Oprah: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly
It is almost impossible to feel neutral about Oprah Winfrey. Myself, I look at her, essentially, as a preacher: like most holders of a powerful pulpit, she can exhort her listeners to good and urge them to evil. Her celebrations of materialism sometimes strike me as gross in the extreme, but then she’ll turn around and recommend “Anna Karenina” and, once again, I’ll feel kindly toward her. I wish her own movie and TV endeavors (“The Great Debaters” is only the latest example) weren’t so often stuffed with easy uplift, but there’s no question that she’s also backed true artists from time to time. My Oprah musings were triggered by running across this New Republic essay about her, which is both very fair and very insightful.
