Thank You For Sharing

Now celebrating her twentieth year as the host of the world's most influential talk show, Oprah Winfrey is to television what Bach is to music, Giotto to painting, Joyce to literature. Time magazine hit the nail on the head when it recently voted her one of the world's handful of "leaders and revolutionaries." (Condoleezza Rice wrote Oprah's citation: "She has struggled with many of the challenges that we all face, and she has transformed her life. Her message is empowering: I did it, and so can you.") Like all seminal creative figures, her essential gift lies in her synthesizing power. She has taken the most consequential strands in modern life and woven them together into an hourlong show that is a work of art.

The boilerplate criticisms of Oprah--she exploits a culture of victimization that she did so much to create; she glamorizes misery; she amplifies already widespread narcissism and solipsism; she fills people's heads with hackneyed nostrums about life--are correct, up to a point. But that's not the whole story. Oprah's critics write as if her goal of extending to her audience empathy, consolation, and hope were intrinsically cheap and cynical. On the contrary: The question is whether that is really what she is offering.

Oprah's aspiration to inspire her audience with hope--elaborated on her TV show, in her magazine, and on her website--is hardly ignoble. Her "victimized" viewers--not all her viewers, to be sure--are simply people who have been hurt and have nothing to guide them and nowhere to turn. So they make a virtue of necessity and convert their injuries into proactive forces in the world--just as some people turn their old school ties into proactive forces in the world.

Narcissism and solipsism? Sure. But why not call it withdrawal into a protective inner space instead? When Oprah, in the course of seven days, talks to 13-year-old boys who have been seduced by their teachers, features "flattering clothes for all figures," presents "five things that can make you younger," and follows that with the story of a woman whose husband set her on fire, she is hitting the different planes of the self like hitting the walls of a solitary fortress. In a world where it's hard for some people to know how to think about themselves, the assurance that fashion smiles on you however you are shaped (be content with who you are) and that some people have it a lot worse than you do (count your blessings) is worth gold.

In 1986, human nature in America started to change. That year, "The Oprah Winfrey Show," based in Chicago, became nationally syndicated, and the country entered the beginning stages of a quiet cultural revolution. It took awhile for the transformation to take hold, but, four years later, the effects were unmistakable. Do you really think George H.W. Bush, who presided over the spectacularly successful Gulf war, lost to Bill Clinton in 1992 because of a sagging economy? It was Oprah, stupid. It was Oprah behind Clinton in 1992 and also in 1996; and it was Oprah behind George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004, electoral shenanigans notwithstanding.

It's safe to say that, with her parade of afflicted guests, Oprah helped along the perception of Clinton's childhood wounds as evidence of authentic character. With her emphasis on imperfect self-presentation as proof of genuine intention--she has appeared on the air in her bathrobe, without makeup--she also helped create an atmosphere that turned Al Gore, and then John Kerry, into fabricated con men who were too handsome (Kerry had his lanky Jimmy Stewart allure), articulate, and privileged to be trusted or true. Bush, on the other hand, was so inarticulate, awkward, and funny-looking that, when you thought of his own super-privileged background, you felt that at least he had something going for him. And all that unconcealed imperfection made him real--or at least electable.