- I say this with love... I really do... but I blame 3 people for Donald Trump's presidency: Oprah, Jon Stewart and David Letterman... this occurred to me after watching The Loudest Voice (about Roger Ailes, the creator of Fox News), and I just think... damn, liberals quit their influential shows, and these Jabba-the-Hutt nightmares like Roger Ailes, work till they die... nothing is ever enough... and while Jon Stewart quit to help animals and help 9/11 first responders, and Letterman left his show for whatever reason some good, and Oprah continued to be a philanthropist-extraordinaire... all I was thinking was, uh-oh. Like an existential, spiritual nightmare. And I love them. And I blame them. The timing of their departures from their popular shows is significant. It created a chasm. A hole in the soul of America.
- In many ways. Oprah was the heart, but also the brains to the country's Christian women, who we now see could easily go off the deep end. On behalf of Oprah, and as an admitted superfan, I often feel like I often have to come to her defense. And in light of the hatred that came at Hillary Clinton, I just can't let people get away with the slamming of powerful women anymore. Since the 2016 election and the #MeToo movement, I have been mulling over the crimes that rich men have gotten away with in comparison to famous women. I've been paying attention to stories and anectotes about these women (like Martha Stewart, Anna Wintour) and how tabloids and even journalists and,pretty much, all of society, has attacked them for the smallest infractions. While men were molesting, raping, and harassing (and then harassing them for reporting the molesting, raping, and harassing), women were criticicized for the smallest mole hill. They overwork. They work their employees too hard. They place high expectations on their household staff. The "bitch" word, and worse, are thrown around. I can't take it. It took 50 years in the entertainment business for someone to mention that Charlie Rose would take off all his clothes when a 20-something female worker entered his office...
People who dislike Oprah for her Oprahness and her Favorite Things and what they think is faux spirituality, forget that she took stands that were risky before she was a billionaire. And she took risks that weren't (at the time) considered to be smart financial ones...
- In the late 80s, she took a lot of crap for not continuing to do the typical Jenny Jones/Jerry Spring talk show. That was a risk she took when she was just becoming a celebrity.
- She also took a risk before we invaded Iraq by showing footage of the city of Baghdad, just to show schoolyards and stores and people, so that people knew that when we go in and bomb, we are destroying a society. She didn't even say that, but this was the subtext. While some people wanted to thump their chests about "shock and awe," she wanted to show that their were human beings there living their lives. She got a lot of crap for that.
- So when she went off the air in 2011, the year that Trump started his birther movement, I think losing the Oprah Show was a bigger hit than people realize. I think she provided a source of journalism and media that we are severely lacking right now. There was something to having her show on every day. And yes, some of her shows were pure entertainment, like movie plugs and such. But I know Oprah would be doing that we're just not seeing, and I think the country needs them. Fake News would surely be a weekly topic. Kids on their phones. She'd probably have Steve Harvey giving dating app advice once a week. And the politics... she'd be smart about that too. She polarized people with her support for Obama, but I also think she got him elected. She knew how to walk a line. And she knew how to get people to join her.
Anyway, here's my girl years ago defending Ellen for coming out of the closet. Every now and then, she would lose some of the unhinged Christian women.
