Oprah's empire

Oprah is one of the greatest ironies of our time. By preaching a gospel of failure, she has become a success story.

The way Oprah runs her television talk show is very similar to the way she has made a success of herself. Oprah uses her body as a tool for reaching other people. Most of the nation is acquainted with Oprah's struggle with body weight and her constant weight fluctuations. During any given television season she may gain or lose twenty pounds and some people make a sport of checking her weight and seeing what sort of clothing she is using to make the most of her current form. Thus Oprah shows her, 'weakness,' and makes the audience understand that she is one of them.

The content of the show itself and the way it is presented is also interesting. Though many of the shows are about being real and not having ridiculous expectations, or moving on without regrets, Oprah presents the contents of these shows by dwelling on what she is trying to teach people to pass over.

For example, if Oprah is covering the experiences of people suffering a terminal illness, she dwells on the pain and suffering. She would probably show video clips or pictures of people wasting away with cancer and bald from their chemotherapy in such a case. The story could even be one of ultimate triumph over breast cancer, and Oprah would still dwell on the suffering before the cure. She would make firm imprints of these failures (defined here as any time a situation isn't ok) whether they were misfortunes or actual problems people had (such as extreme obesity).

Usually Oprah will then find some happy way to finish. This may involve finding a way to put the issue to rest, coming up with a happy prognosis or in many cases trying to make the audience realize that the failures don't matter and that they have to focus on other things and just ignore the failure. Oprah thus preaches forgiveness of others and forgiveness of the self and forgiveness of life in general for everything.

Her message is false. First, just because Oprah decides that there is no longer a problem in someone's life doesn't mean that there isn't a problem anymore. She introduces the myth that forgiveness or acceptance constitutes some sort of positive action. She perpetrates the fiction that abstract, internal changes and actions can have an impact on our material happiness. After all, how could Oprah have made any sort of material wealth without offering to return some sort of material benefit to us in return?

Well, she does. Oprah gives us an unfounded sense of well-being, and in return we have made her one of the wealthiest women in the television industry. What a trade.

Yet Oprah's success springs from her failures. She is able to be successful by relating to other people as being unsuccessful (through her weight loss problems and stories of abuse in her childhood). The ability to empathize makes her more successful. Failures make Oprah successful.

Thus, Oprah has discovered success through failure. It's not so much that she has learned that failure is ok as that her failures are ok because they ultimately made her successful. It's our failures that are still unacceptable.

Who's ok, you or Oprah? Question the obvious. Aileen Ann Nielsen is from Upper Black Eddy, Penn. She can be reached at anielsen@princeton.edu.