Celebrity Shopping Within Their Means
News item: Billionaire media mogul Oprah Winfrey says she encountered racism in Switzerland, playground of the super rich and famous, when a sales clerk at Trois Pommes, a boutique in Zurich for the super rich and famous, refused to show the TV personality a handbag with a price tag of $38,000, telling the super rich and famous movie actress she couldn’t afford it.
“She said, ‘No, no, no, you don’t want to see that one,’ ” Winfrey quoted the clerk as saying. “ ‘You want to see this one. Because that one will cost too much; you will not be able to afford that.’ ”
The clerk slightly miscalculated: Winfrey, according to Forbes magazine, could afford it based on her $77 million income last year.
Here are a few similar, but unconfirmed, faux pas . . .
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Rather than a $38,000 wallet from Trios Pommes, Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates has set out to “buy” the worldwide eradication of polio.
Twenty-five years ago, polio was endemic in 125 countries with an estimated 350,000 people – primarily young children – paralyzed by the disease annually. Immunization efforts have since reduced polio cases globally by more than 99 percent and saved more than 10 million children from paralysis.
Polio is now endemic in just three countries: Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Last year fewer than 250 cases were reported compared to 650 cases in 2011.
Gates is currently the world’s richest man with a reported net worth of “More Money Than God” – which in U.S. currency is $72.7 billion. Additionally, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has an endowment of more than $36 billion.
Still, in April when the foundation donated $1.8 billion to continue the surge against the scourge polio, the response Gates heard was: “No, no, no, why don’t you look at something more in your price range – like maybe trying to eradicate the sport of polo off the face of the earth.”
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Tiger Woods was playing a round of golf with Donald Trump at Trump’s Trump National Golf Club on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, soon to be renamed Trump Peninsula.
The signature 18th hole alone cost $61 million to build, making it “the most expensive chunk of golf real estate on the planet” according to an actual quote from the man with the biggest chunk of ego on the planet.
Woods’ drive on No. 18 landed in green rough more tangled than Trump’s platinum hair. After taking three swings to get out of the pricey weeds, Woods, who according to Forbes magazine has a net worth of $600 million, angrily snapped his wedge in two and told Trump, “I want to buy your club.”
“No, no, no, you can’t afford it,” Trump replied, thinking Woods meant $264-million Trump National and not Trump’s $120 58-degree loft TaylorMade ATV Wedge with a KBS Tour 90 steel shaft.
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TaylorMade ACM (American Country Music) superstar Taylor Swift attended a charity auction where she bid on a dinner date with pop idol/bad boy Justin Bieber. When Swift opened with $100,000 (plus all traffic fines and bail for Beiber if required), the auctioneer shouted, “No, no, no, you are a young woman who probably still has student loans and surely can’t afford this!”
“That’s fun money for me,” replied Swift, who ranks No. 6 on Forbes’ Celebrity Top 100 with $55 million in earnings the past year. “Besides, if I write another break-up song after the date I can write it off as a business expense.”
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Oprah Winfrey encountered a second wrong-headed “No, no, no, you can’t afford it” comment while attending the 2013 Ventura County Fair and trying her hand at the softball throw.
“How many times do I have to knock all the milk bottles down to win that pretty handbag,” Winfrey asked the carney, who replied: “No, no, no, you can’t afford enough tickets to win the purse – why don’t you try for the little stuffed shark?”
Winfrey prevailed, winning the purse encrusted with faux diamonds and it only cost her $38,000 – $48 worth of fair game tickets plus $37,952 for orthopedic surgery to repair her rotator cuff.
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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for the Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. His new memoir WOODEN & ME is available for pre-order at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.