Forget
The Color Purple:
Oprah’s All About The Green
By Jason Miller
12 September, 2007
Countercurrents.org
“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.
Consider this excerpt from
Paul Street’s “Skipping Past Structural Racism” (http://www.blackcommentator.com/85/85_think_street.html):
“…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.
Notes:
(1) http://multinationalmonitor.org/
mm2003/03may/may03interviewswolff.html
(2) ibid
(3) http://www.people.com/people/
article/0,,1182572,00.html
(4) http://www2.oprah.com/spiritself/
slide/20070216/ss_20070216_284_102.jhtml
Jason Miller
is a wage slave of the American Empire who has freed himself intellectually
and spiritually. He is Cyrano’s Journal Online’s associate
editor (http://www.bestcyrano.org/)
and publishes Thomas Paine’s Corner within Cyrano’s at http://www.bestcyrano.org/THOMASPAINE/.
You can reach him at [email protected]
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