Encountering socialite Ivanka Trump at a Manhattan gathering is best likened to happening upon Bambi in a forest glen, only to discover that he's pointing a hunting rifle directly at you. Which is to say that in spite of her pin-up bod and palm frond lashes, Ivanka is both freakishly poised and startlingly ambitious. Oprah, who invited the Trumpess on her Tuesday show, discovered precisely that as Ivanka check-mated the media empress at nearly every turn.

Oprah, usually the one to give the gifts, found that the table had turned when Ivanka delivered a pair of giant diamond "O" earrings to her before the taping, and noted she was only able to accept because Ivanka had, at that point, already been invited on the show and so the baubles could not impeach her journalistic integrity. Except Oprah made no mention of the more controversial aspects of growing up Trump and steered clear of questioning fair Trump about her father's absurdity or silly hair. Point one for Ivanka.

While discussing Ivanka's privileged childhood, Oprah enthused that it must have been just like being raised as a princess. Ivanka steamrolled right over her and went on to plug Trump's Chicago residential development. Oprah gushed. "You are a beautiful person both inside and out." Point two for Ivanka.

Sharing her Tiffany-blue-hued Park Avenue pad with Oprah's viewers, Ivanka showed off her packed bookcases, backgammon set, and coffee machine and confessed that she uses non-chic Chapstick, because she is, you know, a practical kind of gal. Capitalizing on this practicality, she then held up a copy of her boyfriend's paper, the New York Observer, and declared it a "must read." Ivanka three, O nil.

But Oprah's not the sort to be out-played by a 25-year-old real estate heiress, and she went on to ask more niggly questions about whether or not Ivanka had been spoiled as a kid. Ivanka was unrelenting, declaring that she'd worked for an allowance and that in spite of the fact that she had attended the best schools (and, as we recall, that her room at Choate had been decorated professionally), her parents never spoiled her in the "consumptive" sense. "Consumptive?" Oprah repeated with emphasis, as if to say, "Now, I've got you, you silly little twit." Oprah's on the boards: Trump, three; O, one.

But to be fair, maybe Ivanka was just thinking "consumptive" because of all those heavy books on her bookshelves, which are prolly about 18th century Russians with actual consumption or other similarly smart-sounding fatal conditions. We're taking O's point away until further review.