The Billiken's Bluff

AWOOD, I've found the perfect candidate for your next thug of the week, Oprah Winfrey.



She may look mild-mannered and neighborly, but Oprah, with a net worth of $1.1 billion dollars, is a mogul on par with Mark Cuban. Actually, she surpasses Mark Cuban in terms of mogulness. Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks and Internet billionaire has been known to have very deep pockets, especially when it comes to his NBA team. He bought the team a luxury airplane, and installed Playstation 2's in every player's locker. Cuban has such a reputation for his generosity that ABC's created a new reality show starring him called The Benefactor . On the show 16 contestants compete to earn Cuban's favor and win $1 million dollars.

Similarly, Oprah also has a reputation for lavishing those around her with gifts. Her studio audience regularly receives samples of whatever product or service is featured on her show. However, unlike Cuban, Oprah doesn't require her benefactor's to possess the ability to dunk. On this year's season premiere Oprah gave all 276 members of her studio audience a Pontiac car.

Winfrey said the audience members were chosen because their friends or family had written to the show about their need for a new car. One woman's young son said she drove a car that "looks like she got into a gunfight"; another couple had almost 400,000 miles on their two vehicles.

In other segments on the show, Winfrey surprised a 20-year-old girl who had spent years in foster care and homeless shelters with a four-year college scholarship, a makeover and $10,000 in clothes. And a family with eight foster children who were going to be kicked out of the house they were renting were given $130,000 to buy and repair the home.

[Via My Way News]

If Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jesse Ventura can be governors of states in our union. If a former college football coach, Tom Osborne, can become Congressman in Nebraska. Then surely a figure as beloved as Oprah, who's daytime talkshow is syndicated in 212 domestic markets and 109 countries, could become... well anything she wants to be.

She is bigger than a talk show host. She is a force. In a way she reminds me of Gene Wilder in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.



"Inside this room, all of my dreams become realities, and some of my realities become dreams. And, almost everything you'll see is eatable, edible, I mean, you can eat almost everything," said Gene Wilder.



"We're calling this our wildest dream season, because this year on the Oprah show, no dream is too wild, no surprise too impossible to pull off," Winfrey said.

Well almost the same.