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The issue is that Karens don't realize themselves as social superiors and see themselves as socially inferior to entry level workers. No one who truly feels themselves above someone else treats them poorly, that's absurd and insane. Karens emerged because the social roles have become so blurred in modern America that no one realizes they are above the minimum wage employee, hence the entire phenomenon of Karens acting ridiculously.
I don't know what you are referring to specifically with her but if you perceive her as a Karen in some instance I presume it's because she lacked the grace or perspective to acknowledge her social superiority as well
I was mostly thinking of the race row she kicked off when the sales staff in a Swiss luxury-goods store were insufficiently respectful. It was back in 2013 when the Great Awokening was just getting started, so the Swiss laughed it off.
Oh, I remember hearing about that. I just read about it here. It's really too vague for me to comment on because one person said one thing and another person claimed another, and retail is a weird power dynamic to begin with in all sorts of ways (not to mention the store could just have that bag on hand not to really sell to anyone, combined with the sales person perhaps not knowing who Oprah was), and besides that the client-customer relationship is different in Europe compared with America- indeed, it may have been out of respect for the customer that the salesperson didn't want to show her such an overpriced item when most people shouldn't really be spending thousands on purses anyway
But yeah, I'd say that was Karen-like behavior from Oprah borne out of a lack of grace and perspective from her position as an American billionaire interacting with a salesperson, for her to weaponize her status in that way is weird and also self serving for her in that she tried to garner sympathy from it
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