Move over, Osama bin Laden—there’s a new tyrant headed to the great beyond, as today brings the last ever Oprah Winfrey Show.
For the record, I am generally pro-Oprah, despite her occasional endorsement of dangerous kooks and charlatans, which ultimately gets cancelled out by the decades she’s devoted to her pro-book, pro-compassion, pro-women’s-self-esteem agenda.
But now she’s going away (at least as far as OWN), and those interested in viewing the last-ever Oprah Winfrey Show should consider heading to the BottleNeck Lounge this afternoon, where they’ll be showing the 4 pm episode on their flat-screen TV and celebrating with happy-hour drink specials till 6 (including Oprah’s alleged favorite cocktail the Moscow Mule, available for five bucks.)
In the meantime, please enjoy (or re-enjoy) this video of Oprah urinating for ten minutes.
best back off the dpack, schmadenator. he’s ma homey.
Is this true? The creator of Dr. Oz, Jenny McCarthy, and Deepak Chopra is going away?
What a lovely day.
I had never watched Oprah until I was in college. It was 1991 I think and she did a show on necrophila…no, I’m not kidding. Oprah, the Queen of Talk, had a show dealing with necrophila.
And I’ve never looked back!
She had a Nazi skinhead show before Geraldo did. One really big motherfucker called black people “monkeys” on it, which kinda riled Oprah up.
Oprah is a horrible human being.
@5, I’d love to hear your reasons as to why this is true.
@ 5 – Ditto.
@6 Because she’s an intelligent, knowledgeable person with an incredibly powerful platform who has time and again selfishly & uncritically peddled and promoted bad science and bad medicine. Teaming up with Jenny McCarthy, while her anti-vax crusade body count continues to rise, championing Dr. Oz who routinely advocates bad medicine to his audience of millions, & promoting The Secret, to name a few. Oprah has gotten rich while making the world dumber and she didn’t give a rats ass, because she was getting paid.
egomaniac? yes, annoying? yes, but a horrible human being? i don’t know about that. what’d she do that was so horrible?
ha my comment came too late! sorry, OC.
and you make some very good points there @8.
@5 & 8 ..
she’s a human being. up from absolutely nothing flying most often by the seat of her own panties. when she’s slips , she slips big..when she doesn’t it was grand thing to watch.( i confess i only watched occasionally in the last decade ) i’m grateful that she was and am absolutely certain for all her awful faults that the world is a better place because she is in it.
I pushed play on that video just as the superman theme started playing in another browser. Good show.
@11 A human being can still be a horrible human being, riz. And she most certainly wasn’t flying by the seat of her pants after she had a multi-million (billion?) media operation surrounding her, which has been there for a long time now and was there while she continued to pawn off tons of bullshit on people. While you are absolutely certain that the world is a better place because of her, her support of Jenny McCarthy’s anti-vax insanity has very likely cost real lives. Her support of Dr. Oz has invariably lead to people seeking ineffective or potentially harmful treatment. Her support of The Secret lead to more people throwing their lives and money away on a cult. She has great power and has used it incredibly irresponsibly. Again, a horrible human being.
I don’t think “horrible” is exactly how I’d put it. I think that given her life story, what she’s really guilty of – and unfortunately due to her prominence even the very best of intentions gone awry can have terrible consequences – is an excess of optimism.
I’m sure the money didn’t hurt; no one is immune to temptation. All in all, though, her message has always been about hope, empowerment, and positivity, and I can’t fault her for that. It’s her complete failure to apply any critical thought to anything that made her go so far wrong. A lot of people have gotten very sick or died following the advice of the various peddlers of bad medicine she’d hosted, to say nothing of all the money that’s been squandered on the various other frauds she’s promoted. There is such a thing as too much positivity.
Without Oprah Winfrey I think President Obama would have had a much more difficult campaign trail and I think racism in America would be noticeably worse. Having a black woman bring the stories of others into the living rooms of middle class (white) women across the US at least brings them a level of exposure to colored folks. You can blame her for the faux doctors all you want, but in between the shitty segments of that show one can say that they’ve seen a couple of faces of color in the commercials another byproduct of having an intelligent black woman on daytime television. Not to mention the fact that, at this point in time, if you’re watching Dr. Oz to self diagnose, you’re probably doing the same shit on WebMD. She opened an all girls school in South Africa! Horrible human being is incorrect and so short sighted. She got people to read Morrison (white folks in the middle of America), McCarthy (black folks), and Garcia Marquez. The woman, with all of her faults is a demi-god, IMHO, and an undeniable role model for young (black) women everywhere. I’ve got money on her funeral being just as big as Michael Jackson’s.
@13, 14, etc
Yes, she is a horrible human being.
I personally dislike her because I think she is a big phony, especially when it comes to “pro woman” issues.
Case in point:
During the re-call election of CA Democratic Governor Gray Davis, she had Arnold Schwarzenegger and his wife Maria Shriver on her show. It was a week before the election and it had come out in the mainstream media that Schwarzenegger had been accused by about a dozen women of groping and sexual abuse/ assault.
Oprah had them come on her show and for an hour she asked them softball questions about what a great husband and father Schwarzenegger was. There were no serious questions like, “please tell us about all these women who claim that you pushed them against a wall and stuck your hand up their skirts.”
The rest is history. That scumbag Schwarzenegger got away with assaulting women, became governor and screwed up the state, especially it’s education system.
The Hollywood elite stick together no matter what.
So fuck Oprah. She’s a phony with a big ego who doesn’t give a shit about the average American woman.
I agree with Schmader and Riz: Oprah’s awesomeness cancels out her missteps. I know I’m definitely a better person for her show and her magazine, as she opened my eyes to a lot of wise ideas and makes me feel like a stronger, smarter and more empowered person. And her book club was, more often than not, excellent.
A horrible human being is someone who purposefully aims to make life worse for other human beings, like certain politicians and pundits we all know. Oprah’s aim has always been for betterment. It’s too bad some people take away the negatives—they’re missing out!