months!  Granted, unemployment benefits are substantially less than what one was making while employed but you’re also not working.  There’s something to be said about doing nothing and getting paid.

I’ve never drawn unemployment.  I don’t begrudge anyone who has.  I’ve just chosen not to do it and I’ve been unemployed a number of times.  This is radio, after all.  The worst time came when I was program director of a station and got washed out in a format change.  I was let go with no severance pay.  I worked on straight commission for an ad agency and made a whopping $100 in three months.  It never even occurred to me to file for unemployment.

In retrospect, I’m glad I didn’t.  It was my lack of success in sales that prompted me to pack up everything I owned and move to Nashville without a job.  Within two days I had a fulltime job selling memberships at a health club and a part-time gig at a radio station.  Within three months I was back in radio full time.

The point is, poverty is a great motivator.  As long as we’re paying people not to work, they won’t.  Time was when Americans would do what needed to be done to put bread on the table.  Nobody’s going to drive four-and-a-half hours if they’re getting paid to sit at home but they’ll drive a lot further than that if it’s the only way they eat.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.