Oprah Winfrey victim of racism in Switzerland

[BSR]

One of the wisest things I've ever read comes from the Talmud: "We do not see things as they are. We see them as we are." Frequentflier, it is obvious to any reasonable person who reads the articles I linked that Oprah at best exaggerated and at worst flat-out fabricated the "racism" she suffered in Zurich. But as a devotee to the Cult of Victimhood, you can't see it because you see things as you are.

 

But I'm delighted that you're keeping this thread alive because it gives me the opportunity to post another race hoax! Usually race hoaxes are reported only by right-leaning media outlets and bloggers because left-leaning ones hate reporting anything that doesn't dovetail into the victimhood narrative. So kudos to the Huffington Post for their coverage of a black Louisiana woman who claimed her car was vandalized with "KKK" and she was attacked and set on fire by a group of men wearing white hoods. A very thorough investigation resulted in all evidence pointing to a race hoax, that the alleged "victim" did it all to herself.

 

Please don't misunderstand, blacks are hardly alone when it comes to victimhood hoaxes. Gays do it too!! Joseph Baken entered a Missoula MT club to celebrate his 22nd birthday, announced he was gay, and asked for directions to the nearest gay bar. He called the police 3 hours later, claiming that a man lured him outside to smoke a cigarette, then once outside, Baken alleged he was jumped by the man and two others, who beat him and cut his face, all while screaming "f*ggot." After a video surfaced that showed the injuries were self-inflicted, Baken admitted in court that he lied about the attack. Baken was convicted of filing a false police report.

 

Keep 'em coming, all Cultists of Victimhood! Like I said, I have pretty much an endless supply of victimhood hoaxes to post.

[seeker630]

One of the wisest things I've ever read comes from the Talmud: "We do not see things as they are. We see them as we are." Frequentflier, it is obvious to any reasonable person who reads the articles I linked that Oprah at best exaggerated and at worst flat-out fabricated the "racism" she suffered in Zurich. But as a devotee to the Cult of Victimhood, you can't see it because you see things as you are.

 

But I'm delighted that you're keeping this thread alive because it gives me the opportunity to post another race hoax! Usually race hoaxes are reported only by right-leaning media outlets and bloggers because left-leaning ones hate reporting anything that doesn't dovetail into the victimhood narrative. So kudos to the Huffington Post for their coverage of a black Louisiana woman who claimed her car was vandalized with "KKK" and she was attacked and set on fire by a group of men wearing white hoods. A very thorough investigation resulted in all evidence pointing to a race hoax, that the alleged "victim" did it all to herself.

 

Please don't misunderstand, blacks are hardly alone when it comes to victimhood hoaxes. Gays do it too!! Joseph Baken entered a Missoula MT club to celebrate his 22nd birthday, announced he was gay, and asked for directions to the nearest gay bar. He called the police 3 hours later, claiming that a man lured him outside to smoke a cigarette, then once outside, Baken alleged he was jumped by the man and two others, who beat him and cut his face, all while screaming "f*ggot." After a video surfaced that showed the injuries were self-inflicted, Baken admitted in court that he lied about the attack. Baken was convicted of filing a false police report.

 

Keep 'em coming, all Cultists of Victimhood! Like I said, I have pretty much an endless supply of victimhood hoaxes to post.

 

That's a great quote - but it applies to you as well.

 

Certainly there are fabricated claims of racism & oppression, and there are perceived instances of racism as well, when someone misconstrues the reasons. But do you think that somehow invalidates the real instances of racism?

 

Is it time to move this to the political forum?

[Guest]

One of the wisest things I've ever read comes from the Talmud: "We do not see things as they are. We see them as we are."

But I'm delighted that you're keeping this thread alive because it gives me the opportunity to post another race hoax!

 

Yet you know the real truth, of course. Oprah did not "confess" to making the story up. Unless there is a video of their interaction, the only two people who know for sure what happened are Oprah and the sales associate. Yes, there are hoaxes, but you have no evidence this was a hoax. The website your post links to regarding the Baken hoax is really sweet, with such comments as "A more notorious hoax was fabricated from the death of Matthew Shepard, whom a hate crime bill was named after." It's obviously geared to some pretty hateful, sick-minded people. Those few people who commit hoaxes are obviously sociopathic or highly disturbed individuals, which Oprah is not. I do think it's more likely than not that Oprah was, in fact, snubbed, although I think it would be jumping to conclusions to say that this was due to race rather than the way in which she may have been dressed at the time. This is a country of over 300 million. I'm sure you can, in fact, come up with an "endless" supply of "victimhood hoaxes" by perusing all of the hateful websites you apparently love to read.

[BSR]

Golly, I didn't realize that the Huffington Post was a "hateful website." I get these examples of race hoaxes by a simple Google search. When I type in "race hoax" or "gay hate-crime hoax," countless examples pop up. But thank you, Cultists of Victimhood, for keeping this thread alive!

 

Here's a particularly pathetic hoax that popped up when I googled "hate crime revealed as hoax": Azalea Cooley was a black lesbian, wheelchair bound and dying of cancer. In May 1992, she claimed that vandals painted a swastika and "Burn, N*gger, Burn" on her house. She reported a series of "hate crimes": swastikas, threatening letters, a burning cross, a black plastic doll with a .38 bullet lodged in the forehead. The community of Portland OR was horrified and outraged. Vigils and marches were held. But something didn't seem quite right to the Portland police. They secretly (not even the Police Chief at the time was informed) planted a camera in a neighbor's window. The perpetrator of these alleged hate crimes? Yup, Azalea herself. She wasn't even handicapped, nor dying of cancer.

 

Back to the hoax that started this thread. Of course Oprah would never confess to making the story up because that would bring on national, if not global, humiliation. But since when the f*ck does anyone apologize for a racist incident getting blown up out of proportion? Oprah originally claimed that the shopgirl refused to show her the bag. She probably thought she could tell this little tale of oppression (so conveniently timed with the release of "The Butler") without any blowback. But then, most inconveniently, the shopgirl stood up for herself by making a public statement, vehemently insisting that she offered to show Oprah the bag and even others in that price range. The store owner backed up her employee 100%. Of course, the Cult of Victimhood will believe Oprah. I believe the shopgirl and store owner.

 

Elizabeth Vargas reported that the murder of Matthew Shepard was not a gay hate crime, but a drug-fueled robbery by a couple of meth addicts with a history of violence. The legal team for Aaron McKinney, Shepard's primary attacker, came up with the world's most foolish defense strategy - "gay panic" - which they pretty much fabricated out of thin air. McKinney's girlfriend later publicly recanted her gay-panic testimony, admitting it was something they cooked up in a desperate attempt to reduce McKinney's sentence. What happened when Vargas reported the facts of the case? Gays en masse screeched at the top of their lungs to boycott ABC and destroy Vargas's career. God help anyone who dares contradict the Cult of Victimhood. Yes, Matthew Shepard's murder is a tragedy, but it wasn't a hate crime. Yet this fabricated hate crime catalyzed the passage of a federal hate-crime law, legislation that previously failed to pass on both the state and national level. That's the hoax.

[+ Axiom2001]

I watched the E! interview, I've read all the posts above and have come to this conclusion:

Oprah Winfrey was treated disrepectfully in a chi-chi handbag shop in Zurich---perhaps her attire and her race had something to do with it---perhaps there was a language probllem. But perhaps Ms Winfrey could have taken the "high road" she used while in the shop and NOT given any interviews after the interaction. Then again, no one would be talking about Oprah and the hanbag, would they?

 

If no one else has presented this in some of the preceding posts, I'm doing it now on Saturday, August 17, 2013, which I just accessed from aol, I think! Go to http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/14/oprah-swiss-racist-interview_n_3759144.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular

[Guest]

Golly, I didn't realize that the Huffington Post was a "hateful website." I get these examples of race hoaxes by a simple Google search. When I type in "race hoax" or "gay hate-crime hoax," countless examples pop up.

 

 

Back to the hoax that started this thread. But then, most inconveniently, the shopgirl stood up for herself by making a public statement, vehemently insisting that she offered to show Oprah the bag and even others in that price range. The store owner backed up her employee 100%.

Elizabeth Vargas reported that the murder of Matthew Shepard was not a gay hate crime, but a drug-fueled robbery by a couple of meth addicts with a history of violence. The legal team for Aaron McKinney, Shepard's primary attacker, came up with the world's most foolish defense strategy - "gay panic" - which they pretty much fabricated out of thin air.

 

First of all, you're not being truthful when you say that the site to which your hoax example referred was the Huffington Post. Clicking on the "Joseph Baken" link in your post yields the site:

http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/another-gay-hate-crime-hoax-victim-injured-himself-with-a-somersault

not the Huffington Post. This is obviously a right-wing website. You're surprised that the "shopgirl" "inconveniently" denied refusing to show Oprah the bag???? What do you expect her to say "Yeah, I do that all the time!"??? The fact that the store owner "backed up her employee 100%" is irrelevant in supporting the sales lady, since she was not a witness to the event. It says more about the store owner than anything else. I didn't expect her to say "Yes, it's store policy not to show expensive bags to certain people," but she could have at least entertained the possibility that the sales lady might have acted incorrectly.

What's absolutely astounding, however, is that you claim to believe that Shepard's killers drove him out to the country, whipped him up, and tied him to a fence to die because they needed drug money. And as the only evidence for this strange assertion, you cite the words of convicted murderers, who, in the same breath, admit to lying about their "gay panic" defense. I cannot truly fathom the amount of imbecility or lunacy one would need to have to believe such an outlandish assertion. What are you going to claim to believe next? Maybe that Shepard whipped himself and tied himself to the fence in order to have a movie made of him?? You actually believe that since there are documentations of some hate crime hoaxes, that most reports of hate crimes are hoaxes?? That is totally nuts, as General McAuliffe would have said.

 

Gay City News reporter Duncan Osborne pointed to “reams of evidence” left out of Vargas’ report, including a statement McKinney gave to police just days after the killing, in which he referred to Shepard as a “faggot” and a “queer.” Osborne also cites a letter obtained by Denver television reporter Rick Sallinger of News4 and reported in the Rocky Mountain News in 1999. According to this letter, attributed to McKinney, he learned that Shepard was gay, he “flipped out” and beat the college student with a gun. Shepard “said he was gay and wanted a piece of me,” according to the letter. “Being a verry (sic) drunk homofobick (sic) I flipped out and began to pistol whip the f-- with my gun.”

[Frequentflier]

Golly, I didn't realize that the Huffington Post was a "hateful website." I get these examples of race hoaxes by a simple Google search. When I type in "race hoax" or "gay hate-crime hoax," countless examples pop up. But thank you, Cultists of Victimhood, for keeping this thread alive!

 

Here's a particularly pathetic hoax that popped up when I googled "hate crime revealed as hoax": Azalea Cooley was a black lesbian, wheelchair bound and dying of cancer. In May 1992, she claimed that vandals painted a swastika and "Burn, N*gger, Burn" on her house. She reported a series of "hate crimes": swastikas, threatening letters, a burning cross, a black plastic doll with a .38 bullet lodged in the forehead. The community of Portland OR was horrified and outraged. Vigils and marches were held. But something didn't seem quite right to the Portland police. They secretly (not even the Police Chief at the time was informed) planted a camera in a neighbor's window. The perpetrator of these alleged hate crimes? Yup, Azalea herself. She wasn't even handicapped, nor dying of cancer.

 

Back to the hoax that started this thread. Of course Oprah would never confess to making the story up because that would bring on national, if not global, humiliation. But since when the f*ck does anyone apologize for a racist incident getting blown up out of proportion? Oprah originally claimed that the shopgirl refused to show her the bag. She probably thought she could tell this little tale of oppression (so conveniently timed with the release of "The Butler") without any blowback. But then, most inconveniently, the shopgirl stood up for herself by making a public statement, vehemently insisting that she offered to show Oprah the bag and even others in that price range. The store owner backed up her employee 100%. Of course, the Cult of Victimhood will believe Oprah. I believe the shopgirl and store owner.

 

Elizabeth Vargas reported that the murder of Matthew Shepard was not a gay hate crime, but a drug-fueled robbery by a couple of meth addicts with a history of violence. The legal team for Aaron McKinney, Shepard's primary attacker, came up with the world's most foolish defense strategy - "gay panic" - which they pretty much fabricated out of thin air. McKinney's girlfriend later publicly recanted her gay-panic testimony, admitting it was something they cooked up in a desperate attempt to reduce McKinney's sentence. What happened when Vargas reported the facts of the case? Gays en masse screeched at the top of their lungs to boycott ABC and destroy Vargas's career. God help anyone who dares contradict the Cult of Victimhood. Yes, Matthew Shepard's murder is a tragedy, but it wasn't a hate crime. Yet this fabricated hate crime catalyzed the passage of a federal hate-crime law, legislation that previously failed to pass on both the state and national level. That's the hoax.

 

Dude, reach for the phone book and find a well qualified medical professional for the problem. I know what the "B" and the "R" stand for. What does the "s" stand for (there are too many options and none your momma would be proud of)?

[Epigonos]

Really guys hasn't this topic been beaten to death. I beginning to think it is time to order pizza.

[robberbaron4u]

Grat houses and fine clothes do not a lady make whatever her "shade". . .

[BgMstr4u]

After all the kerfuffle and to-ing and fro-ing here and elsewhere, which I have little desire to amplify, there is one thing about all of this I find curious.

 

Zurich is one of the world capitals of surveillance security. It isn't difficult to understand why, with its economy virtually based on banking and the preservation of wealth, which attracts all kinds of interesting activity. At any rate, I find it implausible that a store that stocks $35,000 handbags in full view of customers who can just walk in off the street does not have video cameras capturing the entire premises all the time. The easiest way for the store to establish beyond question the righteous behavior of its employee would be to release its footage of the event in question. To my knowledge this has not been done. It would be easy to do if such a recording backed up the store. The National Enquirer would pay a fortune for it, as would any number of British tabloids.

 

Which raises two (actually, two and a half) possibilities in my mind. First, that the electronic record backs up the customer, not the employee, at least to a degree, which they would certainly not want to go viral, with all the consequences that would have for that business. Or, second, that either the store doesn't have such a system or that it was malfunctioning, in either case a major managerial foulup, IMHO well within the termination-of-responsible-manager range, which for p.r. reasons can't happen in the white-hot glare of international publicity, but which might happen when the spotlight is turned to another dim corner of possible public iniquity, returning this boutique for rich-bag ladies to its well-deserved obscurity. A third is suggested by my evil twin Skippy: That the tape exists, that it backs up the employee, but that Oprah has paid to suppress it. But, as I said, that comes from my evil twin. I think it too far fetched for words. On the other hand......., the movie Oprah co-produced (with only 40 other co-producers: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/why-lee-daniels-butler-has-605011) and which apparently is a major assault on the kind of racism encountered every day by black people, and whose opening not a few people have noticed as perhaps not entirely coincidental with this incident, is doing very well on its first weekend. Perhaps money will be made.

 

My guess is that the answer lies behind door number 1.

[Frequentflier]

Really guys hasn't this topic been beaten to death. I beginning to think it is time to order pizza.

 

Sounds good. Can we have a hot pizza delivery man bring it?

 

I'll buy. The pizza at least, maybe more

[+ WilliamM]

The store may well have video cameras, but isn't it highly doubtful that sound is recorded.

[seeker630]

The store may well have video cameras, but isn't it highly doubtful that sound is recorded.

 

That was my thought as well. Certainly on all the TV shows, there's never sound when they look at the store surveillance footage.

[Guest]

The store may well have video cameras, but isn't it highly doubtful that sound is recorded.

 

Would it really be necessary? The exact words wouldn't matter. I think one could surmise the gist of the conversation from the actions, such as Oprah pointing to a handbag, and said handbag not being shown to her.

[robberbaron4u]

Or, perhaps. fried okra?

[+ WilliamM]

Would it really be necessary? The exact words wouldn't matter. I think one could surmise the gist of the conversation from the actions' date=' such as Oprah pointing to a handbag, and said handbag not being shown to her.[/quote']

 

I think it would just drag out this situation further, without decent quality sound people will draw different conclusions about what is happening. You are also assuming that the camera(s) are focused completely on Oprah and the saleslady, rather than the store in general.

[+ FreshFluff]

The store may well have video cameras, but isn't it highly doubtful that sound is recorded.

 

This was what I thought as well. A tape would probably show the salesgirl talking to Oprah, the salesgirl holding up one bag and then another, and then Oprah leaving.

[whipped guy]

I think it would just drag out this situation further, without decent quality sound people will draw different conclusions about what is happening. You are also assuming that the camera(s) are focused completely on Oprah and the saleslady, rather than the store in general.

Exactly... and I would bet that most pizza joints have security cams as well... This from someone who was born in the self-proclaimed pizza capital of the USA...

[bigvalboy]

Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the forum, "The Butler" wins big at the box office....I'm sure that makes many of you sad, so have at it....and don't blame me, I called to have this thread closed yesterday, despite the fact that most of the comments were most entertaining indeed.

[Steven_Draker]

I suspect that the premises of a high-end store like that would be under video surveillance.

 

CCTV cameras? Was someone killed in this "incident"? (apart the crocodiles whose skins were used to make the bag)

 

http://www.toonpool.com/user/20106/files/oprah_et_trois_pommes_2062635.jpg

[Guest]

This was what I thought as well. A tape would probably show the salesgirl talking to Oprah, the salesgirl holding up one bag and then another, and then Oprah leaving.

 

According to Oprah, she pointed to the handbag:

http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/celebrity/trois-pommes-denies-it-was-racist-to-oprah-winfrey/story-e6frfmqi-1226694566565

 

So I, for one, would be very curious to see even a silent video of the interaction. It would seem that this would set the record straight.

[BSR]

Unicorn, oh my, where do I start?

 

Regarding the possibility that the Oprah kerfuffle was captured on video, I'm guessing it's inconclusive, which is so often the case with surveillance video. If surveillance neither proves nor disproves anything, there's no point in releasing it. In any case, I've grown beyond tired of this subject. But please, feel free to discuss the subject of the world's most oppressed billionaire as long as you like. I'll just skip those posts.

 

Regarding the Baken hoax, what are you arguing? That nothing reported on right-leaning websites is true?? Of course right-leaning news outlets do far more reporting of these hate-crime hoaxes because mainstream media are complicit in the Cult of Victimhood's narrative. Baken's case is a matter of public record since he admitted to his hoax in court and was convicted of falsifying a police report. If the Baken hoax, or any other, turned out to be an actual hate crime, then why doesn't the left-leaning media report that? It would be a double victory: 1) the victimhood narrative is strengthened, and 2) the right-wing media is discredited. Why don't you do a google search to see how many right-leaning reports of hate-crime hoaxes turned out to be bad/false reporting? Oh right, because you'd come up with nothing.

 

I'm not denying that what happened to Matthew Shepard was horrible and sadistic. I'm arguing the motive. What Gay City News (hmm, not exactly disinterested, huh?) reporter Duncan Osborne neglects is that McKinney attacked another young man that night, fracturing his skull. But unlike Matthew Shepard, who was alone and defenseless, McKinney's other victim was with a friend, who had a baseball bat and used it to fend off McKinney. The Cult of Victimhood never mentions this other attack, which was motivated by McKinney's quest for money or meth, because it doesn't fit the gay-victim narrative. It does, however, support the fact that meth addicts are often paranoid and extremely violent, to everybody, not just gays.

 

OK, time for another hate-crime hoax! Because we've been discussing both racism and homophobia, let me give both gay and race hate-crime hoaxes. Here is case of threats made via a Facebook profile, featuring a profile picture of someone in a KKK outfit. Supposed KKK member "Colins John" made racist slurs, made references to lynchings, and named targets on the Facebook pages of a number of black students in a Louisiana high school. These threats were so deeply upsetting that over half the students of this high school did not go to school the next day, and those who did were often found crying and afraid. The perpetrator? Yup, a black 11th grader. Alexandra Pennell of Central Connecticut State University received anti-gay notes scrawled on her door. The students of CCSU were horrified and outraged, and hundreds attended a campus anti-hate rally. The mystery deepened when a surveillance camera set up by police was disabled shortly before one of the anti-gay hate messages appeared. But all was clarified when the footage from a second (hidden and secretly installed) camera revealed that the perpetrator turned out to be Pennell herself.

 

I keep posting these hoaxes, first and foremost, to annoy the living sh*t out of Unicorn and other Cultists of Victimhood *snort*. But I also post them because the sheer volume of hate-crime hoaxes undermines the Cult of Victimhood's narrative. Every Google search reveals a new trove of hoaxes. I'm happy to share them ad infinitum.

[Becket]

The moral of this story is : Insult the President. Fine. Criticize the Queen. No problem.

 

Just don't EVER mess with OPRAH. She will f^*k you up!