Hey Oprah, stop yelling at me
Posted: Tuesday, October 14, 2008 7:00 AM by Paige Newman
Filed Under:
TV
When the thought of looking at your 401 (k) balance makes you feel slightly nauseous, you know we’re in strange times. But it seems like money advice is coming at us from everywhere. Especially daytime TV talk shows.
CNBC |
Why is Suze Orman so mad at me? And how can I get her to stop talking?
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Dr. Phil recently devoted a show to having Ben Stein and Jim Cramer scream at us about saving money. Even Oprah has gotten into the game. Not only does she have Suze Orman scold us on a regular basis, Oprah also recently had “America’s Thriftiest Family” on to give tips about “living within our means.”
Now, I know that Oprah grew up poor, but at this point, having her give advice about “living within our means” is a bit like asking Neil Armstrong how to pilot a paper airplane. She’s a bit beyond the clipping coupons stage.
And do we really need all this scolding? It reminds me of the old Preston Sturges film,
“Sullivan’s Travels,” about a film director (Joel McCrea) who wants to make real, gritty films about how hard life is during the depression finds out that what people really want is to laugh and escape.
Personally, I want to watch the Oprah shows where Nate Berkus transforms someone’s home or the ones where she gives advice on dog care (and I don’t even have a dog). Frankly, even the recent show about
the father who forgave the son who killed their family, was more of an escape than Orman telling me to stop using my credit cards.
What are daytime talk shows really for? Do we really need all this money advice, and is that why we tune into “Oprah,” “Ellen,” “The View” or “Dr. Phil”?
Frankly, the best two shows I’ve heard (they were on the radio, not on TV) on the current economic crisis came from NPR’s “This American Life.”
The first one, “The Giant Pool of Money,” explained why banks started offering mortgages to people who couldn’t actually afford them. And the other, “Another Frightening Show About the Economy,” will teach you everything you ever wanted to know about credit default swaps and what scared Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson so bad that he finally felt the need to take action.
What distinguishes these shows is the lack of hysteria and the fact that real people from the financial industry explain exactly how these events occurred without the spin. And guess what? Afterward, you won’t feel reprimanded, you won’t feel panicked; you’ll just feel like you understand what’s going on a little bit more clearly.
Until Oprah gets around to that, I’ll be skipping those Suze Orman shows. If I want to feel bad, I can easily go look at my 401(k) balance.
