Rochelle Riley

It’s a good time for big business in America.

First, taxpayers provide the money to pay multi-million bonuses for CEOs that literally took the country to the brink of a second Great Depression.

Now, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that women fighting Wal-Mart could not sue for discrimination because too many women indiscriminately claimed that they were discriminated against.

The court threw out an employment discrimination class-action suit against Wal-Mart that sought billions of dollars on behalf of as many as 1.5 million female workers. The court, quite frankly, said the case was too big and didn’t offer enough evidence.

It was like saying: You can’t convict a serial killer of killing 1,000 people just because they were all connected to one person, they were all killed the same way and their families had complained about how that one person treated them.

Circumstantial evidence instead of specific evidence.

Continuing the murder analogy, each family would have to sue – in an O.J. Simpson case way – on behalf of each victim, flooding the courts with more than a million suits instead of allowing all the families to sue together. Or they’d have to include only women who had concrete proof of discrimination. That thinking protects an atmosphere of discrimination. But it leaves open a door to possibly end specific discrimination.

Specifically, according to a New York Times report on the decision, the court ruled five to four – right versus left – that the suit did not satisfy a requirement that there were questions of law common to the class of female employees. The fact that they all claim they were discriminated against wasn’t enough. They each had to prove they were discriminated against individually before they could join as a class to file for discrimination as a group.

Ideally, the decision seems fair: You wouldn’t want every woman who ever worked for Wal-Mart to join the suit just because. That would be like an attorney filing a lawsuit on behalf of every black person in America because all black people have been racially discriminated against.

It might be true. But in court, you must offer specific proof.

Chief Justice Antonin Scalia declared, properly, that scattered anecdotes — “about 1 for every 12,500 class members,” were insignificant. But you know what else he did: Admitted that there was one case for every 12,500 class members. That, in itself, was something the court could have dealt with.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, joined in dissent by Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, would have allowed the suit to go forward under a different section of the class-action rules, according to the Times. She said that statistics presented by the plaintiffs as well as their individual accounts were evidence that “gender bias suffused Wal-Mart’s corporate culture.”

“The practice of delegating to supervisors large discretion to make personnel decisions, uncontrolled by formal standards, has long been known to have the potential to produce disparate effects,” she wrote. “Managers, like all humankind, may be prey to biases of which they are unaware.”

So in this case, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, but there are too many ducks to determine what they’re quacking, the plaintiffs must do a better job of translation.

Here’s what should happen: From this decision should rise an independent entity, one like the New York-based Innocence Project. It could be called the Guilt Project, and it could collect legitimate cases of employment discrimination at the 3,500 Wal-Marts across the country – solid, provable cases of discrimination.

Then a group of knowledgeable and experienced labor attorneys could file suit on behalf of those women.

Discrimination should not be allowed to continue just because there’s too much of it.

The show closed with a shot of Oprah picking up one of her beloved pooches and walking down a darkened hallway. Suddenly the TV shifted to WYFF News and a story about a missing woman.

Life has already moved on. And it feels so weird that I need to sit for a minute.

It feels like someone took down a traffic light that has been at the same corner for 25 years and you have to adjust your driving, or your favorite minister has retired and you’re trying to figure out whether to change churches.

Oprah Winfrey is gone.

She says she’s not really gone. She’s headed over to her own network. And since she has failed at nothing she has tried in her career, she will make a success of that.

But that daily conversation that was unprecedented in history is over. The Guiness Book of World Records stat for largest conversation will remain for a long time. Yes, more people watched Oprah say good-bye than the State of the Union (60 million vs. 26 million). And weekday afternoons won’t be the same.

Here’s what I wish for Oprah: What she wished for us: To live our best selves, to give to everyone what you want to come back to you and to wake up every day joyful at where you’re headed.

I had wanted to write her a letter, to tell her thank you for the times that needed a word of gratitude. I never did. But she had enough from millions of others to know that she made a difference.

I had wanted to make some suggestions about OWN:

Perhaps the syndicate would have taken a boatload of money to let her out of the contract that would have allowed her to do the final season of her signature show on her signature network.

Perhaps she could do a daily introduction of a new talk show, just so people could get that few minutes of her that they so crave. (I was available for that one).

Perhaps she’d found a publishing company so, instead of suggesting books for people to read, she’d publish books for people to read. (My book was available for that one.)

But Oprah doesn’t need advice from me. All Oprah needs is what she has had: the loyalty of fans whose lives she changed, whose spirits she lifted and whose laughter she elicited with ease.

Don’t know about you, but I’ll follow her over to OWN.  After 25 years of joy and heartbreak, reflection and introspection, it’s the least I can do.

I walk up to the counter at the hospital lab and immediately am asked for my insurance card, my driver’s license and a requisition from my doctor all to ensure that I am not trying to steal medical service and that I am not some needle junkie who gets blood drawn for fun.

I answer personal questions, always asked loudly, and confirm my address and phone number, hoping that the weird-looking guy behind me isn’t a pervert memorizing both.

And then I wait for it, because I know the question is coming:

“What is your marital status?”

I hate this question.

I hate it more than someone asking, “How far along are you?” after I’ve had a big meal or “I like your boots; is that a size 10?” while I’m on a date.

The other irritations are because of a lack of privacy and an over-sensitivity to having big feet.

But this query, in the 21^st century, is an affront because it is an independence issue.

I have been responsible for my own care and feeding since I was 21 years old.  I spent four years at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a long, hot summer at the News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C. learning to be a great journalist so that I could always get a job. I’ve never not worked since my first job at the Greensboro Daily News, where I was hired before I even graduated.

So the question offends me, as does the reason for it:

“Why are you asking about my marital status?”

The young, blonde doing-as-she-has-been-told receptionist says: “It’s to find out who’s responsible for your bills.”

I swallow my frustration at her ignorance and say simply, “I’m responsible for my own bills.”

I hand her my insurance card and my driver’s license, the keys to my personal information.

And I fume.

I am not an overly sensitive person. I’m a newspaper columnist, so it is impossible for me to be.

Yet every time it happens, I get irritated and a little feisty.

And I get upset that the women – and it is usually a woman who asks – never understand why.

My hope is that one day, even without prodding, hospitals, banks and other entities, will finally get that ,sometimes, women are doing it for ourselves.

Among the great losses when your child becomes an adult is the loss of the children’s movies.

Or at least, that used to be a loss.

What I discovered during an early evening screening of “Toy Story 3″ is something I’ve seen more of in recent years. Adults are enjoying children’s films without even bothering to drag their kids along.

I entered a 6:30 p.m. show to discover not one child in the theater, initially. But a few minutes into the previews, ah, there he was: a young man of about 5 sitting in the fourth row with his parents. But everywhere else in the theater, I saw couples, friends, almost everyone over 20, plenty over 40.

Just as the final preview ended, the couple in front of me was dismayed to hear a loud young voice ask: Where are we going? A trio of adults with a 3 or 4 year-old little girl had arrived late and was looking for seats. They were greeted with the kinds of looks popular kids used to give the nerds who had just grabbed their lunch in the school cafeteria.

The group sat in the row in front of me. A couple directly in front of me moved over a few seats, looking at the poor kid as if she’d just wandered into an adult club.

But they needn’t have worried.

Once the movie began, the entire audience was mesmerized, entranced possibly by their own memories of childhood and their own favorite toys. I worked hard not to sob at the end and was aided by the teenager two seats down who didn’t understand that every time she texted, the light from her phone was as big a distraction as if it had emitted a Drake ring tone.

I walked out as the credits rolled, reveling in having just seen a beautiful, beautiful film that remains the top movie in America, deservedly so. And I was so glad that I hadn’t decided to put children’s movies on the shelf because my daughter isn’t a child anymore.

Sometimes, it’s OK to remember your own childhood as much as your children’s.

It was a Saturday afternoon, and my friend, Walter, had arrived so that we could go shopping for a new TV. The last time I bought a TV, Bill Clinton was president and “Survivor” was a hot new show.

We began our journey at a Meijer’s, which had one that I figured was perfect. We waited and waited for a clerk, before finally calling for help on a red hotline mounted on a nearby pole. A young woman came over. We asked the difference between an LED and a LCD set. She said: “I don’t know,” as if we’d asked how far to get to the moon.

She left to find somebody. We left to find a store with actual TV salespeople. We weren’t mad at her. We just knew that she’d drawn the short straw that forced her to leave the comfort of whatever break room she was in and that the next person would be no more eager to sell us a set than she. Thought we’d save them the time.

We headed to Best Buy.

Although their prices weren’t as low, their customer service got high marks after a knowledgeable young lady talked me through screen size and models and pixels and other features that one should consider before purchasing a set. I chose one that was only a little more expensive than the one I’d seen earlier. And we took it home.

Now, this is where the story gets a little funny and a little weird. I told Walter that the set was for my woman-cave, a female version of a man cave. He was, at the least, inordinately unimpressed, and at most, horrified.

“There is no such thing as a woman cave, and if there was, this wouldn’t be it,” he said sweeping his arm around at the books on every wall and the glass writing table in the corner.

“Why?” I asked.

“Man-caves,” he said, “are fun. This says work.”

Man caves, I told him, are for sloth. Most are dark places with big sofas and sports paraphernalia and ratty chairs that are impossible to stain. And they are for nothing but watching TV.

A woman cave, I told him, is a place of relaxation and refuge but also a place for intellectual stimulation.

“The writing table is to scrapbook!” I said. And I pointed determinedly at the leather recliner that my nephew had helped me maneuver in the week before. “Look! There’s even a cave chair!”

No, he said. You can’t have a desk or writing table or books or any items that require thought or can be used for work.

“You need to have a jersey or two on the wall!” he explained in exasperation. What I had, he said, was a cove. I told him that a cove required water.

Instead, what I have is a quiet all-in-one room where I can watch “27 Dresses” or “An Affair to Remember,” where I can manipulate photographs and sheer silk, where I can – as I did after Walter left – drink a cup of tea while lying in a recliner, watching re-runs of “The Sentinel” on SyFy. Or where I can watch Wimbledon as I did a few days later.

I’ve thought of a perfect name for my new space, where I can scrapbook, write, cuddle, read novels, watch old episodes of “The Wire” and do crosswords: It’s my cavern.

A woman cavern.

Sports allowed in moderation.