Right now BBC News are doing a feature about Oprah - an American chat show host who bares very little relevance here in the UK. We're being led to believe she is (and I quote!) incredible, amazing, influential, an institution, mother of the nation and various other comments. For news of a foreign TV presenter to reach here, she must be quite good, but is she really as amazing as we're being led to believe?
Not at all. She's just a person who has had problems and milked the world for sympathy.....and got it. For example, weight problems aren't exactly unique in the US or anywhere else, and yet her up-and-down weight loss (and gain) experiences are something many women can empathise with, and she makes sure that they do. It's jot like she has done anything special to get this much attention. She gets a lot of attention for getting a lot of attention. Now her only problem is how to pose on next month's cover of Oprah's own magazine (she's on the cover of every issue).
No- she's not who she appears to be. A friend of mine was on her show and said she'd never do it again, she was treated so poorly. I dated a guy who works for her and he had some stories, let me tell ya. She wouldn't even call him by his right name, and he was not allowed to correct her when she called him "Jack" instead of "Sean" (I made both those names up to protect the guiilty, BTW). Insanity.
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7) I saw this on BBC breakfast this morning too, could be because Barack's over and she was quite politically active in that regard.
I'm sure Oprah has had a positive effect on many people's lives, and that's great. But when the cameras aren't around - damn.
It's the power of branding and image manipulation, pure and simple, plus a few very widely publicized charity appearances (widely publicized by herself, no less). She has become big enough to self-perpetuate. The only time I ever saw her was in Throw Mama From the Train. srsly.
Her influence on women glued to the TV can't be denied But there is no substance to her I am not a fan and find nothing compelling about her Other than her ability to turn nothing into $omething
Well, she's responsible for Dr. Phil and Dr. Bob or whatever his name is getting their own shows. Has she done a lot of good for a lot of people? Maybe. But somewhere along the line it seemed she started believing her own hype.
This is all news to me. I've no reason to doubt any of it, but boy, that's a far cry from the image one sees on TV. I do have to say all the religious talk in her final show was off-putting, even for one as relatively tolerant of it as I am. Made me wanna lock her in a small room with Bill Maher. I also wonder about her statement that everyone is responsible for their own lives. I think that 99% of the time that's true, but I also think it's also an overly broad opinion. Finally, I wish she'd laid off praising her audience so much. When you repeatedly tell people that they are what made you so successful, it starts to sound like you are just using them as an excuse to keep talking about how successful you are.
Notwithstanding Lee's friend's experience, I would LOVE to hear a story from a pilot, that may, or may not, have flown Her Highness about.
I met her a couple of years ago when she was in town at her offices in Beverly Hills. We spoke for a few minutes in the hallway......she was very pleasant. She could have ignored me and kept walking, but she didn't.... actually, she was the one who started the conversation. Her success is very impressive if you consider where she started. Regarding her show.......meh, never watched it.
Oprah is/was the most dangerous woman in America. She is responsible for spreading more irrationality in the last 25 years than any other single person.
Well, she is very personable in her manner, and she "uses" her Blackness very well, I'll give you that. Are you thinking what I'm thinking? A Presidential run, down the road?
Boy that would be a shocker if that was the case. You know how much support she would garnish. Hell we have two actors hold office why not add a talk show host/actor to the list!