hysterical for oprah

I've got to stop watching Oprah.

Even as I type those words my breath catches in my throat. Not watch Oprah? Is that even legal? I mean, as far as I know, women watching Oprah is akin to men registering for the select service.

The four o'clock hour rolls around and the diva of daytime tells me what to do when my marriage is on the rocks, my children are on drugs or my boss is sexually harassing me. (None of which has happened yet, but at least I'm prepared.) She tells us what books to read and movies to see and shoes to buy. She reels in political and social leaders, fashionistas and superstars. She even once made a girl who could immitate a rooster into a multi-millionairess and God-love-her, she launched Dr. Phil. Plus, everything she does is packaged into a format amber-hued and easily swallowed, with the appropriately peppy or somber interstitial muzac to accompany it. So what I propose is, I think, some sort of sacrilidge. But I've got to do it, because I think I'm losing my mind.

See, in the past few of years, in addition to dissecting the everyday vissitudes of the American existence, she's started focusing on the vissistudes the third world existence. In doing so she has rocked me from my comfortable middle-class American mindset and while I know that's the point thankyouverymuch, I don't think it's her intent to send me over the edge. Because, you know, then what good would I be? She'd have to start a foundation to save me. But regardless, she is, in fact, walking a fine line with my sanity and I just don't think I can take anymore.

Everytime she does one of these exposes, delineating the horrific conditions in which the people (and primarily the women) of Africa or India or Afghanistan live, I find myself madly scrounging for my passport, stamped, to my shame, with the frivolous selos of luxury locations like the Bahamas, Madrid, Paris, London, etc. I start cataloguing all my worldy possessions to sell on ebay and practice breaking the news to my mother that I must go help the people of [fill in your favorite third world destination] and oh-by-the-way I'm probably never coming back. But then it hits me -- help do what? I knew I should have gone to medical school. Everyone needs a good doctor, but who really needs a hack-writer with a penchant for pop-culture? Really. What do I have to offer? My ever-requested recipe for spinach-artichoke dip? My insanely intimate knowledge of the goings-on in the life of Britney Spears? I think not. But suppose I do find a niche for my mediocre skills. What do I do with my dog, Fred? He's got a nervous condition and doesn't enjoy travel. Would it be fair of me to uproot him from the comfort of my feather duvet? And then there are the vaccinations. Aren't injecting toxins into our systems generally considered a bad thing? Did you know that some of them preclude you from ever giving blood again? And, you know, I'm not married, though one day I imagine I'd like to be and even if Atlanta's nothing compared to say, Alaska for meeting eligible men, I'm fairly certain that my chances are better here than they are in a mud hut in the middle of nowhere. I mean, even if I did meet an eligible bachelor by some godforsaken well or hovering around a primative, hand-dug latrine, I don't speak the language. And what language do they speak exactly in these little out-of-the-way, no-one's-ever-heard-of-them-except-stupid-Oprah countries anyway?

So far, I've already been to Afghanistan to rescue battered women from stone-throwing mobs, travelled to Africa to help educate young girls orphaned in the AIDS crisis, moved to Argentina to work with street kids and trekked to India to perform life-saving surgeries on damaged young mothers (after going back to medical school, that is). I've been to Bosnia, back to Africa, adopted a baby girl from China, taught Haitian boat people how to swim and just know in my heart of hearts there's something more I should be doing about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Truly, I'm exhausted just thinking about all the good my imaginary self does in the world. And in the meantime, back in reality, I've got to write a report for work proposing that the posting of paper flyers in company breakrooms is an ineffective tool for the purposes of internal communications in an online-driven business. Since the Starbucks phenomenon no one spends time in breakrooms anymore. And please, don't even talk to me about that horror?everytime I buy my grande-no-fat-no-whip-organic-mocha-mocha I'm overwhelmed with guilt for the damage I'm probably doing to the rainforest (no matter what the in-store literature says about shade-grown coffee), thinking that perhaps my time and money would be better spent purchasing a hefty length of chain with which I should tie myself to a tree.

I know that my fantasies are irrational. After fifteen minutes or so I usually manage to pull myself back up and over the precipice of my imagination, but I'm left with a longing to do something -- anything -- to help. And it's all Oprah's fault!

And then recently, mid meltdown my eye fell on this plasticine plaque my father gave me for Christmas one year. "Do small things with great love," it says, quoting Mother Theresa. It stopped me in my tracks. So simple. So eloquent. So much crap. Do small things with great love? What's the point in that? I do small things everyday, with I might add, a good deal of good-will and I've got to say, it just doesn't pack the punch one might expect.

Because no one notices.

People only speak up when they're pissed off or inoconvenienced. Consider even the simple nicities: the spirit-lifting thank you (antiquated), the gentle please, (as passe as tuna-noodle casserole).

No, in my mind, my acts of good should be grand, sweeping, dramatic gestures of selflessness and altruism. (Scene:Young woman parachuting out of a plane, sorely-needed medical supplies clutched in her teeth.) The kind of goodness, no -- greatness -- that inspire associations with not only the aforementioned Mother Theresa, but also Jane Goodall and perhaps Ghandi. The kind of acts that warrant at least one little biographical film about me in which Jennifer Anniston stars and wins her first Oscar playing me.

The kind of work that gets me on Oprah!

But the truth is, that sort of unmitigated self-sacrifice takes a bravery, a boldness which I have thus far been unable (or unwilling) to tap into within myself. Either that or a lack of alternatives (Have you noticed how many of these all-out do-gooders are rather long-in-the-snaggled-tooth Singletons?) And so I'm left with a cheap plastic chochke and two choices.

1) I can muddle through, uttering an occasionally revolutionary though probably unacknowledged, "Have a nice day," while making a concienscious effort to volunteer an hour or so a week at some non-descript non-profit. Not exactly a star turn, but the nagging pit of self-loathing that's replaced my stomach might take a leave of absence. Or,
2) I can bide my time, wait until I get really, really, filthy, stinking rich doing something that makes people want to pay me a lot of money and then donate loads of it to worthy causes.

Damn it.

See that's the danger of Oprah. She's insidious, plugging into my western hard-wired desire for fame and glory and connecting it to the very real troubles that plague our world. One has absolutely nothing to do with the other and her manipulation of my psyche is unspeakably unfair. But it doesn't matter because now I know and now I'm accountable and now I can't sleep.

Fine.

She wins. I surrender. Mia culpa. Uncle and all that hoo-ha. There's a blood drive this week at work. Luckily, I've not been recently vaccinated for Ebola. And if I go early enough, God-help-me, I can be back in time for Oprah.