I know there are a bunch of oprah fans here....so read this and weep 
Goodbye and good riddance to Oprah Winfrey, an enemy of reason
Thank God Oprah Winfrey has brought her ghastly talk show to an end. So gargantuan is her ego, she announced two years ago that it would end this year. This was supposedly because 2011 was the show’s 25th anniversary. “Twenty-five years feels right in my bones, and it feels right in my spirit – it’s the perfect number, the exact right time,” she said. In truth, it was because the show’s ratings had been steadily declining for the last 10 years, plummeting from a peak of 14 million in 1998 to 7.3 million in 2008.
The final show itself rivalled the Academy Awards for pomposity and self-importance, with fawning A-list celebrities trying to outbid each other in lachrymose praise. Madona called her an “inspiration”, while Jada Pinkett, Will Smith’s wife, compared her to a “goddess”. Incredibly, Barack Obama did not appear via a video link from the White House to thank her for getting him elected President of the United States.
Okay, okay, she isn’t all bad. I will grudgingly concede that she deserves credit for promoting tolerance of lesbians and gays. She’s also one of America’s most generous philanthropists. Oprah’s Angel Network (everything must have her name stamped on it, from O: The Oprah Magazine to the Oprah Television Network) has raised over $80 million.
But the case for the prosecution is overwhelming. The Wall Street Journal coined the phrase “Oprahfication” to describe public confession as a form of therapy, surely one of the most stomach-churning spectacles of our age, particularly when indulged in by errant politicians or disgraced celebrities. Oprah, more than any other individual, is responsible for the hypocritical shame culture of contemporary America whereby no sin is considered so great that it can’t be expiated by a bout of public humiliation. Rosie O’Donnell could be caught snacking on a baby seal, but provided she broke down in tears on Oprah’s couch and linked her crime to some imagined childhood trauma all would be forgiven.
She is also America’s number one snake oil salesman. No self-help philosophy is so crapulous – so spectacularly vacuous – that she won’t enthusiastically promote it to her credulous fans. One of her most ringing endorsements was for a book called The Secret in which a self-help guru called Rhonda Byrne instructs readers on how to use the “Law of Attraction” to get what they want. The “secret” of the book is that if you wish for something hard enough, you’ll get it simply through the act of wishing. Nothing more is required. Byrne claims to have used this “secret” to improve her eyesight so that she no longer needs glasses. Byrne also asserts that food does not make you fat, only the belief that food makes you fat. (Alas, this “spiritual” dieting technique appears to have failed for Oprah.) Needless to say, as soon as Oprah started praising this fatuous collection of New Age gobbledegook on her show, The Secret shot straight to the top of the New York Times bestseller list.
Above all, it is Oprah’s incontinent sentimentality that I find so objectionable, the elevation of ersatz emotion over any critical thought. For Oprah, the only test of veracity worth the name is whether something “feels” true, as though our initial emotional response to something – whether a prospective lover, a spiritual belief system or a political leader – is a more reliable guide than a careful sifting of the evidence. In a modern democratic society like America, which is crying out for informed public discussion about a whole range of critical issues, Oprah’s constant attempts to undermine reason and rationality make her one of the most destructive figures of our age.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tobyyoung/100088655/goodbye-and-good-riddance-to-oprah-winfrey/
Goodbye and good riddance to Oprah Winfrey, an enemy of reason
Thank God Oprah Winfrey has brought her ghastly talk show to an end. So gargantuan is her ego, she announced two years ago that it would end this year. This was supposedly because 2011 was the show’s 25th anniversary. “Twenty-five years feels right in my bones, and it feels right in my spirit – it’s the perfect number, the exact right time,” she said. In truth, it was because the show’s ratings had been steadily declining for the last 10 years, plummeting from a peak of 14 million in 1998 to 7.3 million in 2008.
The final show itself rivalled the Academy Awards for pomposity and self-importance, with fawning A-list celebrities trying to outbid each other in lachrymose praise. Madona called her an “inspiration”, while Jada Pinkett, Will Smith’s wife, compared her to a “goddess”. Incredibly, Barack Obama did not appear via a video link from the White House to thank her for getting him elected President of the United States.
Okay, okay, she isn’t all bad. I will grudgingly concede that she deserves credit for promoting tolerance of lesbians and gays. She’s also one of America’s most generous philanthropists. Oprah’s Angel Network (everything must have her name stamped on it, from O: The Oprah Magazine to the Oprah Television Network) has raised over $80 million.
But the case for the prosecution is overwhelming. The Wall Street Journal coined the phrase “Oprahfication” to describe public confession as a form of therapy, surely one of the most stomach-churning spectacles of our age, particularly when indulged in by errant politicians or disgraced celebrities. Oprah, more than any other individual, is responsible for the hypocritical shame culture of contemporary America whereby no sin is considered so great that it can’t be expiated by a bout of public humiliation. Rosie O’Donnell could be caught snacking on a baby seal, but provided she broke down in tears on Oprah’s couch and linked her crime to some imagined childhood trauma all would be forgiven.
She is also America’s number one snake oil salesman. No self-help philosophy is so crapulous – so spectacularly vacuous – that she won’t enthusiastically promote it to her credulous fans. One of her most ringing endorsements was for a book called The Secret in which a self-help guru called Rhonda Byrne instructs readers on how to use the “Law of Attraction” to get what they want. The “secret” of the book is that if you wish for something hard enough, you’ll get it simply through the act of wishing. Nothing more is required. Byrne claims to have used this “secret” to improve her eyesight so that she no longer needs glasses. Byrne also asserts that food does not make you fat, only the belief that food makes you fat. (Alas, this “spiritual” dieting technique appears to have failed for Oprah.) Needless to say, as soon as Oprah started praising this fatuous collection of New Age gobbledegook on her show, The Secret shot straight to the top of the New York Times bestseller list.
Above all, it is Oprah’s incontinent sentimentality that I find so objectionable, the elevation of ersatz emotion over any critical thought. For Oprah, the only test of veracity worth the name is whether something “feels” true, as though our initial emotional response to something – whether a prospective lover, a spiritual belief system or a political leader – is a more reliable guide than a careful sifting of the evidence. In a modern democratic society like America, which is crying out for informed public discussion about a whole range of critical issues, Oprah’s constant attempts to undermine reason and rationality make her one of the most destructive figures of our age.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tobyyoung/100088655/goodbye-and-good-riddance-to-oprah-winfrey/
