Why I will no longer watch Suze Orman

Okay, last night was the last straw. I turned on the Suze Orman show to see if I could learn anything about better money management and what I learned was that Orman, for some reason has stopped hiding her utter contempt for men and the women who marry them. It used to be that she would try to hide this contempt, had ordinary men callers and gave advice that was at least fair. Now she seems to be playing the role of angry feminist to the unenlightened female masses who are stupid enough to stay married to any man who causes them financial trouble.

Orman was in luck last night. The woman who called in with a question about her husband's finances did not require any advice to leave him for poor money management--he was already dead. Instead of talking about how hard this would be (she likes to give a lot of emotional advice--people first, then money, then things!) she asked the woman how shocking it was that this man had dared leave her with $100,000 in debt.

The female caller said that they had separated their finances but that she was now running his business (it must have been worth something if she is keeping it going) and that he had left her $250,000 dollars in life insurance. No mention that this man had not left her high and dry, that even after paying the debt, she would have $150,000 plus the business if it made money to help out. It was a non-stop ME, ME, ME, fest between the caller and Orman with no compassion for the man who had died--just a constant barrage of this woman's needs and how awful it was for her that this man had left her this debt. I might have pointed out that he had the forethought to get a life insurance policy and had a business if I were Orman but she wasn't about to let a man off the hook, not even in death.

Another female caller let Suze know that she had gone bankrupt prior to meeting her husband. She then married her husband who was generous enough not to want a pre-nup and she did not work during the marriage. But now, the couple is having problems and the woman wants to leave. She has few job skills and with her bankruptcy in the background, says no one wants to hire her or give her an apartment--so she might stay with the husband. Orman needled the woman until she got a response that the woman wanted to leave the man with her daughter but was afraid. There was a lot of talk about "you have the power, girl" but no mention of what a loser she must have been to get herself in a position of bankruptcy in the first place and not to have learned anything from it except how to blame a man. Where was he when she went bankrupt in the first place? They weren't even married. If this woman is bad with money, it's obviously her own fault. No man is required.

Instead, Orman talks about how you can't let a man take care of you (true) even if he insists on it and gives alot of platitudes about empowerment but no real advice about how not to be an idiot and stop blaming others for your problems. Orman tends to blame men for women's problems but when the shoe is on the other foot, the man is generally held responsible and needs to "man up." Maybe if she wants to set an example of "empowerment" to her female viewers, she should quit blaming men for so much of their financial troubles. It encourages in women a sense of entitlement and a lack of personal responsibility--both undesirable traits on the way to financial responsibility, one of Orman's goals.

So, I assume most of you reading this do not watch Orman and could care less. Good for you, I will be joining you and forgetting this nonsense except every once in a while to write a blog post or column. It's kind of sad to me though because for a period there, she was rational and fair to both sexes.