Don’t Be Like Oprah: A Lesson in Thinking Ahead

Obviously, Oprah’s been in the news lately regarding this whole bullshit KFC coupon thing. In case you’ve been living in a cave for the last week or so, Oprah announced on her TV show that she would be allowing every person in America to download a coupon good for a free two-piece grilled chicken meal with two sides and a biscuit.

Now, my personal viewpoints about KFC, the consumption of chicken, and the factory farming industry aside, this is not a bad deal, and as Treehugger.com pointed out, it’s hard to knock down the lady who’s trying to give people free food.

That said, this was a totally fucked up idea, and has turned into a “public relations nightmare” for Oprah and her show. Why? Two reasons:

1. As the animal rights activists have been pointing out ad nauseum ever since it happened, Oprah has done some pretty interesting (if not inspiring) work to expose the conditions of factory farming (including Tyson, the company from which KFC gets its chicken, and one of the most disgusting offenders of animal abuse in the industry). She also went on a 21-day vegan “cleanse” in the spring of last year, extolling both the physical and the spiritual virtues of eating a cruelty-free diet. Because of this work, she was named PETA’s 2008 Person of the Year and honored and congratulated by animal rights people all over the world. And now, as though none of those things had ever occurred, she’s suggesting – nay, advocating! – the consumption of factory-farmed chicken from a company notorious for its cruelty to animals. Oprah apparently thinks we all have really bad short-term memory, because I don’t understand why else she would agree to anything like this.

2. Apparently, many KFC franchises were expected to eat the cost of the free meals which is simply not practical, and in a lot of cases, impossible. Some franchises claimed that they didn’t even know about the coupons until customers started flooding their store waving the coupon about like a winning lottery ticket. And when these customers were necessarily turned away like freeloaders at a soup kitchen, did they eat there anyway? No. In most cases, they went elsewhere. In some cases, they stamped their feet and pouted. In a few cases, they RIOTED.

My God, we really are just a bunch of children, aren’t we?

Here’s the thing: I don’t actually blame Oprah for any of this. It’s very difficult for me to believe that she’s some evil mastermind trying to figure out a way to make a quick buck. Now, it wouldn’t surprise me if that’s exactly what she is, but I actually believe that she’s mostly genuine in her intentions. If she were not, she wouldn’t still be as popular as she was ten years ago. The masses can be kind of dumb, but they tend to catch on to things like this after a certain amount of time. I truly think that this stunt is the result of her marketers being overeager dumbasses.

But even if that’s the case, Oprah, as a sponsor of humanity (yes, dramatic, but not inappropriate), had a responsibility to consider the logical conclusion of this idea before signing off on it. She has a responsibility to do her own research, just as we all do.

So, for a Total Change of Heart: Don’t be like Oprah. Be altruistic, sure. Be generous as much and as often as you can. But for the love of all that is decent, don’t jump into something that sounds like a good idea before thinking about it first. Other than a CZ-75 semi-automatic pistol, thoughtful planning is among the best weapons you can keep in your arsenal, and it can defend you against any attacker. If Oprah had done her research, or at the very least thought about the implications of what she was doing, she wouldn’t be in such deep shit with everyone right now.