Oprah Gives What She Gets
by Big Dog on Dec 31, 2008 at 16:41 Political
Oprah Winfrey is perhaps the best known TV talk show host in America. Each day her show reaches out to pathetic people who have little to do except watch a millionaire tell them how to live. To be fair, she has been generous to her audience giving them a lot of gifts.
Oprah sometimes features authors of books, typically memoirs, and she recommends those books to her audience. Some of them get her book club seal thus giving them more legitamcy, or so some think. Winfrey has been the victim of three hoaxes when books she reviewed with the authors turned out to be complete fabrications.
Rosenblat’s bogus autobiography [Angel at the Fence] is one of several memoirs that have been lauded by Winfrey [“the single greatest love story”] and then later revealed to be frauds — including James Frey’s best-selling “A Million Little Pieces” and Margaret Seltzer’s “Love and Consequences” — consequently calling into question how much weight Winfrey’s future book endorsements will carry. ABC News
Winfrey has played the victim in these incidents and in all honesty there is little she could have done to prevent the hoaxes. How does one go about fact checking memoirs which are based on memories of the writers? Winfrey was fooled like everyone else.
But, the question is how much weight will her future book endorsements carry? Don’t know but her endorsement of Barack Obama carried quite a bit of weight. She was so partial to him that she had him on her show and then claimed she wanted to keep politics out of her program when people called for her to interview Sarah Palin.
Oprah had the opportunity to actually fact check Barack Obama and she decided not to do that or ignored the negatives (like all the media did) and kept right on riding the Obama train. If Obama turns out to be a failure or his presidency does not give everyone all the things he promised then she will not be able to claim that she was duped as she has with regard to the books.
Oprah had plenty of chances to get it right and she ignored the evidence that was right out there. She, along with all the major media, failed to properly vet Obama and now they must work hard to ensure his presidency is a success (maybe that is why she is looking for a house in DC).
Winfrey would have been better off not endorsing. If things go badly she will lose much more credibility than any book hoax could cause. Her future political advice will be looked upon with scorn and people will lose trust in her. Well, except the true morons who hang on her every word.
Oprah was scammed by authors and she scammed some Americans with her endorsement of Obama.
In the overall scheme of things the Obama endorsement will have much greater consequences than the three hoax book endorsements.
Don’t worry Oprah. If you lose your show Obama can use a PR person. Your experience should fit right in to the propaganda machine that he runs.
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Tags: barack obama, book hoax, candidate hoax, oprah winfrey