I realize that if you didn’t see Paul Blart: Mall Cop, that headline is lost on you, so I’ve prepared an alternative.  How about, “Oprah’s Ratings Crash Faster Than Lizzie Grubman’s SUV Into A Crowd of Pedestrians” ?  The moral of the story:  The American people have smartened up and aren’t watching Oprah.  And I thank you for that.

The week ending July 5th was the worst in ratings since 1983, the debut year of The Oprah Winfrey Show.  It isn’t a totally fair comparison since it was a holiday week, Michael Jackson had just died, and Wimbledon was on.  So, it was a bad week for ratings in general, but the show has been on a steady decline since October of 2008.  

What could be causing this loss of viewership?  Perhaps people are sick of her inability to find truthful authors.  Or maybe her audience has reached their limit in watching her hypocritcal advice-doling sessions whilst her own weight spirals out of control due to her “wacky thyroid.”  Want to know why I think people are tuning out?  I’ll speak for myself:  Because when I watch television, I don’t want to be lectured if I don’t follow Suze Orman’s financial plan, admonished if I don’t get enough Omega-3 like Dr. Oz tells me I should, or criticized if I think The Secret is nothing but common sense bound into a book.  I don’t want to feel less than worthy if I don’t support every gasp of air that Barack Obama takes and — I know I’m crossing a line here — I’m not so impressed with Oprah’s Book Club picks.  Oprah doesn’t feel good, and if I’m going to dedicate 42 minutes to television I want to walk away feeling positive about the experience.

In a move that proves money doesn’t necessarily equate to power, Angelina Jolie has bumped Oprah Can Someone Please Pass The Mashed? Winfrey out of the number one slot on Forbes’ Celebrity Top 100 Most Powerful list. 

Rankings are based not just on income but also on visibility.  In other words, Oprah needs to be in Playboy this year if she expects to waddle her way back to the top.  I’m not sure how serious a Top 100 Anything list can be considered when Jennifer Love Hewitt makes the cut, but it’s still wildly amusing to think of Oprah doing a centerfold spread. 

After Angie and O, Madonna, Beyonce, Tiger Woods, Bruce Springsteen, Stephen Spielberg, Jennifer Aniston, Brad Pitt, and Kobe Bryant filled out the top ten.

To view the entire list, click here.

Heh. Check out this clip from Oprah’s commencement address at Duke University. “It’s great to have a nice home. It’s great to have nice homes! It’s great to have a nice home that just escaped the fire in Santa Barbara,” she told the students. “It’s great to have a private jet. Anyone that tells you that having your own private jet isn’t great is lying to you.”

But she also emphasizes that her greatest joy in life is being able to help others.

That, and the private jet.

Hey, Oprah, I have a thought: Maybe you could buy me a private jet? That way you’d be helping others and I’d have a private jet. And every couple of months, between trips to the Cayman Islands, I would use my private jet to go pick up Lindsay Lohan from a bar and drop her off at rehab. And then I would pick up Paris Hilton from her house and drop her off in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. See how many people would be helped?

No, Oprah did not go into her local Kentucky Fried Chicken and rip tables and booths in half with her bare hands in a fit of extra tasty crispy fried chicken-craving rage… Although I wish she had.

On last Tuesday’s Oprah show, the would-be saint announced a deal she had partnered with KFC to promote. Customers and Oprah devotees could download a coupon and bring it into KFC for a free two piece meal of their new Kentucky Grilled Chicken (a product whose slogan should be “Kentucky GRILLED Chicken? What’s the Point?”).

The promotion was originally supposed to run through May 19th, but it seems like the chicken pluckers underestimated the Oprah effect. Similar to the butterfly effect, the Oprah effect mandates that if Oprah flaps her underarm fat in a field in Africa, blindly devoted wildebeests American consumers will stampede to buy whatever product she’s currently promoting and a giant thunderstorm will brew inside KFCs all across North America.

The overwhelming response to the promotion–which included long lines and clashes between tired employees and hungry customers– has led KFC to put the free meal deal on temporary hiatus. Customers can bring in their free meal coupon and fill out a form to receive a new coupon in the mail which they can redeem for a free meal and a free Pepsi at a later date. I love the video above because the PR team directed KFC president Roger Eaton to sound really excited and happy when he says “We can’t redeem your free coupon at this time!” Yaaay! I suspect that might not even be the real President of KFC. I think he’s a plant, because the PR people understand that almost anything sounds like a good idea when it’s being said by a happy, excited Aussie.

If you don’t feel like filling out a voucher and waiting for your new free chicken coupon to show up in the mail, you can just go into El Pollo Loco, who is capitalizing on KFC’s gaffe by promising to honor KFC’s coupon for free chicken– on Mother’s Day no less. What better way to thank your mother for squeezing you out of her vagina and selflessly putting up with decades of your crap than by taking her to El Pollo Loco for some free coupon chicken?

Beefy Saint Oprah, friend to absolutely positively everyone in the entire universe as long as they hold her personal belief system, spent a large part of her night hanging with First Lady Michelle Obama last evening at Time’s 100 Most Influential People in the World dinner.  I actually find it surprising that the centerpiece survived and wasn’t consumed in the wake of O’s feeding time.  And yes, I am aware that my yet-to-be-written book now has no chance of being Oprah’s Book of the Month Club pick-I’m at peace with it.

Oprah’s minions were there such as Suze Chiclets Orman and Gayle King.  Also, all the wenches from The View appeared amongst the sea of black dresses as well as Claire Danes, Jimmy Fallon and his wife in yet another sleeveless dress, Kate Hudson and two other names that I’ve just been dying to put next to one another:  Billie Jean King and Ann Coulter.

“I was an addict for all practical purposes, that I had never stuck to a real diet, that I’d never stuck to a real exercise program, and that when confronted by my doctor and the doctor said if you don’t make changes, you will die. I had no choice. When you hear people say, oh, you took the easy way out, I would have longed for an easy way. It was not an easy way. It was this — the hardest struggle of my whole entire life and I still struggle.”

Star Jones, discussing her gastric bypass surgery with Oprah on a special weight-loss episode airing Wednesday.

I’m not a giant Star Jones fan, but I’m glad she’s out there saying this. I’m firmly of the belief that many people who are obese suffer from an addiction to food, as psychologically powerful as any addiction. You can’t effectively address the disease JUST by putting someone on a diet, in the same way that you can’t effectively treat alcoholism by handing someone a Diet Coke. There’s much deeper work to be done before a person can hope to be successful in the long term.

It’s obviously a huge issue in this country, and I feel like the longer we treat it like these people just need to find a diet that works without addressing the — excuse the pun — giant elephant of addiction in the room, the longer we’ll continue to see obesity-related illnesses and expenses on the rise. So, ya know, good for you, Star.

Big, potato-bloat Oprah is having Michelle Obama as the cover girl of the April issue of Oprah magazine.  And, predictably, Oprah is in the picture as well.

I thought for sure suck-up O would have her arms wrapped around the first lady like they are the oldest of friends who just came in from an afternoon of carbs and shopping.  Instead, it just looks like she’s praying for the photoshoot to be over so she can get back to the business of being giving out unsolicited advice and being her general holier-than-thou self.