Books, Rainbows, and Reading Can Only Mean One Thing. Oprah.

(LOOK! WE'RE A .COM NOW!)

Stupid people don't own books. Sure, on the surface that probably looks like a very stereotypical statement. I don't know every stupid person ever, but I have yet to hear the phrase, "Man, that person is so stupid, I can't believe they own all those books." At some point owning books has become intertwined with being intelligent. It probably has to do with all those books using words like "intertwined." Books are supposed to give us intelligence which is why all of us were forced to read Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead at some point in high school.

Spoiler alert: She did not invent all those maps with McNally.

If someone tells you they read the book of the movie you are about to watch, you immediately think of them as smarter. They actually spent days reading something that your brain can only handle in a 2 hour time frame with popcorn butter on your Dockers. Does this make sense? Not really, since no one actually buys Dockers on purpose anymore. But also because the book they could be talking about is Twilight and they missed out Robert Pattinson's sexy pale white skin and anti-sun credo. I don't think reading Twilight makes you more intelligent than the person next to you per say, but the ACTION of reading the book has made you a more well read person.
Or a teenage vampire. Either or.

In the grand scheme of things it should be the quality of books we read that determines how smart we all are. If I read Paddington Bear or the Bernstein Bears and you're reading something by Malcolm Gladwell or F. Scott Fitzgerald, I think it's safe to say you'll be a little bit better versed than me in non-bear related knowledge. However, if there is a quiz on loveable bears that can talk and don't like school, you are screwed. This gets me to my favorite person in the world.

Oprah.

Oprah really isn't my "favorite" person in as much that she's everyone's favorite person. Think about it no one really hates Oprah. People may think she's not as great as the 50 year old housemother of 3 in Tulsa, Oklahoma thinks she is, but not one person believes that Oprah is a bad person. "You know who I hate? That Opera Winefry. She's giving out cars for no reason and starting charities all over the place. WHAT A BITCH."

The consensus is that Oprah is a smart woman due to her business savvy. That is a very valid point. She built a billion dollar empire that has made us forget that she was in the amazingly short lived TV show called "Brewster's Place" in the early 90s which had nothing to do with Soleil Moon Frye. I argue that we think Oprah is smart BECAUSE she has a book club. Oprah's book club has pushed her perceived intelligence to heights that haven't been seen since Zack Morris scored an impossible 1502 on the SAT breaking the scoring policy of all standardized tests.

(Insert something Saved By The Bell Related/Mario Lopez joke here)

This is from Oprah's Book Club Wiki page.

"In Reading with Oprah: The Book Club That Changed America, Kathleen Rooney describes Winfrey as 'a serious American intellectual'"...

There's more to that quote, but who cares. I don't have time to copy and paste it all. So there is a book about how Oprah's book club has changed America and made us smarter? That is the most meta thing in the history of all things meta. We are to assume that Oprah read all these books, correct? Here's the ruse. What if she just picked a bunch of random books, started a book club, and we immediately thought that makes this woman smart? Oprah could be pulling the biggest okie doke ever. Starting this book club is just a way to show how intelligent she really is since we ALL believe smart people own and read books.

I'M ONTO YOU OPRAH.

Now, of course, I've taken some liberties with this since I’m a blogger and we pretend to be outraged at the most minute things. (It took me 4 MINUTES TO GET A HAPPY MEAL TODAY. LOOK AT MY OUTRAGE. I'M TYPING IN CAPS). I'm sure Oprah's house is filled with all of these books and sitting in a corner is the body of James Frey tied up and lashed every 68 minutes with page 172 from "A Million Little Pieces". That's not the point. James Frey's decrepit body in Oprah's dungeon is not the story. The story is whether anyone could start a book club and we would buy into their increasing brain power.

What if Steve-O from the Jackass movies came out tomorrow and said, "I'm starting my own book club" and proceeded to list thought provoking books and wonderful nonfiction? I say we would instantly think of him as a person that was intelligent this whole time and his whole character was a joke. This is a man that picks his nose and puts it his pocket. A man that let animals bite his penis. A man that has lit himself on fire. A lot. But just because he would say he read some books our perception would change. A smart Steve-O? Aliens come take me now.

But first find James Frey.

I'm worried.