Oprahism

Jeff Jarvis takes a break from his crusade to save Howard Stern to rip a strip from Oprah.

Hypocrite. Oprah: You can’t act as if you don’t bear considerable responsibility for this. You brought sex to afternoon TV. Now I don’t think you should be fined for that and I don’t think you should be taken off the air for that; I just don’t watch you. But you’re doing nothing different from Howard Stern — except getting away with it. So cut your holier-than-thou disapproval of sex on the rest of TV. You are the Queen of Trash.

Jeff doesn’t mention her greater and more destructive hand in creating the “Culture of Victimhood”.
It began with countless shows about child abuse, especially child sexual abuse. The same juicy and shocking details, cloaked in weepy concern and repackaged as “public service”. The biggest fallacy of the time was cultivated by Oprah – “Children never lie about these things”.
Well, they do, and they did, and largely because of the myths that Oprah and her copycats fostered, innocent people – child care workers, parents, neighbors – were smeared, accused and jailed because it wasn’t appropriate to question the veracity of a child. Then we got countless more Oprah shows educating the mainstream about “repressed memory” – and more broken families and lives ruined, based on false accusations and true-believer therapists.
Victimhood was good for ratings. Child abuse. Spouse abuse. Substance abuse. Date rape. Disease of the Week. Oprah shifted gears effortlessly, from trash talk to trash thought, creating an afternoon sisterhood of victims and transforming unproven and sometimes ludicrous theories into mainstream “fact”. And the over-riding message – no one was ever personally responsible. There was always an underlying excuse. Someone else was always to blame – a monster in the past, an uncaring parent, a teacher who bullied. Society. History. Cultism. Racism. Sexism.
Now, we have an entire generation suffering the effects of “Oprahism”, and wonder why so many “dysfunctional” North Americans blame everyone but themselves.

4 Replies to “Oprahism”

  1. Fair enough point – but Oprah did the “sexing up” and mass marketed it in a way Phil didn’t. (Or couldn”t).

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