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Are You a Member of the Anti-Oprah Brigade?
by Stephanie Earp, posted Jan 24th 2011 5:00PM
Whenever someone gets truly huge and has the approval of almost everyone, a backlash is inevitable. It's like we humans have some primordial instinct for cutting people down to size. Think of it as the checks and balances system of pop culture; without it, Tom Cruise would have been crowned King of America, and no one would be making fun of Natalie Portman's laugh.As a result, we've been in the midst of an Oprah Winfrey backlash since 2009, but the low-level simmer of resentment against The Mighty Opes reached a full-rolling boil as her cable network OWN launched. Personally, I've never had strong feelings about La Winfrey, which means I'm perfectly poised to become a member of the backlash. How easy it would be for my half-formed approbation of Oprah to turn to ill-informed disgust! (Of course, her announcement that she's found a half-sister will definitely bring on the defenders).
I haven't decided yet if I want to become a member of the Anti-Oprah brigade. There are certain advantages that accrue to naysayers -- at the crest of a backlash, they seem smarter, even like they care more about art, culture and people. But coming later in the wave, they just look like followers, mean-spirited and dumb. As a result, I can't decide if I want to join the Anti-Oprah brigade. But in case you do, I've compiled a cheat sheet so you can get started right away, and possibly cash in on that early-adopter bonus.
"I Preferred Discovery Health." I've run into this argument on a couple of messageboards, since OWN replaced that net on the air. The upside is, it's a fresh new way to bash, but the downside is it's completely ridiculous. Nothing could be worse than a Discovery network, with those documentaries that follow the same format as a high school essay: thesis, proving thesis in British accent over same five or six stills, thesis, credits.
"Oprah's Ratings Are Getting Worse." Some people are gloating over OWN's declining ratings. Apparently only an average of 310,000 people watched the network, according to the Hollywood Reporter. But the folks behind the scenes claim they expected the ratings drop and were prepared for it. It's so much harder to be smug when people say they saw it coming and aren't surprised.
"Oprah Doesn't Care About Poor People." Another avenue of complaint opened up by the launch of OWN is that Oprah is abandoning her basic-cable fans. Why this is only coming up now I can't say, except to speculate that somehow, these viewers didn't understand that OWN wasn't going to pop up on their UHF dials until Oprah actually disappeared from their lives into the upper stratosphere of pay channels. So now, despite Winfrey's efforts in South Africa, in Chicago, and for innumerable charitable causes, she is being accused of being classist because OWN isn't free.
"Oprah Elected Barack Obama." This method of bashing Oprah is pretty old, but with Obama halfway through his historic term as president, it's bound to start rearing its head again. In some ways, this bashing has a similar flavor to the cable dilemma mentioned above -- white women saw Oprah's endorsement of Obama as a betrayal of Hilary Clinton. In fact, I've never seen such a neat demonstration of the tension between race, class and gender outside a classroom, but the ladies who were so pissed at Opes obviously didn't take Gender Studies like I did, and didn't notice they're being really typical liberal feminist jerks. But the Obama-bash still works. Now you just have to make it about how ineffectual he is. As an aside, why haven't Americans taken a cue from Toronto Maple Leafs fans and started throwing waffles on the White House lawn?
"Oprah Made Measles Come Back." Speaking of Oprah throwing her weight behind a dubious candidate, how about that Jenny McCarthy? There's someone whose early career really didn't give any hints that she would end up being known for radical medical opinions. Suzanne Somers, I think we all saw that a mile away, but McCarthy? Anyhow, Oprah has given weird science a lot of room on her show over the years, and McCarthy in particular has advanced a view that vaccinations cause autism. Always a sketchy idea, it has now been revealed as an elaborate fraud and meanwhile, vaccination levels have dropped enough for measles and whooping cough to show up in large numbers again.
This should help you get started on your new path of ripping on Oprah -- and of course, it's essential that you also work on your own unique anti-Oprah sentiments -- you'll need to go beyond simple memes like 'What Has Oprah Really Done?' and 'Oprah Makes Bad Books into Bestsellers.'
And please, I don't want to hear about how 'Oprah Gives TV Columnist Something to Write About When Mid-Season Shows Aren't That Great.' I think you can do better.
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