Hot Takes

On this week’s episode of the Rich Spinster Podcast, Alexis comes to Oprah Winfrey's defense, unpacking the wave of online criticism directed at one of the world's most influential women and exploring why internet outrage so often misses the bigger picture. She also weighs in on the debacle surrounding the Great American State Fair, reflects on the importance of building genuine connection and community in an increasingly disconnected world, and shares her thoughts on the extreme heat making its way across the Northeast.

From pop culture to current events to the everyday moments that remind us what really matters, Alexis delivers another episode filled with wit, perspective, and the kind of conversation that feels like catching up with a good friend who always has something worth saying.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

It's just all about love and life and living and freedom. That's what that's what it's all about for me now. Welcome to the Rich Spenster Podcast. This is the Lexus. I I just want you all to stay hydrated. Listen, here in the Northeast, we are going to be expect experiencing a heat wave. Summer here in the Northeast is so interesting for me because I am originally from Florida where it feels hot and humid and sticky 90% of the time. Okay. Like I also don't understand like outside activities when it's hot like that. I am not a person who enjoys being outside in the blazing heat. We are just now, this week, are about to experience oh the full joys of summer. We are experiencing a heat wave in the uh northeast this week, and they're talking about temperatures like 98 and 99. Let me tell y'all something. Y'all can have that. Okay? And y'all can have the 98s and the 99s, and it's supposed to be really hot like that for about a week. And I just don't want I don't know how I'm going to deal with this. I don't know how I'm going to handle myself. Now, here's the thing: I don't have to be out in the elements, and I won't be out in the elements. I do have some place that I'm going on Saturday. It's a cookout. I cannot tell you the last time I have been to a cookout, especially on 4th of July. I don't even like celebrate the 4th of July, but I really don't celebrate it, not just a political stance, but I really don't celebrate it because it's hot. And 4th of July has everything that I don't like. I don't like the color red, I don't like heat, hot dogs, bugs, flies, all of that. And then you're supposed to do all of those activities while smiling and talking to people. Uh-uh. I tend to not like to do things on holidays in general. So when people are having their Labor Day gatherings or their Easter celebrations, that is the time that I really like to stay home and stay in. And um, it just feels good when I do that. So this will be the first time in a long time that I'm going somewhere for the 4th of July. I know that it's gonna be a good time and I know that it's going to be with good people. Can we talk about this great American State Fair? Um yeah, not so great. Not so, not so great. Apparently, attendance has been piss poor. Energy has been piss poor, the food has been pissed poor, the communication around it has been piss poor. So the entire event has been essentially a giant golden shower on the country. I don't know. Do you guys know anybody who's attended this? Even though I have lots of people in DC, I don't think anybody that I know actually will. Let me tell you all something that I really want to discuss this podcast. And it is something that I hadn't planned on discussing, but I saw it all over social media last week. And what y'all not gonna do ever is make me hate Oprah Winfrey. Absolutely not. Disliking Oprah, not appreciating Oprah, not valuing her and her contribution to not only American culture but black culture specifically has bothered me. This anti-Oprah talk has really bothered me. Now, listen, let's be clear. We don't know any of these people. I don't know Oprah. Oprah does not know me yet. So it is not as though that I am a person who is just, you know, standing for someone. The main backlash that I saw online, which was crazy, was that Oprah disclosed that when Whitney Houston performed at her studios, Whitney fell. Oprah deduced that Whitney was high. I also saw other accounts online where people said, Yeah, I was there. It happened, right? One, I don't feel like Oprah would go on a show and just like make up something like that. But the main thing that irritated me is that I think she has the right to tell her story and to talk about the truths about things that happened while she was filming her show. And we cannot love people so much that we don't tell the truth about them. We sometimes look at people in the public eye with such admiration and such reverence for their art or perhaps something that they have done, something that they have achieved, that we are unwilling to look at or discuss the truth about them. And I do believe that she has a right to discuss anything that happened during her show. And I heard someone say online, like, oh, I feel that Oprah is out of touch with the black community because there's certain people we don't play about. That irritated me, comes off a little bit like the Negro Olympics, and like black folks are always trying to qualify. If you do this, okay, you're in touch, you're really black, or this. If you do this, you're not black enough. It makes no sense. The Negro Olympics do not exist, but she's a successful, brilliant black woman from Mississippi. Oprah was not born with money, and people were saying, Well, I think she's been rich too long, and but she's really out of touch. No, she might be out of touch with you. There's still a lot of black people, black women specifically, who revere her, who respect her, who understand what groundbreaking television that she put forth when it was really difficult. That we understand the things that she had to face as a woman who doesn't look like the standard of beauty that they want on television, Oprah was there anyway. Yes, she has wealth, but that is not who she is. Who she is is as complicated and stitched together as the rest of us. It's so easy to be online talking about everything that someone has said or done. Think about if people were recording every single conversation that you had. Think about all the missteps you have made in your life and apply that to other people. Give other people some grace. But what I'm not gonna do is have y'all talking about Oprah Winfrey and me be silent about it. And then there's this idea that because someone has passed away, that you're not supposed to talk about them. Listen, now I think that that's bullshit all the way to the church house. I think that is bullshit. I don't understand why. Suddenly, when someone passes away, you're supposed to speak glowingly of them. I would speak glowingly of everyone if they behaved better. So if someone has passed away, I still have the right to tell my story, not discussing things that are so obvious, like Whitney Houston's drug use or not discussing another family secret that you have to swallow every Thanksgiving, harms you. And it harms the culture. It tells us that how we present is more important than the truth. And I believe that there is nothing more important than the truth. Nothing. Y'all gonna have to get off Miss Oprah Gail Winfrey, 72 years old and icon in media. Y'all gonna put some respect on Oprah Gail Winfrey's name. Period. Steadman too, and the dogs, and I love Gail too. Happy Pride.

unknown 8:40

Just kidding.

SPEAKER_00 8:41

Gail and Oprah are not lovers. It's stupid. That's why sometimes I like I can't look at the internet, I can't scroll a lot because there's just so much dumb sometimes and it angers me because some of them are just so mean. Have you looked in some of the comments of let's say, like, your favorite celebrity, whoever that may be? And we know that a lot of those are bots, but the ones that are not bots, I've just seen some really just mean things written under people's videos, especially under the videos of women. What how is your life better? It's not, you're still the person on the internet writing rude comments under a stranger's post. It's so bizarre. I don't want strangers to feel bad. Call me crazy. I don't want strangers to feel bad. I want people to feel good when they have an interaction with me. I want them to feel seen when they have an interaction with me. I want them to know that I was focused on them when they have an interaction with me. I want to give them, as I call it, the Alexis experience. So when I am with people, I want them to know that I'm with them. I want I really that's why I don't really like large crowds, like crowded gatherings. I love just sitting down with somebody over lunch and looking at them in the face and talking to them and letting them know that I see them and not looking at my phone the entire time and scrolling through. I I want to look in their eyes and I want to smile when when they make a funny face, and I I want to do all of those things. And I feel like this world of the internet takes that away from people. I feel like people are missing out on so much, they're missing out on a lot of quietness because their lives are never silent because they're always online arguing about Oprah and shit. Like all of that matters to me. And it matters to me that someone can think back and say, you know what? I had this great interaction with Alexis. I had this great interaction with her, and she said this, and this made me laugh, or whatever it is. I love that, and I love hearing about that. Now, that's not to say that everybody has had a great interaction with me. I am definitely a person that follows like the energy. And when I say follow the energy, I'm not putting that on other people, but I'm also aware of the energy that's in a space, and I make sure that I am not in a space where I can't be free anymore. I've been in lots of spaces where I can't be free, and I don't want to be there anymore. Like ever. I've been in spaces, even work spaces that have been hostile, where I've had to play games, where I've had to talk and be friendly with people that aren't good people just to get my job done. And I don't want to do that anymore. Life is too short. And for the rest of my life, I want it to be about love and experiences and pleasures and real connections. And I've been lucky, not lucky, I've been blessed. I've been blessed in my life to have a lot of love and a lot of good times and a lot of appreciation. And where I have failed has been times when I haven't focused on that. Like the person who really does not matter to you in your life at all says something crazy or does something wild, maybe at work, and you spend three days, three days thinking about it and talking about it, and like, you know what? I should have said to that motherfucker when he said this, I should have said this. And that way, I wouldn't be thinking about this shit at 3 a.m. and eating ice cream. But that's not how it goes sometimes, right? And sometimes we have to stop ourselves in the track. So I guess I'm saying all of this to say that sometimes we do have to stop ourselves. And so, like, maybe if you're listening to this and you are tempted to go online and write something really mean to someone, or to say something nasty about Oprah Winfrey, that you'll rethink it because it's not making your life better, but it's also not making you better. Have you all seen the updates about Nancy Guthrie that in one of the initial letters someone sent the note and it said, hello Savannah, we have your mother. Leave Savannah alone. Give these people some peace and tell them where Miss Nancy is. I can't deal with this. It's like every week I was complaining last week because there wasn't enough coverage. They just pulled me in to this story about Miss Nancy, and then suddenly people went on with their lives. Meanwhile, I'm checking the internet every day saying, where the fuck is she? Then they said she was buried somewhere in Mexico. Now someone sent a letter saying no, she's not buried in Mexico. But I tell you what, we have a phone with a recording of the people who kidnapped her. We also have their names and ages. Like, what? And yeah, you can have it all just for one Bitcoin. But I have questions. Tell them where their mother is. This is this is too, y'all. This name, this Miss Nancy thing is too much for me. It is literally too much for me. I can't take it. I'm always talking about my niece because my niece and I talk every day. And she said, she asked me something today that was really surprising and it caused me to think. Uh, she asked me, TT, what is the worst thing that you've ever done? The worst thing that I've ever done. And then I thought about it, and I always I told her, I said, you know, I once loved someone, and that person hurt me. And I told that person when we were having a conversation, I told that person, I don't love you anymore. And it was interesting because in the moment I knew that it was hurtful. And I said it, and it was absolutely untrue. I think what I should have said was, I don't love you in the same way anymore. But I didn't say that. I said I don't love you anymore because I have a flair for the dramatics and I like a period on things. I said that, and I've never said that to someone before. And here I am thinking my niece is gonna support me in this like deep reflection. And she's like, T, that was awful. I was like, what? She's like, that was awful. I mean, listen, it it is what it is. It was what it was, and I'm not apologizing, but I'm just saying. I think that's like the one thing that I've I've done that I've regretted because I am such a person who is committed to words and like saying things that I believe and mean. That's what I said, and I felt very judged by my niece. I felt very judged by her. Here's the thing: I'm a person like I really focus on the words that people say, I focus on what you say and how you say it, and also what you don't say. I think they're full conversations that happen there. But yeah, that was like the one of the times in my life that I was just like, oh, that was bad. And even though in that moment, maybe I felt like that person deserved harshness for me, or that person deserved to know how disappointed I was, and really how angry I was, because I hear I I do love you, and you can't receive it, you can't value it in the way that you should. But I do understand that that was probably a really mean thing to say. Well, and it wasn't necessarily a mean thing to say. I'm quite okay with saying mean things, but I don't think that we should say things that we don't mean because we're hurt. So basically, my my niece made me feel very judged today. Extremely judged today. You guys, I was scrolling on Instagram though. Some good things can come from scrolling. I was scrolling on Instagram and I found this song by Nick Hustle, something like that. It's called I Ain't Worried About Shit Today. I heard this song. And when I tell you it lit up my life, I heard that song and I'm like, this is my theme song. And I loved it so much that I did like a little Instagram reel where I'm lip syncing the song, and I I promise you, I'm listening to this song every day, every morning. I ain't worried about shit today. The song says, I ain't worried about a goddamn thing. No stress, no fucking stress. I feel blessed, I feel blessed as a motherfucker. When I tell you that brought me joy, oh my gosh. I love when I find just little things like that. And it's like a little diamond in the sand that you find. And now I got a whole song to include in my hour of power. Oh, so when I did the little video that I ain't worried about shit today, I found there's a story. Okay, so I went to the black hair care store and I saw these pink rollers, pink rollers that mama used to wear every night when I was a young kid. Yeah, mama wore these pink rollers, and it just reminds me of like the 80s. These pink rollers she put in her hair. And I used to wonder, like, how can she sleep in these? Oh my god, they're so hard. When I saw them at the hair store, I smiled and I decided I'm gonna get some rollers. I'm gonna put rollers in my hair. But then I looked and they had green ones, and you all know I am a lover of green, and so I said, Oh my god, if I get these green rollers, I have to wear them as like an accessory because these are the things that I do. And I was like, I have my fabulous green sequins robe, and I have this fabulous mid-century modern green and gold glass, and I could just see myself on the porch enjoying the afternoon that way. Yes, these are the kinds of things I do at home. I absolutely do these things at home, and so that's what I did. I purchased the rollers, I rolled my hair, um, I put on my robe, I got a drink, and I sat outside on the porch, and it was heavenly, and that is when I found that song. And it was just perfect. It was perfect. I'm not even giving a report on Trump this week because what is there to report? You know what I mean? What is there to report? I only have a question for Donald Trump, and my question is don't you ever get tired of being a punk ass bitch? I don't even maybe have a question for Donald Trump. It's for everybody around him, all of the people in the administration that are supporting all of this bullshit that they know is harming the country. I want to know, doesn't your throat hurt yet? Does your throat hurt? Your tonsils have to hurt. You have lock job. I mean, y'all are doing a lot of dick sucking, like a lot of dick sucking. Like y'all are doing more dick sucking than Pornhub. Did you all see Joe Biden though? Talking at the Maryland Democratic Party Gala, and he basically called Trump a loser. What a loser. Listen, Joe Biden, rock out with your cock out. Joe Biden is 83 years old. Say whatever the fuck you want to say, Joe Biden. This man has survived such tragedy in his life, losing children, losing his wife, all of that in the Senate. He served his country in the White House. I mean, Joe Biden, say whatever the fuck you want to say. Call a thing a thing, Joe Biden. We support you. And now he's got cancer. Nah, don't hold anything back, Joe Biden. You tell it all. If I gotta tell it, then I gotta tell it all. Damn, I love Usher. I keep saying I want to go to an Usher concert. Now I heard that, like, so Usher is like, I guess, like around my age. Um, but I think he's going on tour with Chris Brown, someone said. And I really there's a part of me that really wants to go to that concert, but then there is another part of me that feels like I may have aged out of that Chris Brown portion of that tour. Like, I don't know if I can really enjoy a Chris Brown concert. I'm not, I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not like a lover of concerts anyway. I'm a lover of music, not a lot of lover of concerts because, like, listen, I gotta be in front. I gotta be in front because I don't want to be just like surrounded by people. I also want to be dropped off at the door and picked up there. Like, I just a concert is like not a great time for me most times. And like, I want to like them and I want to enjoy it. That's just kind of like the movie theaters, right? It's like the idea of going to a movie. Like, I want to see the film, but I know once I get in there, other people are gonna be in there, and the bitch is gonna start chewing popcorn and nachos and slurping on soda. And then I'm gonna be fixated on that the entire movie and not gonna enjoy it. Not a fucking thing about it. Not a fucking thing about a movie do I enjoy because other people are there ruining my experience. I'd much rather watch a film at home. You all, I really do have to take my ass to the Obama Center. I want to go so bad to the presidential library. I'm gonna wait until the fall, though, because a mad rush. Everyone's going this summer. There's already been like 10,000 people there. I've seen the videos and the energy from it, and I absolutely love it. I will make sure that I make a special trip to Chicago to see it. I have to. I am officially just like obsessed with Barack and Michelle Obama. That's true. I'm I love them both so much, and I would just love to show them how much I love them. Preferably both of them at the same time. Y'all, I also just got a text message from somebody I haven't talked to in like two years, and she just sent me a text, and I cannot wait to talk to her. I cannot wait to talk to her. Y'all, keep in touch with your people, keep in touch with your people. I think about how many years left I could have on this earth, and I just want to spend them loving on folks and having folks love on me. And it's important to keep in touch with people, it's important to check in and see how they're doing. It's important for me to have those connections because they always appreciated it. Connection for me has always been really important in my life. I think because uh, you know, I grew up in a really unconventional sort of situation where I was raised by my grandparents and raised and adopted, my brother and I by our grandparents. And there was always this longing for connection in a way, because I really wasn't close with my grandmother uh in that way. I was very close with my grandfather, but I was always seeking connection, particularly from women. I was seeking connection. I think because I didn't have the natural maternal bond that you're supposed to have, I was always seeking a sort of maternal bond, seeking a very nurturing love. And I got that love a lot from teachers and from mothers of my friends and things like that. But as I've gotten older in life, I think from the time I was 20 or so, I was very like, I was always very intentional about making connections. And it was very important for me to keep those connections. Like if I decided that I loved you, notice I said decided because I do believe that love is a decision. We'll talk about that at another time. But if I decide that I love you, that means I am saying that I want to be a part of your life, that I want to know how you are, that I I want to check on you when you are sick, and I want to give you a sweet note, and I want to send you a card, and I want to buy you a gift if I see that perfect thing in the store that looks like something that you would love. I want to do that. And I've always wanted to do that, and I've always had relationships with people that they give that to me too. And so, my the people closest to me have always filled in the gaps in my life, and to a point where you know they filled in the gaps in my life. I feel like my life no longer has gaps, and so now there's just room for us to love each other, to be good to each other, and to support each other and to watch each other grow, and to cuss a bitch out for each other if necessary. So her texting me just now just made me smile. And I think I'm gonna end the podcast now and give her a text back and see how she's doing. Thank you for listening to the Rich Spencer Podcast. You can listen to the podcast anywhere you listen to podcasts. You can also watch this episode on YouTube in its entirety. Have a wonderful week, everyone.