Ok, I’m a fairly typical guy so I haven’t watched more of Oprah’s Big Give than my wife forced me to watch (10 minute’s worth) before stumbling off in my loincloth, club hefted over my shoulder, to scratch myself and resume my quest for fire. Ogg cook meat now. But I did get the post-show highlights from my wife and browsed some articles about it and I’m a little annoyed at the cynicism rampant in the media today.
Several stories I read were written by authors who seemingly went out of their way to devalue the premise of the show by pointing to the convenient access to corporate sponsorship Oprah’s team of do-gooders enjoyed. “Hey, it isn’t like it’s coming out of her pocket,” they implied, “the tab is being picked up by insert-corporate-sponsor-here!” They suggested (without having the testicular fortitude to come right out and clearly state) that Oprah’s generosity is somehow less deserving of praise given the commercial revenue the show surely generated.
I’m a simple person and my feeling is this… how it happens doesn’t matter as long as nobody gets hurt. Ok, Oprah may not be dipping into her own personal savings account to pay out the prize, but she is giving her time and her celebrity power to the cause. What’s that time worth? Salary.com has a cool salary timer that allows you to compare your real-time earnings against the rich and famous. I won’t tell you how my income from my day job stacked up but I will confess to feeling a little emasculated after running the comparison. Go here to try Salary.com’s Celebrity Salary Comparison tool for yourself. The site estimates Oprah’s hourly earnings at $111,500. I repeat…, hourly. In the time it has taken me to write this sentence she has earned over $400. To put that further into perspective, if you were paid $100,000.00 per year, in the time it would take you to earn enough to buy one McDonald’s Big Mac, Oprah would have earned enough to buy 2238 (according to Salary.com’s Burg-o-meter). Now apply that to the amount of time she personally invested in Oprah’s Big Give. Think of everything that goes into a production like Oprah’s Big Give
- Conceptualization
- Meetings
- Scripting/Writing
- Travel
- Sponsorship Solicitation
- Interviews and Research
- Filming
- A random assortment of other things I know nothing about
Add that all up and how many hours do you think she’s given? Yes, television is a long hall full of smoke and mirrors but that doesn’t change the fact that Oprah has likely given tens of MILLIONS to this project in her valuable time alone.
Say what you will about Oprah. I know it’s popular to slam the successful, but, as a very insightful friend who runs thaiphoonblog.com once told me, opinion cannot be substituted for fact. Regardless of where the actual prize money originates or how much her star power served to influence the corporate sponsors who are really shelling out the prize, Oprah is giving BIG to those to whom she has no obligation beyond her own kindness. Being wealthy is the just reward her compassion and dedication to her craft has earned. Rather than pursuing the popular American pastime of hunting for the flaws in anybody so brazen as to be more successful than average, perhaps we should be content that there’s at least one person out there trying to do good with their success.
