Oprah Gives What She Gets
Dec 31, 2008 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
The Phantom of the Oprah
Jan 21, 2008 Political
Oprah Winfrey has been very vocal in her support for B. Hussein Obama. In her first venture into the political scene, Winfrey campaigned for Obama at several events and he is the only candidate that has appeared on her show. Winfrey has been paying a bit of a price for her support of Obama and has been labeled a traitor by women who think she should be supporting Hillary Clinton.
This kind of thinking is very dangerous for the political scene because it places emphasis on a physical characteristic rather than on policy issues and qualification for the job. Winfrey is in a particularly difficult position because if she supports Clinton she will be labeled a traitor by the blacks who support Obama. Race and sex are not supposed to play into the selection process and picking a candidate based solely upon those, or any other characteristics, is a silly way to select leaders. Imagine what kind of uproar there would be if famous male supporters of Hillary were labeled traitors by other men who think a male should be president or if whites were labeled traitors for their support of Obama.
Think of how ridiculous it would be if the supporters of other candidates did the same thing. The elderly and Vietnam vets would label other elderly or VN vets who do not support McCain as traitors. Balding men would label as traitors those who do not support Thompson, evangelicals label other evangelicals as traitors for not supporting Huckabee, trial lawyers would label other trial lawyers as traitors for not supporting Edwards, those who have been divorced several times would labels others with that history as traitors for not supporting Giuliani and successful businessmen would label other successful businessmen as traitors for not supporting Romney.
Ron Paul supporters already label anyone who does not support Paul as a traitor.
These examples are just as ridiculous as concentrating on the fact that Obama is black or Hillary is a woman. Of course these are barriers that have never been broken but electing someone just to break that “glass ceiling” (as Hillary calls it) is not the correct way to select leaders. If one is a liberal there are many reasons to vote for Clinton or Obama and if one is a Conservative there are plenty of reasons not to vote for either of them. The color or sex of the candidates does not fit into this equation.
In order to see how invalid the idea of support based upon color or sex is one only needs to ask the question; is it OK to oppose Clinton because she is a woman or Obama because he is black? Would a person who said that he will not vote for Clinton solely because she is a woman be labeled a sexist and would a person who says that he would not vote for Obama solely because he is black be labeled a racist? If the answer is yes (and we know the answer is yes) then support based upon those two items is just as wrong.
This country is ready for a woman president and it is ready for a black president and there are plenty of both who would do a great job. These two just are not the ones.
