What a crock!

I assume by now that everyone on the entire planet has seen this. Notice how this is being spun as an great act of kindness and generosity by Oprah and GM. Then notice how "audience members were chosen because their friends or family had written about their need for a new car." Now, look at the picture and count the number of males in the picture. None. Zero. Zilch. Thanks Haas for pointing this out. Since the wife and I had a HUGE discussion on the relevancy of this fact, I thought I'd throw this out and get some other opinions.

My position - This is being spun as an act of kindness but it's really a PR exercise in disguise. Since the media is portraying it is generosity and people will believe it, Oprah & Co. are doing their loyal subjects a disservice by misleading them. Evidence that this is nothing more than a PR stunt is that all the cars seem to have gone to women and the shows target market is women. Thus giving cars to your target market audience instead of people who need new cars seems to prove the point. Evidence of cars going to men would obviously nullify this argument.

Wife's position - This is a blatant PR exercise designed to bolster both Oprah and GM and the fact that there is a kindness attribute to it is just an added bonus. Anyone who doesn't see it this way is a moron. This is good for Oprah and a bonus for GM because Oprah has a Midas touch in that everything associated with her show sells like hotcakes.

Personally, I don't have a problem with this being a PR exercise, though I fail to see how GM gets $7M of value out of this. That said, my main issue is how this is being spun and how people are being mislead. If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck, don't tell me it's a chicken. What do you think?