Oprah followers

Am I the only one that sees the Narcissim in Oprah and all that she does? When she recommends a book, it becomes a best seller, regardless of what the content is. When she recommends a way to lose weight, many follow her, and then a year later she gains weight, and then another diet to follow. Are we like sheep, with no brain of our own to know what to read, eat, wear and whom to vote for? I love her magazine, excellent articles, but I first tear out her many photos of herself, including the cover and then I can enjoy the writings. She used to interview others and have the photo of herself the main part of the interview; others, including myself, complained and now we get pictures of the interviewee also. Yes, she gies money away, but she has it. And the percentage of what she gives to her 'new' school or other causes is only a small percentage of her wealth. And most of it is done with press coverage. Oh, well, my gripe for the week. On to more positive things in life.

I don't have any problem with Oprah. I'm not interested in anything she does and I'm not interested in giving her trouble for her choices. Maybe one of the few things that really bothered me about her was when she gave away cars to everyone in her audience and then the audience members got stuck with the taxes (though Pontiac did pay for the sales tax on their behalf, but there were other taxes as well). Maybe Oprah should have known better, but even then it was the government enforcing the taxes, not Oprah.

I find it curious that she seems to stimulate many strong reactions, some very negative, others very positive.

If it's any consolation, right after Oprah endorsed Obama, many of her devout female followers became unnerved that she would endorse him instead of the female candidate. So she doesn't have a complete hold over the XX.

I don't have any problem with Oprah. Does she have an ego? Sure. But it's not exactly her fault that so many people are sheep like in following here.

At least her book group does try to spice things up from time to time with stuff like East of Eden, Anna Karenina and Night. If Oprah's book club can bring people to Steinbeck, more power to her.

Oprah scares the crap out of me. No one person should have that much power. Her spiritual views that she espouses from time to time can be dangerous as well. Also, am I the only one who gets pissed off when discovering a new book I'd like to share with friends, only to find out it's already an Oprah Book Club book?

I am curious, why does it piss you off that Oprah likes a book that you like? Her taste in literature is not always the same as mine but she and I have read a couple of the same books. OK with me.

Yeah, Maggie. I share that curiosity.

Robert

in an increasingly-secular age, people need something to worship, and she seems like a fairly benign figure to me. At least she's not Michelle Obama.

I think the most heartening fact about Oprah is that she is Black but has many white followers (who are ordinary people, not guilty liberal intellectuals). This is a harbinger of things to come, perhaps, when we have finally gotten around the stupid race thing.

I always figured that woman would have a role in the Apocalypse.

^7, I suppose it might be an oddity of mine, but I like to not be part of the mainstream. Oprah has become the epitome of mainstream.

Not an oddity at all - pretty mainstream actually, we all go through it from time to time.

As to Oprah, I haven't ever watched the show or read the magazine (all of the cover articles seem to have the same subject), but I do check in at the grocery store, waiting my turn, to see if it is fat Oprah or skinny Oprah, smiling Oprah or serious Oprah, carefree Oprah or concerned Oprah, staring out at me. So, I feel like she's a friend. She cares about me, my lifestyle, and the grocery decisions I made that week. Too late to put the haagen das back, I suppose, and I can't really ditch it here in the candy rack because it'll melt...

At any rate, I know that if I had an entourage of people, nay an industry of people, committed to my well being - weighing me, feeding me, cleaning up after me, plucking, waxing, toning, sculpting, etc., I would be far more megalomaniac than O. I know that at the very least I would purchase a third world nation state to run utopian experiments, and to the best of my knowledge, she hasn't done that. So, I must admit she is a better man than me.

As to books, well, it is a good thing, yes, for book groups across America to read Anna Karenina for a change? I doubt Lev is happy about it, that harlot, of all his writing...нам Бог помогает, but I'm sure Sonya is tickled pink.

12
The interesting thing about Oprah is that she can apparently never find anyone as fascinating as herself to grace, let alone share, her magazine cover. My wife gets annoyed at my perpetual schtick - "Oh, look who's on the cover of Oprah this month!"

Anyway, I'm glad we have a new (self-appointed)secular messiah - the Elvis worship was getting pretty old.

Oprah who?

14
Someday, you will pay for your impertinence!

D'ya ever wonder if Oprah has someone watching (24/7) a Google alert for her name?

16
If so, I want to go on record as stating that that Ms. Winfrey is the bestest, most wonderfullest person to ever walk the face of God's green earth.*

*Please contact me privately for directions on where to deliver the car...

17... Fraidy-cat

She kills men with her eyes!!

How is it, then, that Stedman still lives? --Don't answer that!

20
He probably just looks at her reflection in his shield...
oh wait, I'm thinking of someone else...

"D'ya ever wonder if Oprah has someone watching (24/7) a Google alert for her name?"

I believe it pays 56k a year, with benefits and company car. Gym membership optional.

21>

That was directed at me, wasn't it?

#19: That's Michelle Obama you're thinking about, and it's whites of both sexes who sicken and die when exposed to the rays coming from her eyes.

I had an epiphany recently with Oprah . . . maybe I'm slow . . .

I have enjoyed her show and found it helpful, and even if her magazine is a bit over-focused, shall we say, it seems invariably uplifting and encouraging. In a society that seems to pick down everything and everyone all the time for sport and entertainment, it's nice to have the option of reading something that treats you like you genuinely have worth.

But my epiphany came when I read the press that Oprah was trying a new vegan diet for 21 days. The diet is new because the author just happened to have recently published the supporting book. Suddenly, the veil lifted. It's not (simply?) a new attempt by Oprah to lose weight. It's part of the book's publicity junket.

Now, I'm not saying that Oprah has a vested interest in whether the book does well or not. But it wouldn't surprise me if she received some sort of compensation (read: $$$) for publicly trying the diet.

It put her very public "battle with weight" in a new light for me. I have to admit, I lost some respect for her. It's obvious that her "best things" shows (or whatever she calls them) are thinly veiled advertising. But I wouldn't mess with my body that way, unless I really believed the diet was a lifestyle I planned to adopt permanently.

I don't see much American TV and a few years ago at a social gathering I naively mispronounced Oprah's name. People looked at me as if I were the Man from Mars. Or the Idiot from Mars.

I don't get it. The worship factor. Yes, yes I understand the need for role models and such, and she's a very loud, very large (not supposed to be a pun on her physical weight either), very out there figure. I suppose she's charismatic. However, from time to time I catch bits of a show and I'm fascinated by the audience. They do seem like sheep to me. These are women (mainly) who go home from whatever studio they're in to lives, and families, and problems. But, while in that studio on film, they seem so insipid. So 'oooh Oprah's given us a new kettle, let's scream, flap and act like it's the Second Coming.' Like a mass of screaming idiocy. It's abhorrent to me.

So, I suppose, my problem isn't with Oprah herself, but her religious followers. Or is that too one-sided? Too black and white. I don't know. It's just what I see.

I can't stand her. And I'm so sick of people coming into my store asking for Deceptively Delicious and A New Earth. Which, of course, they don't know by name, they just expect us to have an Oprah section. %*&%(% lemmings. Ugh.

Come on, guys! They could be mindlessly following someone a lot worse. A lot worse.

Come on, guys! They could be mindlessly following someone a lot worse. A lot worse.

Someone like John Hagee or Pat Robertson?

I agree with Doug (on this one issue!) in that I just don't get all the anti-Oprah sentiment. I worked at a bookstore from A Million Little Pieces through Deceptively Delicious. Yeah, maybe the people who watch her show and don't bother to have an author's name are annoying, but hell, at least she's getting them into bookstores.

I like Jerry Springer a lot more as a person, but look at the influence his show has had versus the influence Oprah has. Oprah seems very benign to me.

Yeah Doug, like who? Michelle Obama? Or how about that other Michelle, Malkin?

We Americans are fortunate that our charismatic lunatics are hemmed in closely by the rule of law within a fairly stable social order.

Neither John Hagee or Pat Robertson are people with whom I would paticularly like to share a table at a dinner party. Same goes for Michelle Obama, in spades. (Oops!). (But Michelle Malkin would be lots of fun to talk to, I think.)

However, the political programs advocated by each of these people, if implemented, would be only minor irritations for their opponents. I wouldn't like to live under a government which put into practice whatever Michelle Obama would like to see happen, but I could live with it. The fundies basically want to roll America back to the 1950s, in some respects, and have absolutely no chance of doing so. Big deal. If they want to achieve their changes through the ballot box, rather than by killing people, we can worry about other things.

There have been far worse. In my mis-spent Marxist youth, I was acquanited with the younger brother of a comrade who, instead of becoming an orthodox Leftist, became a hippie. Terrible. A big disappointment for his brother and me -- we wanted him to join the Revolution. I met him a few years later, in the early 70s, and was pleased to see that he was in Medical School at Berkeley. Haircut, coat and tie ... I was happy to see that he was going to make something of his life, even if it meant that in order to bring some discipline into his life he had had to find Jesus and enlist with some obscure socialist Christian sect. Was I ever wrong: he had become a follower of Jim Jones, and his last medical act was mixing up the cyanide which killed 900 people. Now when people start following the Jim Jones of the world, we can worry. Oprah is Socrates in comparison.

Also, consider this: sometimes these guys provide us with lots of laughs. In evidence I offer the Reverend Billy James Hargis.

Doug, is it fair to assume that Michelle Obama is your new bete noire? You (and others) spend a lot of time disparaging her, but I'm not sure what bothers you about her, unless she is just, as they used to say, "uppity". I'm no fan of the ice queen, Cindy McCain, but I don't spend a lot of time thinking about her.

Re the Michelle Malkin (nee Malagang) thing. I've told the story before, but when my son was born back in the halcyon pre-9/11 days, we took a few "baby walks' in suburban Maryland with the Malkins and their daughter. I can attest that she has probably always been a bitter, angry person. 9/11 gave her (in addition to a larger paycheck and a recurring role on O'Reilly's show, until even he tired of her) a focus for that anger - mainly other persons of color. I would pass on any dinner party with her.

Without having done any research I think that Michelle Obama is taking heat because:

a) We can't seem to get our heads around an outspoken first lady (the Obama swipes remind me of the ones against Hillary Clinton). People seem to be more comfortable with a first lady like Laura Bush.

and/or

b) it's safer to pick on Michelle because you are less likely to be accused of racism than if you pick on Barack.

I don't mean to imply that all criticism against Barack is racist. One failure (or cheap tactic) of us liberals is to try and deflect criticism of our candidate by shouting 'racism'. (Am I way off base here?)

Well, "uppity" can mean a lot of things. I think she is a spoiled privileged brat who has been given huge opportunities that her intrinsic talents, such as they are, would never qualify her for. I think she has learned that white liberals will agree with anything she says. She seems the exact opposite of her husband. But it's a third-rate issue.

I don't follow Michelle Malkin closely -- there are plenty of angry, or pretend-angry, demagogues on the Right, Ann Coulter being the Queen of the pack. Maybe she is one too. I know that to get attention on the airways, you cannot be reasonable and open-minded and highly cultured. So Enevada will never speak to the masses, alas.

If I could actually choose my dinner-party invitees, I would invite about a dozen and a half people from LibraryThing, equally divided among Lefties and Righties.

Hear, hear.

Re: Enevada

Agreed.

Re: M. Obama
being "a spoiled privileged brat who has been given huge opportunities that her intrinsic talents, such as they are, would never qualify her for," how is that different from Cindy McCain? (Not that I bear her any personal animus - it's probably my own particular prejudice from living within 1/2 mile of Scottsdale.)

Anyway, Howdy Doug!

What's with the anti-Michelle Malkin tropes? Is it because some consider her an uppity Filipina?

Haha. I kid.

38
I believe the word - which she herself has ironically helped popularize - is "anchor-baby".

RE: Doug's dinner party.

You know, it's do-able. A little thought, some planning, a weekend. Oh, hell yeah!!

I don't think Cindy McCain hates me. That's the difference.

That's because she doesn't know you. :)

I can't imagine that Mrs. Obama knows you well enough to hate you, either, Doug. Your project a great many things on public figures that I have a very hard time taking seriously.

When did you hear Mrs. Obama argue a legal case in court? Were you in her Law School classes? From where and when do you get your strong negative descriptors of Mrs. Obama?

A legend in his own mind.

I'm still amazed at how often Doug's satire and mockery is taken at face value.

In that case, I'm putting away the casserole dish.

I was all set to bring along cigars and my bongo drums.

Does he ever say anything serious. I can't tell the difference.

Doug says a lot of things that are serious. However, he sometimes tightly wraps his serious thoughts around thick layers of saracasm and mockery. He does this because some conversations around these parts, regardless of the merits of the discussion, often take on an air of deep importance. So I can't blame him for having a little fun at our expense.

More than fun, I think. I like Doug's perspective, his cool - he is removed, relaxed, rational. I'm often amazed at the things he gets people to reveal - and I always think: I would hate to be deposed by him.

So, if you ever do have the dinner party, everything is off the record, right? Except for Geneg's running monologue - I'll record the notes on that, myself.

Generally, the fuss about Michelle Obama smacks of desperation to me. Since the candidate is still doing wells in the polls, they're going after the candidate's wife. It might or might not work; we'll see.

But any frequent reader of Doug's posts knows that he dishes it out in many directions. A bit humor certainly helps liven up these threads.

By now everybody has probably heard about the flap over The New Yorker cover. I think the Democrats look too stiff and earnest on this one. The point is to laugh at the yahoos. Here's one link:

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/07/14/america/NA-US-Obama-New-Yorker.php

Actually, the idea of a dinner party attended by equal numbers of LibraryThing liberals and conservatives sounds like something the BBC would do as a program, if it had an American branch. It could be a series, in fact. Lots of high-falutin' discussion, references to books ... and, to get a good audience share, at least the hint of one or two clandestine affairs developing behind the scenes, ideally across ideological barricades.

By this point, Gene's standard monologue, about the utter unredeemable wickedness of the "Republics", could be given without notes by any of us. Better to get him talking about one of his forays into philosophical topics, or recounting stories from his study of classical Greek or his time as an infantryman in Vietnam.

As for Michelle Obama. Like everyone else who has to assess a public figure, I have limited information. I skimmed her Princeton thesis, including the illiterate page I unkindly quoted from in an earlier argument; and I have some knowledge about the state of race in America today, and Black and white attitudes towards each other (the ones they really have, not the ones they are supposed to have) which I will not elaborate on here.

Anyway, I took what I knew about the world and the person, and made a snap judgment. (On the basis of just one article about him in The Atlantic several years ago, and a look at his photograph, I decided that Karl Rove was a bad man. On the basis of about the same amount of information, I decided, at the beginning of his Premiership, that Gorbachev was a good man. If you want to find a justification for this sort of thing, read Malcolm Gladwell's Blink. Liberals: be careful about pouring scorn on the author of this book: he is Black.)

Now of course my opinion may be wrong and I reserve the right to change it. Just as many liberals radically revised their assessment of Hilary Clinton.

Well, since everyone here already knows my "running monologue" there's no need for me to attend the dinner. I hereby withdraw my self-invitation, leaving the floor to all you who know better.

#53: Oh, geneg, it is just that one topic that gets tedious – you are absolutely charming and quite funny when you venture out a bit. A few ground rules would be very helpful – perhaps for you no mention of Republics and for me no long, verbatim quotes from the Regensburg address.

Either that, or they’ll seat us next to each other, at the far end of the table, across from the lady with the ear horn.

I will bring the salmon. (Just to make sure I get an invitation.)

I can bring the moose jerky and Eskimo icecream.

Perfect, and we can giggle as we watch people trying to eat the "ice cream." Of course, we will never get invited back, you realize.

Oh yuck

What you’ll need:
1 lb. dried (grated or shredded)
reindeer fat
1 c. seal oil
1 pint salmonberries
3 c. blackberries
1 c. sugar
What to do:

Add water to reindeer fat and
seal oil till frothy.

Add berries and sugar.

Enjoy!

Very funny.

That's racist.

Is this thread about Oprah or Michelle Obama? :P

#30 "Yeah, maybe the people who watch her show and don't bother to have an author's name are annoying, but hell, at least she's getting them into bookstores."

Yes, she's getting people into bookstores, but most people don't ever buy anything except Oprah books. What's the point of getting them there if they stay so narrow-minded?

GoddessLady: In the Pro&Con group, each thread is (potentially) about every conceivable topic, reflecting the extreme petty-bourgeois individualism characteristic of the undisciplined and irresponsible intelligentsia under late capitalism.

60/61
Pro and Con threads are kind of like episodes of "The Simpsons". They start out being *about* one thing, then they go off into a completely different direction.

With that frame of reference, I can understand "undisciplined and irresponsible", but the "intelligentsia" part just doesn't fit...

The way things work now, anybody who can spell intelligentsia is a part of it.

Goddesslady,

I think all the backlash against Oprah and her book club is related to our desire to look superior to others (see post 11).

We love to think things like "I'm smart because I've read Anna Karenina and East of Eden. Your average Joe Six-pack hasn't even heard of these books!" We think better of others we meet if they have read those books as well. Obviously we think reading these books is a good thing.

Then all of a sudden, someone like Oprah also thinks it would be a good thing to read East of Eden and turns millions of other people on to it as well. Suddenly that's one less thing we can feel special about. Though we try by saying things like "Yeah, well, I read it before Oprah recommended it!"

What's the point of getting them there if they stay so narrow-minded? It isn't so easy to read Night, East of Eden or what have you and remain so narrow-minded. You're making it seem like since not every Oprah fan who reads Anna Karenina will read it and have a religious experience, so none of them should bother to read it at all. I wonder who's being narrow-minded?

63
Did I spell it right? I'm afraid to look...

64
I read Gravity's Rainbow at a Monster Truck Show. Where does that put me?

#65 - Makifat,

The question is, how put out would you be if Oprah featured Gravity's Rainbow as a book club selection?

#65 in Texas? Or do they have truck shows elswhere these days?

A good book is a good book no matter who else has recommended it. I don't pay any attention to Oprah's picks because I'm in the wrong country but we have a similar issue with Richard and Judy although they might not be quite as annoying. I don't pay any attention to them either, because they don't match my demographic and don't have LTs sophistication in recommendations but that doens't mean there won't still be overlaps.

#64
No, that's not what I mean. I have never personally seen someone at my store buy East of Eden or Anna Karenina (or any other literary book) based solely on Oprah's recommendation. If people are doing that and enjoying these books and becoming better people for it, that's great. All I see are the people who watch Oprah recommend the "miracle" books, like Deceptively Delicious and The Secret, and they only come in for those, without even looking at anything else. And the episodes that discuss these types of books are constantly re-aired on tv. So, yes, I still think these Oprah-drones are being narrow-minded if the only books they come to stores for are diet books and self-help manuals. There's so much more out there.

Somebody is buying East of Eden and Anna Karenina when she recommends them. Night didn't hit the best seller list again last year for nothing.

I have a friend who isn't a big reader. She does read anything by Stephen King and follows the Oprah book club. I consider myself to be a big reader. Yet at this point I haven't read any of the Faulkner I've picked up, but she's read As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury and Light in August. Thanks Oprah!

Anna Karenina and East of Eden also hit the top of the bestseller lists the weeks after she recommended them. etc. etc. All you have to do is Google the Oprah titles for sales, and the results are pretty predictable.

No I don't think she's narcissistic. I think she uses her celebrity & wealth as a power for good as she sees it.

But as far as Oprah book club books, the first few I read were such awful downers that now I see her recommendation as a negative.

And diets. Lord! Give me a break. She is the worst advertisement for any diet she'd promote.

"O" magazine. It's her magazine - so why can't she be on every cover? I like the Martha Beck column enough to justify purchasing it.

Her show. It's really gone downhill, hasn't it? I'm still scratching my head in confusion over the lady who fell asleep at the wheel and her car plunged into the water with her six kids. I think in general it's all a bit too revealing of people's dirty laundry. They're supposed to be telling their stories to help others like them with the same deep dark horrible secrets but I still can't help but cringe for those tell-all guests. I confess I frequently yell at the show and throw something at the screen before turning off the TV. I'm always thinking, 'didn't you mother teach you any decency?'

66
I wouldn't be put out at all. It's a modern classic, and wider exposure would be great. Oprah-fication may sometimes elevate mediocre books, but it doesn't diminishe good wones.

The other side of the question is how many people actually READ the Oprah selections start to finish. I have no idea.

The other side of the question is how many people actually READ the Oprah selections start to finish.

You could always look at an Oprah book club selection on Amazon and here on LT and see how many reviews there are and then look up other books by that same author and see how many reviews they have...

That wouldn't work for something like Night where the author is primarily known for one book, but you may be able to compare the number of reviews for East of Eden (85) against the number for The Grapes of Wrath (76) maybe. Or try checking out the number of reviews of A Million Little Pieces (101) against say... My Friend Leonard (23)...