Lance Armstrong (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I watched Oprah Tuesday on CBS This Morning. This in itself is a departure from my morning news routine as I am typically a Good Morning America devotee due to my long-standing crush on George Stephanopoulos. I met him years ago when I was in the news business, I remember it well, he does not.

Oprah was telling CBS newsreader and friend Gayle King that her interview with Lance Armstrong (which is set to air on her OWN network Thursday) was “the biggest of her entire career.” This sentence alone was the biggest surprise of my entire Oprah viewing life. Oprah, of “how-to-live-your-best-life” blah, blah, blah was stating on national TV that a doper, bicycle rider was the biggest interview of her career?

I know, I know, he won all those Tour de France races and he was a big deal in the racing world then he was stripped of those titles and became a rather small deal. He apparently lied about not taking performance enhancing drugs, some kind of super drug transfusion stuff etc. and led a band of other cyclists into this endeavor where he was proclaimed a ring-leader of sorts in this huge doper-cheating-cycling scandal. I get all that. I get that he has been lying about it for years when others have fessed up and he has been ultimately calling them liars for telling the truth. But, I still don’t get why Oprah would think that this was her biggest interview ever just because he finally admits to her that he used drugs throughout his cycling career. I get that she got the interview that everone else wanted but I still don’t get why, considering the body of work she has accomplished in her life that she would consider this interview her biggest or most important.

Oprah actually said, ”we were mesmerized and riveted” with some of his answers. I was mesmerized once when I saw the Pope and riveted by the sight of the Grand Canyon. How could a confession from a bicycle guy be the same? She also said that he says what the world has been waiting for him to say. Guess what? Many of us were truly not sitting around with bated breath waiting for him to utter a word. We had already figured out he was a liar because so many other cyclists had already blown the whistle. This must be the big Oprah climatic watch-my-show teaser. Oprah told Gayle via satellite from Harpo Studios in Chicago, that she studied for the interview like a college exam and had 112 questions prepared. 112 questions? Why would she not have taken a tip from Dr. Phil and just asked “What were you thinking?” and “How’s that lying been working out for you?” Surely answering these two questions could easily fill up her two-hour plus interview.

Oprah has interviewed Presidents, pop stars from Elizabeth Taylor to Michael Jackson and  everyday people who have done insightful, important and heroic things in life. To me, her interview with Lance Armstrong will be about as “riveting” as her much-anticipated interview with John Edward’s mistress, Rielle Hunter was. Another dud.

English: Ruby Slippers on display a the American History Museum (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It started with the ruby slippers movie.  Most people remember the  movie as the Wizard of Oz.  I however, have always called it the ruby slippers movie. Why? Because I coveted Dorothy’s magical ruby slippers. It had little to do with the magical qualities of clicking the shoes and finding myself in Kansas or Peoria and everything to do with red, sparkle, bows, shiny and nothing I would ever be allowed to wear as long as my parents faculties hadn’t gone the way of the Hula Hoop and spun out of control.

I remember shoes I have worn like most people remember important dates,  places traveled and people who walked in and out of their lives. I remember my first pair of suede gumdrops because I was finally allowed to buy a pair of red shoes after seemingly years of black, brown and white shoes as utterly boring as a city sidewalk and a marble with no cat’s eye.  For the uninitiated, gumdrops were a slim, tie, oxford-type shoe that came in the colors of what else? Gumdrops.

I remember milestones by the shoes I wore and I remember sad and happy times through my choice of footwear. I remember ugly saddle shoes in high school that were indestructible (I did try to kill those things) and I remember my first pair of thongs (yellow rubber ones) before some idiot decided to call them flip-flops and then unceremoniously dubbed string underwear thongs. I remember my white Keds when they were called gym shoes, even if you weren’t in the gym. My red cowboy boots were actually called “cowgirl boots” which I thought was stupid so I refused to call them that. I detested sexism from a young age, evidently.

I loved loafers, even though my parents said they had no structure or arch support and looked sloppy when walking. They were always insisting on taking us to Jack O’ Day’s sensible shoe store on Western Avenue in Chicago where they actually measured your feet and then stuck your feet in a xray machine that I’m sure did more harm than shoes with no arch support. I eventually had a job where I wore high heels all the time and obsessed over matching every outfit to my shoes. No, I did not buy the outfit first.

I had divorce shoes which I burned after wearing and a sad pair of black sling-backs that I wore to my mother’s funeral that I couldn’t bring myself to wear again. I had reporter’s boots that I wore for years chasing fires and stories in bad weather and I had my editor flats that I wore for many more year’s working as a newspaper editor standing for long hours every day. I had my door-knob shoes that I only wore in Las Vegas (the heel looked like a small round door-knob I swear) and my one pair of both Prada and Manolo Blahnik‘s if I felt the need to impress myself (because seriously no one else was going to know who I was wearing). I had happy shoes for my kid’s weddings with rhinestones and sexy kitten heels for dancing. I had ankle strap heels to make my short stature look “better” but actually they cut me off and I ended up looking shorter. I even had see-through shoes but those  were odd and not in a good way. I had date shoes that only looked good while sitting with my legs crossed (spike heels now called stilettos) and not walking, and pregnancy shoes that I could barely see when I looked down. My extreme pointed toe leather boots made the Florida TSA agents laugh, they called them cockroach killers stating the pointy toe could easily fit into tight corners. I guess I made their day although I didn’t get the joke, I was merely being fashionable.

I wore Adidas sneakers to play with my kids and try my hand at tennis and hiked Colorado in North Face hiking boots. I went rafting in Teva river sandals and played tourist on countless cobble stone streets in Birkenstock, Keen and Chaco walking/sport sandals. I never did get into the Crocs plastic shoe craze but I fell right into line with the ugly but comfortable Uggs boots. I know the most comfortable flat on the market is Me Too and the most comfortable flip-flop on the planet is Sanuk, made out of yoga mat material that withstands miles of warm weather walking. I am a walking encyclopedia of shoes and my closet bears witness to this fact.

I rarely buy shoes anymore as I don’t need them, plus, I am getting older.  I don’t want any shoes hanging around that don’t have a memory attached.  My shoes were purchased over the years for a lot more reasons than walking and looking good, although I didn’t know it at the time.

“Bubba” Bill Clinton

Last week at the Republican National Convention we saw an old man berating a chair. Last night at the Democratic National Convention we saw Bill Clinton. Perhaps one of the greatest orators of all time (for sure in my time). Clinton spent 48 minutes talking in an affable, serious, jovial, relatable, academic, authoritative, passionate yet simple way. Not surprisingly, the crowd went nuts. In a good way.

Clinton’s speech hammered home just how superficial, cloudy and ineffective the Republican’s “plans” for this Nation are. Their idea of giving the rich tax cuts while proposing cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, will leave the elderly and poor “with nowhere to go.” History has shown us, said Clinton, that trickle down economics does not work. He added, “We simply cannot afford to give the reins of government to someone who will double down on trickle down”

In July this year a team of about 40 economists from various universities, think tanks etc. came to the conclusion that the GOP had abandoned economic reality. These independent economic professors said Republican plans couldn’t possibly pass a basic economics class/test. Clinton said in his speech last night that it all boils down to arithmetic. “Tax breaks and cuts for the rich plus spending cuts (that would harm the poor) means what?” He added, “Where does the revenue come from? The middle class, of course.”

Since I have an obvious left leaning bias and make no bones about it in this blog, I thought it only fair that you hear from a Republican. A onetime early heat GOP Presidential candidate, past Ambassador to China and past Utah governor, Jon Huntsman.

Appearing on Stephen Colbert’s show recently, Republican Jon Huntsman was asked what it would mean if the GOP lost in November. He appeared to welcome the possibility of defeat, and to have thought about what good might come from it:

“The party, I think, goes to the wilderness for a while… And eventually we’re going to wake up to the fact that the Republican Party draws from a lot of chapters in history…. Theodore Roosevelt believing that the land is an important legacy to leave behind, Eisenhower who left us with the Interstate System — what would we do without our infrastructure? You can’t compete in the 21st century without infrastructure. There’s a role for government in that.”

Later, in an interview on CNN, Huntsman suggested there was something else the GOP needs to wake up to. He said one of the reasons he didn’t attend the Republican convention in Tampa was because, “You have a party that lacks inclusiveness, that is not focused on real solutions and delivering the bread and butter issues that the American people are looking for, that lacks the sense of optimism and the big-picture strategic thinking about America.”

Huntsman is a Republican that truly “gets it.” The RNC was a sea of white people lacking diversity and as Huntsman said “inclusiveness.” The DNC had the melting pot that makes up America, in attendance and as speakers. The Democrats know they have truth and reality on their side, and it showed at their convention.

At the root of the great debate about the debate, is the fact that the four chosen moderators are not diverse enough. Yes, there are men and women in the mix but no African-American or Latino moderators were chosen. This so-called “snub” has caused unrest among the ranks of the National Association of Black Journalists, the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies and of course Univision (the largest Spanish-language network). It doesn’t matter evidently, that Black Journalist Gwen Ifill from PBS has moderated these debates for the last eight years, she is said to be “shocked” and Livid” that she was not chosen. I guess Gwen thinks it is some unalienable right because she is a minority. This is getting crazy that an individual or organization can’t simply pick who they think will be the best person for the job because diversity now has to trump everything. Yes, our country is a melting pot which is a good thing but a debate stage can only hold so many people so the “snubbed” will just have to live with it. The Country is in an economic crisis and the big question should be what are these candidates going to do about jobs, the economy, healthcare and taxes? The crucial problems affecting our diverse nation.

Among the “snubbed” were also NBC, Fox News and MSNBC. The Romney camp evidently said they would take their toys and go home if anyone from MSNBC was chosen. So, there is a lot of childishness at work here putting together these top-level, don’t-ask-me-anything-I-don’t-want-to-answer debates. So is the answer to get a person from every ethnic group in America? Will that quell the whiners? Of course it won’t. They would then be complaining about who got the best question to ask. When in reality, the only good questions will be the ones that never get asked.

Mitt Romney’s first trip abroad as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee got off to a bad start when he offended his British hosts by questioning London’s preparation for the Olympics.  After getting rebuked by Prime Minister David Cameron and London Mayor Boris Johnson and getting savaged by the British press for questioning London’s readiness for the Olympics,  Romney said he now thinks the city is ready for the games. This backpedaling is almost too funny for words. Does he really think they care what the heck he thinks? And more importantly, are his PR people out riding a double-decker bus somewhere playing tourists? Many British already think Americans are lacking in the social graces due to our habit of  ”not necessarily thinking before we speak.” His PR people (I’m assuming he has the best that Republican money can buy) should really tell him his Ken doll image is really not going over well  in London so maybe he should move along to the next leg of his I-really-do-know-a-lot-about-foreign-stuff  journey, to Israel and Poland. Where I assume he will be telling jokes.