I hope the Big O sees this and turns up the heat a little... Jewish guests, feminist sex-&-independence themes, etc. It's sad to think that she's distracted for the season. Feminists should be embracing Palin, but they're against her, which is ludicrous. (If she wins big, she could change the meaning of the word feminist.)

This hasn't been the decade we'd hoped for, not for the country and not for liberal democracy. We're in a dangerous time economically, and I think this election is going to hurt a lot of people's feelings.

But America still leads is so many respects. It's crazy the way so many people think our wad is shot.

Is this what Muslim women actually need? A woman who makes celebrities of rapists and sexual mutilators because they're female.

Iwas going to ask the same thing gwallan

Gwallan and lujlp- I don't pay any attention to Oprah or who she interviews, so I'm clueless as to what you're referring to- could you fill me (and anyone else who doesn't watch much t.v.) in on it?

I have on rare occasions had the misfortune to see Oprah Winfrey's show. When I have seen it, the guests have always been women, and the the show's attitude was that no woman can ever be blamed for anything, even if she screwed up her own life and the lives of everyone around here.

The usual formula is "look at this person, how she has been mistreated. Cry a little, dear, and we'll all feel sorry for you". Since she she tries to find controversial guests, you occasionally get psychotics you wouldn't let near your dog, with Oprah oozing sympathy all over them.

Of course, things may have changed - I've managed to avoid seeing her show for several years now...

Personally,I can't stand that self-satisfied, smug bitch. Yeah, she came up from poverty and abuse (so she says), made a better life for herself, etc. BUT, she's way hypocritical in the way she has vilified people who've done drugs, but then cries and capitulates when she's caught out doing the same. She's all holier-than-thou about how much better she is. Yeah, she's given away cars and money, but it seems to me to be a cheap trick in order to get people to like her. Please. She's also hyper-critical of people who don't agree with her. She seems to me to be almost as phony as Shrillary, and we all know how I feel about her. Ah, well, as usual, YMMV. o_O

Oprah? Groan. But, yeah, at least maybe it's a beginning. Western influence is going to be the only thing to change the mid-East.

That's the impression I got of her show when I checked it out too. I was so disgusted I've managed to not view it since years before I left Denver and I left Denver 13 years ago. I think it was pretty near when it first got on that I checked it out.

I really, really wished this woman had just stuck to acting. Loved her in "The Color Purple" and "Women of Brewster Place" but she is now just a sanctimonious bitch who thinks she's god and everyone should do as she thinks. She really needs to be taken down a peg and made to realize she isn't the wisest person in the world. In fact, far from it.

Financial success fine. I don't begrudge her that. In fact, more power to her even though I don't get the appeal. But, Christ, the ego -- the freaking enormous ego that even avoiding her show (I admit I don't care for talk shows in general) doesn't escape us from if we turn on the media at all.

I guess we don't always get to pick our heroes. If Oprah winds up breaking up some ice over there, good for her, the Saudis, and us.

I remember about twenty years ago, different people were calling for banning records by a group called 2 Live Crew. Remember that? I recall wondering aloud to our office radical feminist/uber-liberal about why, of all people, did these guys have to be First Amendment heroes. She agreed that someone else would have been more palatable, but we didn't always have that choice.

The women that watch her show enjoy playing the victim role, so she gives them what they want, and gets rich by doing it. It's no surprise the Saudi women can identify with her because they ARE victims. The next step for them is empowerment, and I don't know if Oprah teaches that.

The next step for them is empowerment, and I don't know if Oprah teaches that.

She does, but only to killers and child molesters - and only if they are female

I don't care if they're watching infomercials. Pretty much any western TV is probably helpful.
I think they should have bombed Iraq with billions of porn DVDs...real shock and awe. Maybe they would have been interested in how many anals Jenna can do each day?

>>>I don't care if they're watching infomercials. Pretty much any western TV is probably helpful.

Couldn't agree more, Amy.

It may be fashionable to remember Reagan's "tear down that wall, Mr G." as the pivotal point in East Germany's transformation - but I recall how incredibly antsy the authorities there got about east Germans getting access to TV commercials from the rest of Europe. (By "antsy" I mean news stories about east German teachers slyly grilling pupils about what they wanted to get for Christmas - to find out whether their parents were watching banned TV stations!).

As for Oprah. I can forgive her a great deal for her (overdue!) clobbering of author James Frey for his macho fibs. God, that was entertaining!

Quoth Ms Alkon, "I don't care if they're watching infomercials. Pretty much any western TV is probably helpful."

I suspect they already get a lot of western TV. The Disney Channel Middle East web site is http://www.disneyme.com/DisneyChannel/. The site is available in both English and Arabic, which suggests availability to both English speakers and native Saudis. So the Middle Eastern world can have all the Zack and Cody, Hannah Montana, and Kim Possible it wants.

By the way, Disney Channel spans the globe. At a wake in Manila a couple of years ago, a young girl from my wife's family was waving her DVD copy of High School Musical, while her little brother tried to grab it. Disney Channel Southeat Asia strikes again! That's why I'm not worried about totalitarian ideologies conquering the world. The Mouse is way ahead of 'em!

Its no great wonder that Oprah features women.

Women are her main audience.

That's not bias...that's sound marketing. The same reason why you see Fabio on the cover of bodice ripping novels...and not Richard Simmons.

And what is her audience going to love most? Talking about feelings.

Throw in some empty words like "empowerment" a few tears (or alot) and a victim complex now and then, hell she'll be on the air until she dies.

>>So the Middle Eastern world can have all the Zack and Cody, Hannah Montana, and Kim Possible it wants.

Old rpm daddy,

Pretty sure you do need a satellite dish, though? (My sister has just moved to flashy Dubai & her kids are grumbling about very limited western TV available because they don't yet have the permanent address necessary for a full hook-up).

Said Jody Tresidder: "Pretty sure you do need a satellite dish, though?"

Good point, and I should have thought of that. I wonder how widespread satellite or cable TV is in Saudi Arabia? Is it hard to get? Hard to afford? Can anyone provide any Saudi-specific insight?

>>Good point, and I should have thought of that

Promise you, old rpm, it was a sheer fluke I made that point!

I had just got my sister's email from Dubai about the tv..."blah blah...kids! Huh! even when they've got a swimming pool AND bath-water temperature sea right outside, they still moan about the TV..blah blah..the apartment block is brand new but the tv is lousy...and the locals are SO hypocritical about Ramadam..."etc.

It was just good timing.

> can forgive her a great deal for
> her (overdue!) clobbering of
> author James Frey for his macho
> fibs.

Essentially, I agree.

And now, let me nitpick.

(1.) He wasn't being macho, quite the opposite: He was exploiting his readers' capacity for pathos.

(2.) Those readers (Oprah & her audience) loved him for doing that... Until they realized that people less enthused by such pornography were amused at their response to it. This emotion is called "shame", and it has wonderful --though often insufficient-- cleansing powers.

(3.) A better talk show host --Hell, a better human being-- would have acknowledged that the demon lived in the hearts of the satisfied readers, not the exploitative author. As always, the conman knows that his mark has to want to be taken. As I understand it (having not seen the show), the second Frey appearance --in which he was dressed down-- did not address point #2... It was all about saying "You LIED to us!!!"

I sympathize with commenters who worry that the Oprah Winfrey model of a life well-lived is naive and solipsistic.

But on the other hand, isn't that exactly what the these cultures are about anyway? Is there any culture more childish and small-minded than that of the islamic primitives?

It would be nice if the Oprah show was more about discipline and hard work rather than sharing feelings. (Feelings that are often imaginary.)

But it's redundant to worry that Oprah's Saudi viewers are going to be recklessly reconnected with their inner children. They never grew up to begin with.

So I agree with Jody and Amy and they guy who said this:

> If Oprah winds up breaking up
> some ice over there, good for
> her, the Saudis, and us.

>>He wasn't being macho, quite the opposite: He was exploiting his readers' capacity for pathos.

I can see my original meaning got compressed the way I wrote it. In fact, machismo and pathos were allies in Frey's fibbing prose.

All his lies rewrote the feebler facts to make him appear more macho, more brutal, more raging, more capable of sustaining more physical and spiritual pain than your standard drunk junkie.

When fictional Frey hit the bottom, it was several floors lower than the usual recovery memoirist. (Which, naturally, added to the pathos.)

But, yup, hell will etc before Oprah ever addresses point #2.

(I actually bought the book when it came out because of those early rave reviews. It really was shit.)

Nice cover art, though.

Anyway, whatever machismo was depicted was meant to be seen as a cancerous force in the guy's life. He knew the hens wanted to cluck.

Ah, here's Lileks:

I tell you, I knew something was fishy about that "Million Little Pieces" book, simply because it was so successful; there HAD to be something wrong with it. Every time I saw it, I got annoyed – in a just world, drug addiction and criminality would not be rewarded with such good jacket design. (When I first saw that hand covered with tiny pill-dots, I thought: he was abusing Contac?)

"Gwallan and lujlp- I don't pay any attention to Oprah or who she interviews, so I'm clueless as to what you're referring to- could you fill me (and anyone else who doesn't watch much t.v.) in on it?

Posted by: juliana at September 19, 2008 4:46 AM"

I'm guessing they mean Winkler. She had Mary Winkler on her show awhile back. The woman who murdered her husband in his sleep with a shotgun, then yanked out the phone cord, said I'm sorry, I love you and took off with the kids out of state. She ended up with around, 9 months total behind bars/loony bin. Preacher hubby was supposedly an abusive monster and made her wear a wig and hooker heels to bed. The press tended to ignore the rumors/allegations that she'd lost a bunch of money falling for a nigerian email scam with hubby and wife due to talk to the bank the day after she shot him.

That and this article in oprah magazine link thru Glenn web site

http://glennsacks.com/blog/?p=2634

The comment I left there about the teacher/molester I've also pasted in below:

As the relationship progressed, Rogers (a former homecoming queen now serving an eight-year sentence) began, as many of these women do, to live in a world of "magical thinking," Schleicher says. "And she responded to that instead of the rules of society"...

"I don't think she's a sexual predator," Schleicher says of Rogers. "I see her as a really hurting adult who needs help. I just hope she can get it."

Hey, try that logic on the judge the next time you rob a bank!

For juliana and Sio...

I refer to rapturous standing ovations afforded Lorena Bobbit, perpetrator of a brutal sexual mutilation. I'm refering to numerous sexual abusers given celebrity treatment and similar ovations. I'm speaking of murderers and other assorted abusers.

The common theme is they all abused boys or men. It demonstrates how countless women will shamelessly applaud and defend even the most vicious acts by other women as long as the victim is only male.

"She talks about racism, for example," she said. "This is something that Saudis are very concerned about, because many of us feel that we're judged for the way we veil or for our skin color...

Yeah? Tell it to the tens of thousands of non-Saudi Muslims living in near slavery conditions as servants to these vile, arrogant layabouts. The Saudis know a lot about racism because they among the world's worst racists.