Commentary

A new car!

Nothing gets the Price is Right crowd going like those three words. But now it’s Oprah’s turn: Talk show host Oprah Winfrey celebrated the premiere of her 19th season Monday by surprising each of her 276 audience members with a new car … Winfrey said the audience members were chosen because their friends or family had written to the show about their need for a new car. One woman’s young son said she drove a car that “looks like she got into a gunfight”; another couple had almost 400,000 miles on their two vehicles. I wonder if the anti-sprawl types will take her to task for this … Even though welfare advocates from all political stripes agree that auto ownership is a great way for poor people to get better jobs. And hey, if her audience members stop driving their 400K clunkers, she’s actually improving air quality, too.