“The other kids were all into black power,” Oprah told the Tribune in the mid-1980s. But “I wasn’t a dashiki kind of woman … Excellence was the best deterrent to racism and that became my philosophy.”
Excellence indeed. Few would deny that Oprah Winfrey has achieved an extraordinary degree of THAT, at least by our society’s warped standards. Witty, articulate, attractive, beloved by tens of millions, and fabulously wealthy, she is the “I pulled myself up by my bootstraps” queen of a vast media empire. Oprah is a living embodiment of the American Dream. What is perhaps most inspiring to her genuflecting disciples is that Oprah rose to her stratospheric position of wealth and influence from an impoverished start in a socioeconomic hierarchy still largely dominated by white males.
Oprah Winfrey ostensibly possesses the mythical Midas Touch, a generous spirit, deep spiritual wisdom, and, in the eyes of those blinded by their adoration, the credentials of a saint. Yet despite appearing destined for canonization, Oprah injects heavy doses of infectious pus into the already deeply abscessed wound of the American psyche.
How could anyone who’s noted for having said, “Let your light shine. Shine within you so that it can shine on someone else. Let your light shine,” have such a pernicious effect on our culture?
Let’s “count the ways…with a passion put to use.”
To truly understand the depth of the damage Oprah inflicts on our society, we need to step outside of our bourgeois indoctrination and see her for what she truly represents. Manifesting the Horatio Alger Myth on steroids, Oprah is a wet dream come true for our criminal class of ruling elites sometimes referred to as the plutocracy. She provides them with “irrefutable” and ubiquitous anecdotal evidence which “proves” the idiotic delusion that America is a meritocracy where everyone has a realistic chance of getting rich, if they just work hard enough. The reality is that the richest 20% of US Americans own over 80% of the wealth and the long-term trend has been toward an ever increasing concentration of treasure into a smaller number of strong-boxes(1).
Comfortably administering her dominion from “The Promised Land,” her 42 acre estate near Santa Barbara, CA (which she purchased for a cool $50 million), Oprah surpassed the $1.5 billion mark in net worth in 2006 while earning the tidy sum of $260 million. See what happens when you devote yourself to excellence (and narcissism) instead of “wasting your time” parading about in a dashiki to pursue “ridiculous” ideals like civil rights and egalitarianism? Others did that for her. And now Oprah’s very existence proves that economic inequalities and barriers to upward mobility have been eliminated for all of us, right?
Well, not exactly. Consider that in the United States “the
average African-American family has about 60 percent of the income as
the average white family…..[and] the average African-American family
has only 18 percent of the wealth of the average white family(2).”
Meanwhile, in the most affluent nation in the world (in which 12% of
the population is black), “Saint Oprah” is the only black billionaire
and one of only two blacks to make the Forbes 400.
Despite the innumerable exploitative workings of the capitalist pyramid
scheme which enable the obscene opulence of Oprah and her miniscule
number of peers (while concurrently damning billions of others to live
in varying degrees of economic misery), she certainly has no qualms. In
fact, she gushes about her unconscionable accumulation of treasures.
From the 4/11/06 People Magazine article, Oprah Winfrey: Wealth Is ‘A
Good Thing:’
[Speaking in Baltimore on Monday at a fundraiser for Beth Tfiloh Dahan
Community School, Winfrey told the audience, “I have lots of things,
like all these Manolo Blahniks. I have all that and I think it’s great.
I’m not one of those people like, ‘Well, we must renounce ourselves.’
No, I have a closet full of shoes and it’s a good thing.”
Winfrey, 52, who is reportedly worth more than $1 billion, said she
doesn’t feel guilty about her wealth. “I was coming back from Africa on
one of my trips,” she said. “I had taken one of my wealthy friends with
me. She said, ‘Don’t you just feel guilty? Don’t you just feel
terrible?’ I said, ‘No, I don’t. I do not know how me being destitute
is going to help them.’ Then I said when we got home, ‘I’m going home
to sleep on my Pratesi sheets right now and I’ll feel good about it.’
“(3)]
The Oprah mystique affords her and her fellow members of the opulent
ruling class a potent psychological weapon (which they wield like a
cudgel) to sustain their cultural hegemony, thus perpetuating their
virtual monopoly on the wealth and power of the US. And be it conscious
or otherwise, Oprah has betrayed her own race and class by shilling her
core philosophy that “not only are you responsible for your life, but
doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next
moment.” While personal responsibility is undeniably important and
human beings do have the potential to pull themselves out of difficult
circumstances (i.e. abject poverty), for every Oprah who “makes it,”
there are tens of millions, regardless of race, who work tenaciously
and are never able to overcome the tremendous barriers erected by the
ruling class. Yet Ms. Winfrey would have us believe that if she can do
it, anyone can. And if you don’t, just what the hell is wrong with you?
Aside from the significant impediments that face all US Americans
(excepting those who are born into our de facto aristocracy and can
rise to the top regardless of how lazy, depraved, and ignorant they may
be—think George W. Bush), many blacks face nearly overwhelming
structural barriers which keep them mired in chronic destitution.
Thanks to the courageous efforts of civil rights activists,
institutionalized and overt racism are fading in the United States.
However, Oprah’s very existence as a black billionaire and the “you can
do and be anything you want if you work hard” pseudo-wisdom she so
gleefully dispenses to the masses would indicate that America’s poor
(and its impoverished blacks in particular) no longer face incredibly
long odds as they employ vigorous efforts to improve their
socioeconomic conditions.
“…reflecting (via e-mail) on a commentary in which liberal New York
Times columnist Bob Herbert argued that inner-city blacks’ material
poverty reflected their own poor values and behavior. “There is a need
for” a “values discussion” among “the poorest African-Americans,” my
correspondent acknowledges. “But,” he added:
“there are three points to add. One is that [the] hypersegregation [of
urban blacks into nearly all-black de-industrialized ghettoes] creates
objective conditions that incentivize (perhaps even require) certain
anti-social behaviors. The second is whether the values evidenced by
the poorest are actually anti-American values. If we consider that the
norms of the protestant work ethic have been devalued in American
society – consider conspicuous consumption, state gambling expansion,
frightening anti-intellectualism, Wall Street’s shenanigans, sexual
revolution, and that recreational drug use knows no racial barrier –
how different is the “underclass” from the rest of America? The final
point is the somewhat sad notion that those who have been most
disadvantaged by American society must somehow quickly develop the
values and norms necessary to overcome those disadvantages, to
“function,” concomitant with undertaking political struggle to
dismantle structural barriers. What is more is that if we accept that
the values Herbert holds in high esteem are not reinforced generally
throughout American society, we are absurdly expecting one group of
super-disadvantaged people – without additional assistance and against
the mainstream of American society – to somehow morph into some kind of
ubervolk.
“As the great ‘historical materialist’ Karl Marx once wrote,’men make
their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do
not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under
circumstances directly encountered, given, and transmitted from the
past.’”
Hard as it may be for Oprah and her fellow moneyed elites to fathom,
Ronald Reagan’s “welfare queen” was a pernicious suburban legend, and
that most people, given an environment affording them reasonably
accessible options, wouldn’t consciously choose to perpetually wallow
in the misery, indignity and self-destruction associated with chronic
and inter-generational poverty. Not everyone is blessed with
exceptional talent, intellect, or drive, but that doesn’t mean they
deserve a life of suffering so that a tiny fraction of humanity can
live as Croesus did.
With the vast numbers of people she influences, Ms. Winfrey plays an
instrumental role in sustaining the false consciousness that keeps us
in the poor and working classes pursuing the one in 20 million dream
she projects, staunchly opposing the creation of viable publicly funded
social uplift programs, and fighting amongst ourselves based in large
part upon the malevolent lie that personal responsibility is the ONLY
reason so many blacks remain “ghettoized,” unemployed, drug-addicted,
and imprisoned.
Man the barricades, Ms. Winfrey, here come the “barbarian hordes” to raid our treasury!
But Oprah didn’t reach her perch atop the capitalist pyramid as one of
its chief apologists simply by virtue of her existence as an anomalous
opulent black woman (portrayed as what could be the “norm” if only more
people subscribed to her “wisdom”). She also plays a very active role
in contributing to the bourgeoisie cause.
A common lever of appeasement employed by our de facto aristocracy in
the United States is to exercise faux benevolence by making charitable
donations. After accumulating shameless affluence through abject
exploitation of the Earth and its sentient beings, they show the masses
their “humanity” by giving a mere fraction of their ill-gotten gains to
a pet cause or two.
Oprah is no exception. Despite being known for her “generosity,” she
remains one of the wealthiest people on the planet, maintaining her
sprawling estate in California and, at last count, four other lavish
abodes with high dollar zip codes. Bear in mind that Forbes recently
gauged Oprah’s fortune to be about $1.5 billion.
Meanwhile, her crowning philanthropic achievement is her Oprah Winfrey
Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa. This “charitable act” is
cynical and self-serving. Its chief beneficiaries are those with a
strong interest in maintaining the maleficent inequitable distribution
of wealth. Here’s why:
1. Oprah invested $40 million in this school, a mere 2.67% of her net worth.
2. For those questioning the use of the word “invested,” this was
indeed a shrewd and calculated investment for Oprah. By “donating” this
relatively paltry sum, she will reap huge dividends in terms of
increased popularity, goodwill, power, and influence. Her Harpo
juggernaut will continue to gain momentum.
3. In a world where 30,000 children die of starvation each day, Oprah
has elected to build a posh, luxurious academy equipped to educate a
mere 152 girls. Winfrey’s scheme was such an abuse of resources that
the South African government withdrew its support of the project.
4. In a vain quest to “make her childhood right”, Oprah is “rescuing”
the poor black female attendees of her school by providing them with a
regal, lavish existence. Just what the world needs–152 more highly
educated elitists who are immersed in the paradigm that the suffering
of the many to ensure the comfort of the few is the “way of the world.”
5. Oprah’s principal lesson to her “girls”? Looking to her as their
example, they will learn that once they have attained their affluence
and power they will need to ease their conscience and help maintain the
social order. The lesson is that to do so they will simply need to
donate a sliver of their bounty in such a way that it enhances their
public image and fulfills their narcissistic needs.
As we prepare to examine Oprah’s most deleterious effect on our
society, consider the depth and breadth of her impact as characterized
by Vanity Fair:
“Oprah Winfrey arguably has more influence on the culture than any
university president, politician, or religious leader, except perhaps
the Pope.”
Biographer Kitty Kelly added:
“As a woman, she has wielded an unprecedented amount of influence over
the American culture and psyche…There has been no other person in the
20th century whose convictions and values have impacted the American
public in such a significant way. … I see her as probably the most
powerful woman in our society. I think Oprah has influenced every
medium that she’s touched.”
Now let’s analyze one of Oprah’s recent and most spiritually corrosive
“contributions” to the fetid cesspool we euphemistically call a culture
in the United States. In February of this year, Ms.Winfrey used her
leviathan media platform to introduce her minions to The Secret, a book
that characterizes Christ as a “prosperity teacher.” Leave it to the
high priestess of Mammon to promote a means to overcome the seemingly
irreconcilable contradictions between the compassionate teachings of
Jesus and the avaricious selfishness of capitalism.
Here’s what the Oprah Winfrey Show website had to say about The Secret:
“It’s making headlines around the world—and buzz just keeps building.
Some say it’s the secret to creating the life you truly want—losing
weight, making money, finding love. See why people everywhere are
talking about The Secret.”
James Arthur Ray, whose “credentials” include, “…almost going bankrupt,
[which] forced him to focus on the life he truly wanted. Now he runs a
multimillion-dollar corporation dedicated to teaching people how to
create wealth in all areas of their lives,” joined forces with Winfrey
to plug The Secret, a book rife with myriad inane mythologies the
ruling class loves to perpetuate.
Again, from Oprah’s website:
[According to James, there is scientific evidence to back up the
spiritual practices and laws defined in The Secret. “Science tells us
that everything is energy, and so your thoughts are energy. Your body,
your cash, your car—everything you think is solid, if you put it under
a high-powered microscope, it’s just a field of energy and a rate of
vibration,” he says. “And so are we. So if you think you’re this meat
suit running around, you have to think again.”
”One way to describe this energy is by comparing it radio waves, “The
frequency you give out through your thoughts and your emotions is what
you have a tendency to manifest in your life,” Michael says. “Whether
those thoughts and emotions are conscious or unconscious, it doesn’t
matter.”
This means that if you are sending out the same negative energy over an
over—whether thoughts or feelings—you will attract like energy back to
you. James says that when bad things happen people might ask, “Oh, God,
why me?” “Because it is you,” he says(4).]
Forget the immediate insult of James’s barrage of pseudo-scientific
gibberish. People have been using that technique to peddle their snake
oil for years. The core issue here is that in The Secret, James and
company are hawking a particularly toxic brew. Oprah, Secret author
Rhonda Byrne, and their fellow hucksters would have us believe that
Tony Robbins or Gandhi would be equally at home applying The Secret’s
“spiritual practices” based on “scientific evidence” to create the life
they “truly want.”
At first blush its obvious remarketing of the shopworn “philosophies”
related to the power of positive thinking seems benign enough, but
thanks to its Oprah’s validation sparking its wild popularity and wide
acceptance, The Secret is significantly reinforcing some very nasty
strands of our cultural DNA, which is no small blessing to the moneyed
elites atop our economic hierarchy.
While to a person who values critical thought and the pursuit of true
meaning in their life The Secret would serve little purpose beyond
perhaps kindling or toilet paper, future archaeologists may hail it as
a Rosetta Stone to unlock the mysteries of our perverse, mean-spirited,
and jejune society. Byrne was careful to incorporate nearly every
revolting aspect of American culture, including narcissism,
self-absorption, victim-blaming, hubris, consumerism, immediate
gratification, acquisitiveness, Mammon worship, hyper-individuality,
selfishness, and an unwavering faith in any belief that “forces” the
world to conform to our desires.
In typical Oprah Book Club fashion, Winfrey’s enthusiastic endorsement
sent the sales of Byrne’s abomination soaring into orbit. Thank you,
Oprah.
As the abundant evidence indicates, despite her impeccable image and
the ostensibly “positive influence” she has upon the untold millions
who have yet to shatter the intellectual shackles of their
acculturation and indoctrination, Oprah Winfrey is a member of our
cynical pecunious ruling class and acts as a highly effective shill for
their agenda.
Forget the good and benevolent image she projects. Oprah ultimately
serves to distract, obfuscate, and lead us into the increasingly
over-crowded cul-de-sac of “fuck thy neighbor; what’s in it for thee”
savage capitalism. As a part of our filthy plutocracy, she is an enemy
to the poor and working class. We need to start viewing her through
that lens.
thank you for giving voice to what i percieved as the truth of oprah...a narcisstic self indulgent and self deluded throwback to the values of a pharoah of ancient egypt.jesus preached spiritual prosperity,not material prosperity...that is an invention of people like oprah,who seek to spiritually validate their me-me pursuits.i would like to add,that in american society,today,the most hideously disenfranchised are middle-age white woman and young white males...two groups of people,for whom aid is routinely denied and whom are often viewed as 'dispensible'......Z.
1
September 13, 2007
a guest: ...
It's great focusing on Oprah, or on George w.; unfortunately as you mentioned, they are simply reflections of a culture. She's good at it. He turns out to be much less skillful. His lack of skill only has made the charade a little more transparent. A culture is an interconnected web with momentum, conservative in its unwillingness to shift out of itself, preserving the whole fabric of itself. As Robert Bly once used as a line of refrain in a stinging poem about the karma of America, "It's already too late." That you point out that many already see through Oprah. These are the same people who are attempting to forge some sort of depth in their lives and relationships. At the margin between the dupes and those who seem to have the lights on, those potentially on the fence, I suspect your invective serves a purpose. Regarding our culture, though conservative in its tight hold on materiality and its flip side unreasoning fundamentalist dogmatic religion, everything changes. Though "it's already too late," someone else said, "you never know." J
2
September 14, 2007
a guest: ...
"With the vast numbers of people she influences, Ms. Winfrey plays an instrumental role in sustaining the false consciousness that keeps us in the poor and working classes pursuing the one in 20 million dream she projects, staunchly opposing the creation of viable publicly funded social uplift programs, and fighting amongst ourselves based in large part upon the malevolent lie that personal responsibility is the ONLY reason so many blacks remain “ghettoized,” unemployed, drug-addicted, and imprisoned."
This is why she is rich. Had she opposed the plutocracy rather than embraced it, we would never have heard of her. If you have some talent, and are willing to prostitute it to the powerful, you have propaganda value. Then, you can make it.
Of course, even a son of a factory worker can make it in the world of media, eg., Michael Moore. To his credit, Moore has made it by attempting to demonstrate the injustices of the American system. He has made a few bucks, but has tended to plow them back into more projects.
His success has been more of a surprise to the plutocracy, but can still be marginalized, if not co-opted. He also made his initial name with relatively innocuous, less controversial films: Roger and Me, even Bowling for Columbine. With his Iraq and Sicko films (and a few of his TV shows) he has been cutting closer to the bone. That he tends to support the Democrats rather than some third party that actually voices opposition to the system, makes it easier for the system to put up with him. Some desent can always be tolerated, especially when focused on a particular personality.
He also tends to be easy to criticize since he must make his films accessible and entertaining for the masses (I haven't seen Sicko), and often plays a very prominent role on film to achieve this. However, since he is not entirely dependent on the corporate networks for his overall success, as Oprah has been, he has been able to get around them to some extent, and can force them to accept him because of the profits he can generate for them, even while he is criticizing their system. This was also a means by which they probably felt they could compromise him. Sicko seems to have shown that hasn't worked. In any case, his availability to the public through the media has always been more limited than that of Oprah, so that any damage he might cause is more easily controllable.
3
September 14, 2007
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“The other kids were all into black power,” Oprah told the Tribune in the mid-1980s. But “I wasn’t a dashiki kind of woman … Excellence was the best deterrent to racism and that became my philosophy.”
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