Oprah hates you, girlfriend

Oprah – what a gal! I didn't have to use her last name for you to know who I was talking about! She's on TV, she writes books, she has a glossy magazine, she raises millions for charity, she puts millions of her own money into philanthropic projects. Why does she have those millions of dollars? Because millions of people hang on her every word.

And what are those words saying? Often they're saying admirable things. Oprah (the NIH style book says I should call her Ms Winfrey, but really – she's Oprah!) – as was saying, Oprah was one of the few major American figures in either show business or the news business to question the utility of invading Iraq (which was a Good Thing regardless of whether or not you think the invasion was a Good Thing). She has played a major role not only in making the mainstream of society aware of the problems of people on its margins, but also in getting the mainstream of society to accept marginal people into the mainstream.

But...there's another side to Oprah. Much, if not most, of what she tells her audience, which consists chiefly of women, is "There's something wrong with you, girlfriend." There is a lot of money to be made in telling women they don't measure up, and Oprah seems to have made most of it.

The most frequent theme on her website is that women need to improve themselves. They need to be more organized, they need to figure out what they want to do with their life and then do it, they need to improve their health, and, most of all, they need to lose weight.

But – you don't have to take my word for it. Simply visit her website. I visited it on March 26, 2007 and here's what I found.

First of all, here are some of the topics on the page that day:

• Top five personal rules to live by
  
• How to improve yourself from the inside out
  
• The five best things to do for your relationship
  
• Dr. Oz's Excuse-Busting Workout

Do you get the feeling, girlfriend, that Oprah thinks that maybe you're totally messed up? I mean, you don't even have your
own rules to live by! Or, if you do, they're not as good as Oprah's!

What are those five rules to live by, anyway? They turn out to be the opinion of one Martha Beck, who starts her advice by writing "When you spend almost all your time thinking about how people can achieve their best destiny, as I do....." And here they are:

1. A little pain never hurt anybody.
   
2. Sunscreen is for necks and chests, not just faces.
   
3. Television is a vitamin (Ms Beck goes on to say that watching television is "essential for social and personal well-being").
   
4. It is good to be wrong.
   
5. You can work miracles.

Hmm. Do you think Oprah might have some ulterior motive in promoting the idea that television watching is essential to your well-being? And I wonder how much sunscreen stock she holds. No, I'm not being cynical here. It just seems strange to me that an intelligent woman like Oprah would think that two of the most important considerations in leading the Good Life should be slathering on the sunscreen and plunking yourself down in front of the box.

The advice about being wrong is good, and presents some important ideas from the philosophy of science in a way that's easy to understand. But, you know, a little pain can hurt you. For example, if you're like me and have a high threshold of pain, you can find out that those little pains you were feeling were symptoms of a big problem, the probability of whose existence you discounted because you weren't feeling big pain.

Anyway, Ms Beck advises you to get through pain at the dentist by thinking "It's only pain," when the most effective way of getting through it is to say "Hey, cut that out and give me some more freezing."

And then there's "You can work miracles." I have news for Ms Beck and Oprah – if anyone could work miracles, they wouldn't be called miracles. Ms Beck's idea of a miracle is the nice backyard she built for herself. That ain't a miracle, Martha – that's gardening. If you want us to believe in your power to work miracles, tell us how you managed to build that garden when people were throwing things at you every time you stuck your head outdoors (a request whose relevance will become apparent over the rest of this article).

The idea of people being able to work miracles is fundamental to Oprah's view of the world, as it is to her close comrade-in-arms Dr. Phil. Dr. Phil tells Oprah's followers that they have the power to accomplish whatever they want. Oprah also vigorously promotes The Secret, a book full of new Age nonsense about how your thoughts about becoming successful "magnetically" attract success to you. If you surf through the "Thoughts for the Day" on Oprah's website, you find one quotation after another about pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. Of course, that implies that you need to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, and the rest of the site is about how you're too dumb to find your own bootstraps.

For example, as we noted before, Oprah tells you how to improve your "relationship" (by which is meant your relationship with the man – sic – you're sleeping with) by following just five simple rules for dealing with problems in it. Here they are:

1. Stop all shame, blame, and criticism
   
2. Change from a critical habit of mind to a positive one.
   
3. When your relationship has a "breakdown," deal with it by apologizing, showing affection, and promising to take action to improve things.
   
4. Don't expect your man to give you the sex a porn star would.
   
5. Don't let your relationship get stale.

Not bad advice, as far as it goes, but the problem is that it only goes as far as the woman. Men apparently need to take no action to promote a good relationship. The commentary about rule 1 advises women that "men need to feel competent." You know, maybe if they want to feel competent they could start being competent. Isn't that a plan?

As for rule 3, the irony of this advice being the tactic men use to cop out of their responsibilities in a relationship is lost on Oprah. "If you take me back, baby, I'll never do it again, I swear. C'mon, give me a hug." You know, Oprah, men are hip to that jive. Anyway, how about getting them to promise to take some action? How about them doing something to keep the relationship from going stale?

Oprah's vision of paradise is of a world in which women have improved themselves by becoming more satisfactory to men. Again, you don't have to take my word for it. Just visit her website and look at all the links on the home page to articles about losing weight, becoming more beautiful, and complying with men's wishes.

Where does this vision come from? My colleague Wentworth Sutton believes it may be a neurotic manifestation of psychic traumas Oprah suffered in childhood. According to Oprah, she was horrifically abused in her mother's questionable care, and became a success after going to live with her father, who loved her and encouraged her to become the success she is today. And today she thinks women are defective. Hmmm.

As Wentworth freely admits, his analysis could be a load of the old cobblers. I have included it here chiefly because I need a structural device to get me to my boffo finish. Nevertheless, Oprah's fondness for Dr. Phil, who advises people that
they become successful only when they liberate themselves from the influence of others, suggests that Wentworth may be on to something.

Wentworth's explanation, even if it's valid, does not, of course, imply that Oprah's advice to women is bad. The thing that implies that it is at least partly bad, though, is that it encourages women to believe that they are solely responsible for their own problems and that they can extricate themselves from their problems solely through their own individual action. Okay, sometimes that's true. I have good reason to suspect, though, that usually it's not. Ask the women who have tried to deal with their abusive husbands by implementing rule 3 about improving your relationship.

So, is Oprah a force for good? Yes. Is Oprah a force for bad? Yes.

In the end, then, Oprah is just like us.

What a gal!

Oprah Hates You, Girlfriend ©
John FitzGerald, 2007