Damn! This 48 hours is going by slowly ... I guess I'll have to diss Oprah, beloved though she may be!

Yeesh! Saying anything about such a lovely woman as Oprah (in my opinion) that might be considered "dissing" feels like ... well, I'll take a shower after this posting.

Some of my favorite stories -- both personal and simply
picked up" around the corner, so to speak, are stories that involve the rich and famous rubbing noses with the likes of the rest of us.

For instance, I love to mention the time I watched Bill Gates and his wife hobnobbing with the head usher at the Galeria Movie Theater in Bellevue and then, after they had moved on, when I asked the head usher about it, he said, "Oh yeh, we're really good friends!"

And, seeing the sparkle in his eyes, I believed it.

Then there was the time I ran into Shaq O'Neal in a bookstore in Orlando back when he was with the Magic and a hurricane (or so it seemed) was raging outside the store. He and I were the only customers and he came over and joked with me about the books I was viewing -- science -- and I was able to laugh and kid him about the books he was viewing -- books on Judaism and other religions. There's more to that story, but we all have such "stories," I know.

Anyway, I think it's marvelous if (or if not, if they're really just rumors) Oprah Winfrey (above,left) and Gayle King (Below, right), an ordinary person like you and me, are having an affair.

Now, I personally don't think Oprah (or Gayle) is gay, but it wouldn't matter one bit to me if she (or they) were. Her friendship (and that's what counts!) with Gayle has lasted over the years and the huge disparity in their incomes hasn't been a problem. That's how it should be with all relationships that are meaningful: it's the friendship that counts and not the sexual or financial disparities between the persons that matters.

And since I'm still within the 48 hour limit, I won't even mention the questions about whether Condi Rice's sleeping with George Bush suggests that she is lesbian or not -- it too doesn't matter. And so I won't bring up the Condi-Georgie affair again in this posting.

Condi and Oprah should both be applauded for maintaining relationships (sexual and/or romantic or not) with persons below them in class, intelligence, income or whatever.


And Gayle King seems like a really nice person too, by the way.