[National Security Advisor Thomas Donilon speaking] […] Fourth, the circumstances arose with the passage of the United Nations Security Council on Thursday, the night before a congressional recess. So he did, even with that, call Congress, those who remained in town on Friday and those who are out of town, on the phone to consult with them. – David Dayen
WASHINGTON — If the President of the United States thinks a “While You Were Out” letter of military actions against Libya passes the smell test, then it’s obvious Obama thinks everyone is really dumb, especially Congress. Tina Brown’s Newsweek proves he may have a point.
Newsweek recently queried people to take their “citizenship test.” It’s not shocking that 38% failed. You can take the poll here. A couple of weeks ago Tina Brown’s newsweekly asked who was the most admired woman? The answer was Oprah Winfrey.
The most admired woman in the United States is Oprah Winfrey. One-quarter say Oprah Winfrey is the most admired woman, 17 percent say Hillary Clinton, 12 percent say Michelle Obama and 10 percent say Condoleezza Rice. Nine percent say Laura Bush, 7 percent say Diane Sawyer and 6 percent say Sarah Palin. – Newsweek Survey: Oprah, Clinton Most Admired Women in America
Did you know Oprah Winfrey helped George W. Bush sell preemptive war in Iraq? Considered the “national anchor” by some, it mattered. This was an exchange that was featured on Bill Moyers’ “Buying the War,” which can be seen in the snippet below (h/t corrente).
Audience member: “I hope it doesn’t offend you… I just don’t know what to believe with the media.”
Oprah: “We’re not trying to propagandize, show you propaganda. We’re just showing you what is.”
Audience member: “I understand that, I’m saying —”
Oprah cuts her off.
Oprah: “OK, but, OK, you have a right to your opinion.”
from Bill Moyers’ “Buying the War”
Obviously, Ms. Winfrey wasn’t the only one on the Iraq war bandwagon, but her impact has also never been discussed. Though when the war went south and she flipped to be against it, she was lauded, while no one logged she was late and had been wrong.
For whatever reason Oprah always gets a pass.
Who can forget the huge moment in the ’08 primaries when Oprah said Barack Obama is “the one”? From CNN:
“I’ve never taken this kind of risk before nor felt compelled to stand up and speak out before because there wasn’t anyone to to stand up and speak up for,” Winfrey told thousands of people in Cedar Rapids Saturday evening.
“We need a president who can bring us all together,” she said. “I know [Barack Obama] is the one.”
Earlier in Des Moines, she focused on world affairs. “These are dangerous times, you can feel it. We need a leader who shows us how to hope again in America as a force for peace,” Winfrey told the enthusiastic crowd.
“I believe Barack Obama will bring statesmanship to the White House,” she said. “He’s a man who knows who we are and knows who we can be.”
Ms. Winfrey’s euphoria is the same type that followed Barack Obama throughout his campaign, which also landed him the Nobel Peace prize.
If anyone knows how dumb we are it’s Oprah Winfrey. She’s been cashing in on it for 25 years.
Though she’s done important shows, including on females in the military, and many others, that’s not what the overwhelming bulk of her shows covered or how she stayed on top. She never intended to follow in Phil Donahue’s shoes, instead going tabloid to beat him in the ratings and never turning away from one trash show after another. Her specialty was always her victim-apalooza shows. Oprah spawned Sally and every other trash TV show after her.
Over her astounding 25-year television career, Ms. Winfrey has also accomplished what no other woman has done before. Not only is she staggeringly wealthy, but someone who got that way through breaking the television trash TV barrier onto daytime long before Jerry Springer’s wild escapades hit. It’s an amazing accomplishment for any entertainment business person, but especially an African American woman raised in the segregated south and she deserves all the credit due for her achievements, including her incredible charitable giving. Her “O” network is a venture I hope will succeed where men have before, but where women have never before ventured.
Oprah has done for women what sports does for men. Make people believe in the financial mountaintop, sometimes through hocus pocus like “The Secret,” but she inspires the sight of dancing dollar bills in her fans’ dreams.
Of course, it’s one of the core problems of this country. Wealth over working to earn it, which Oprah Winfrey would be the first to tell you she worked hard for what she achieved.
So, with women admiring Oprah more than any other woman in America, as our culture also obsesses over Charlie Sheen, and as we blunder yet again into another undeclared military excursion, how can we be surprised that 38% of Americans can’t pass a citizenship test?
But how dumb are we?
Money and fame are our guide.
We don’t gravitate to information or education, though we talk a lot about it. Just look at who represents us and how they do their jobs.
We are suckered by celebrities telling us things made out of cotton candy rhetoric often with no foundational facts available at all.
Oprah’s a blockbuster shopper, hailing “my favorite things,” which makes companies and thrills the women in her audience. Her historic TV show’s tabloid tales reach across the globe. Her spirituality shows have helped rehabilitate her smarmy programming, which cashed in on victimhood as if it were the holy grail of goodness.
I find her historic success on television laudable for the sheer financial power she’s accumulated, but her television show is virtually unwatchable for the most part. I taped her last season for a while, but haven’t been able to watch most episodes. I do admit to enjoying Barbara Streisand and Robert Redford, as well as McGraw and O’Neil, but there’s only so much fluff I can take that doesn’t make me laugh.
Kitty Kelly’s biography, “Oprah,” was so feared by “O” that the media virtually banned her book due to Ms. Winfrey’s power to muzzle Kelly. “Oprah” is an eye-popping page turner of unending revelations compiled in one volume where Kelly constructs a picture of an insecure, binge-eating, control freak who obviously hasn’t taken her spirituality to heart. That Oprah’s fans didn’t read it isn’t surprising, but the complicit nature of the blackout on Kelly’s book is rather historic.
I can’t vouch for anything in the book except to say I’ve read it, but also that Kelly has never been successfully sued and “Oprah” is no exception. Mrs. Kelly is a methodically anal researcher with a gift for getting people on the record, while Oprah refused any contact at all, which is understandable. So there is quite a bit of the book that’s taken from other publications, long before Oprah earned her power. Kelly is an author who is compelled to strip the media story away from her subject then re-compile it slowly, episode by episode.
When Kelly’s book first came out Huffington Post gave her a full airing, as did USA Today and other papers, but television appearances were few and far between.
In America, we like our icons pristine. It’s more important than anything, including information about them that reveals them as imperfect humans. Americans abhor legend busting. On the whole we simply don’t want the facts. To paraphrase a legendary Jack Nicholson character, we simply can’t handle the truth.
Take the experience recounted by Kelly of prizewinning columnist for New Orleans’s Times-Picayune, Chris Rose, who wrote about the traumatic reaction he had after Hurricane Katrina. After 10-hours of “revisiting the emotional wreckage of the hurricane,” here’s a very brief synopsis of what happened when Rose refused to sign one of Oprah’s notorious nondisclosure/confidentiality agreements:
“‘If you don’t sign, we don’t run the segment,'” the producer said.
[…] “I had stuck my hand into a hornet’s next of anti-Oprah sentiment on the Internet that pushed my book from number eleven thousand on Amazon to number eighteen by the end of the day and then on to The New York Times bestseller list. … .. […] I had no idea there were negative feelings about her and her confidentiality agreements out there, but I received calls and emails from writers all over the country saying they were going to buy my book that day to send her a message.”
Any society afraid of truth is in trouble. That’s us.
One year ago when Ms. Kelly’s book was released it caused a firestorm due to the personal revelations revealed by Oprah’s relatives, which is the stuff of stunning tabloid juiciness. It rivals anything in “Game Change,” which is going to be an HBO movie. Your heart breaks for Winfrey, as revelations of being a prostitute are discussed for her memoir that never was done and all sorts of sordid contested details are unloaded. The saddest part of the saga is that for all Oprah’s public religiosity the picture portrayed by Kelly is one of paranoid megalomaniac. However, what wafts from the pages of Kelly’s book helps you understand why Oprah chose the path she did on daytime, churning the swamp of human indignities for ratings and financial reward’s sake.
It’s likely no one in this country could explain how dumb we are better than Winfrey.
The worship of Oprah seems even weirder when you juxtapose Oprah with what’s happening with women around the world, especially as the women of the Middle East rise up to change their countries that includes a place for them in their country’s future.
Perhaps it’s the privilege of women in America that makes Oprah’s fans worship her, without caring about the underlying reality that doesn’t match the legendary “O” marketing.
For whatever reason, Oprah has never gotten the national scrutiny for how she’s impacted our culture, but also the dumb factor in our country. Over 25 years of daytime programming on “Oprah” represents why we’re dumb.
Of course, Oprah’s not the only one to blame or maybe she’s not to blame at all. After all you can change the channel. However, when it’s seen as blasphemy to ask the same questions of Oprah that were asked of Geraldo Rivera there’s a willful ignorance being applied, especially where women are concerned.
So, if you want to know how dumb are we, ask Oprah. She’s become the richest woman in America, rivaling men around the world, by betting on American ignorance.
Taylor Marsh is a political analyst, writer and commentator on national politics. A veteran national politics writer, Taylor’s been writing on the web since 1996. She has reported from the White House, been profiled in the Washington Post, The New Republic, and has been seen on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, CNN, MSNBC, Al Jazeera English and Al Jazeera Arabic, as well as on radio across the dial and on satellite, including the BBC. Marsh lives in the Washington, D.C. area. This column is cross posted from her blog.