I went to the Oprah website and read some of the 500 or so comments already piling up in response to this. I put in my two cents:
I voted for Barack Obama wholeheartedly, but I was extremely disappointed last year in how Oprah covered the Presidential Campaign, endorsing Barack Obama without giving the other candidates any air time on her show. It was unprofessional and I expected more from her. I also did not appreciate her telling me who I should vote for. It was disrespectful and insulting to my intelligence. There was much talk in the liberal media that no matter what she did -- endorse Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama -- she would have gotten a backlash from either the black community or women. But she would have avoided a lot of grief by not endorsing anyone at all and keeping her voting decisions to the privacy of a voting booth. That was the mistake -- not that she endorsed a particular person, but the fact that she endorsed someone in the first place. It was inappropriate. Am I happy she is having Sarah Palin on the show? Well, it's a little too late isn't it? Having said that, I think Sarah Palin is a disturbing individual, but she is a public figure in the news and therefore deserves coverage on this show.
6 comments:
give me a break. It's the Oprah Winfrey show(Tom Cuise "jumping the couch"), not Meet the Press.
Why was it inappropriate for Oprah to endorse Obama. She's a talk-show host,not a journalist. She has no ethical obligation to be neutral or objective or whatever. So she's telling you who to vote for. She's not the only one, and you're free to make your own decision.
I can't wait to see what Palin says when she goes on "Oprah" next month. She is such an idiot, I wonder how Oprah will handle that.
@ Kathy S: I TOTALLY disagree. She knows damn well how influential she is to her viewership, which is quite vast. You're right that she is not a journalist -- she's a guru. And she was blatantly telling women who to vote for and she knows a lot of them will follow her like sheep. Talk show hosts do have responsibility. They are media figures who influence the kind of information people get.
Let me put it this way. If Oprah supported the Neo-Nazi Party and told everyone she was going to vote for them, would you still think she has no ethical obligation to be neutral?
I'd think she has no ethical obligation *as a journalist* to be neutral. She is not a journalist. I'd think she was reprehensible for telling people to vote for neo-Nazis (or black separatists, even), but she would have a perfect right to, and still not have an obligation to be neutral. (Two things: she wouldn't be where she is today if she did shit like that, and Keith Olbermann would be regularly naming her "worst person in the world.") For that matter, newspapers and op-ed writers regularly endorse candidates. Guys like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly have a perfect right to spew their opinions, however vile they may be. (And I do believe they're vile.) They cross the line when they lie about the facts, just out-and-out lie, and they do it all the time. Lying is unethical when you're a journalist, or even a pundit or a talk-show host. But as far as I know, Oprah did not cross that line.
Oprah *is* very influential, but is she really a "guru"? She's a public figure but a private citizen and as such has every right to express her opinion. Her viewers are not sheep, (and I doubt that she thinks for them as sheep); they are adults with backgrounds and considerations and opinions of their own. I doubt that Oprah viewers voted for Obama solely because Oprah said to. (In fact, I doubt that she said "vote for Obama" in so many words. She said she was endorsing him and supporting his candidacy.) What viewers most likely did was take Oprah's endorsement into consideration and weigh it in the balance. Oprah has a right to use her influence to endorse a candidate she believes in.
I disagree that Palin "deserves coverage" on "Oprah." Once again, this is not a news show. From what I've read and heard on the subject, Oprah is booking Palin to appease her conservative fans (and a lot of her fans are some shade of conservative) who weren't happy about her endorsing Obama. So who's influencing whom here? I think Oprah would display more integrity by not booking Palin, but on the other hand, you can say Oprah's taking the high road by giving Palin a chance to speak on her show. Do you think that she thinks her viewers will be like sheep and love Palin just because Oprah has her on the show? I doubt that either you Oprah think that.
The argument is not about whether or not she has the “right” to do what she did – obviously, freedom of expression applies to all talk show hosts. But I don’t think it was appropriate for an extremely influential person in today’s society to use an entire show to endorse a presidential candidate. You say her viewers are not sheep – but is it not possible that she may has assumed at least some of them were? If she didn’t think of them as sheep, then why did she so obviously feel it was necessary to endorse Obama in the first place on her tv show? To get something off her chest? To rejoice in her right to vote as a black woman? Would she have gone through that trouble if she did not think it would influence women? She was obviously using her own show as a vehicle to put forth her political views – and I found that presumptuous, insulting, and inappropriate. When you look at other shows like THE VIEW and REGIS, they invited more than one candidate at one point or another. The more appropriate thing for Oprah to do would have been to express her political views in an interview OFF the stage.
Nobody said anything about Oprah lying about the facts. That’s hardly the issue.
Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly are pundits who, when they are not preaching to their own choirs, are telling people what to think. I expect more from Oprah and I expect more from her audience.
I would think that endorsing a particular candidate on a television show is not terribly different from actually telling your viewers how to vote. Maybe she never uttered the words, “Vote for Obama” – but she may as well have. She proclaimed on that taping that, “I’m not voting for Obama because he’s a black man. I’m voting for him because he’s the best man!!!!!” Then she raised her hands in the air and the entire (possibly pre-selected?) audience went bananas. But it’s hard to ignore the fact that many women in Oprah’s viewing demographic were, according to polls and research, actually very passionate Clinton supporters and supported her over Obama. When the backlash happened, I think she saw that not all of her audience were the sheep she assumed them to be. She is still a guru to many women, but not to everyone, and her influence has limits we did not previously consider. As you say, many of her viewers are “are adults with backgrounds and considerations and opinions of their own.”
No, this is not a news show – it’s actually something more influential than that. I don’t even think “talk show” is the best way to describe the program. It’s a program largely about women’s issues and issues that women care about. But what Oprah talks about most consistently is SPIRITUALITY. Her website has numerous drop-down menus and links that involve spirituality thought exercises, meditation tips, daily affirmations, book recommendations, and at least one online workshop to find meaning in your life. That’s pretty guru-ish to me. [CONTINUED ...]
[... CONTINUED] She may be backpedaling to appease the conservatives, but really, it shouldn’t be about “appeasing” anyone. The whole “appeasing” one group at the expense of another was not an inevitable conundrum the liberal media pundits would have you believe. The issue was that she was mainly interested in appeasing herself and not giving balanced representation of all candidates. This whole “appeasing” problem would never have come up in the first place if she had given the other three -- Clinton, McCain, and Palin -- a chance to present their arguments and policies. Gun-toting hockey moms and granola-eating, Prius-driving homemakers would have both been “appeased” and she wouldn’t have to pander to any group nearly a year later.
As for Sarah Palin -- enh. Those who love her will still love her and everyone else will consider her nothing more than a media curiosity. I don’t think being on the OPRAH show will boost her public profile in any meaningful way. American women are quite aware of why this appearance is happening now. And Oprah is very good at expressing dislike toward a guest without having to say much. She puts the vibe out there and transmits it.
Post a Comment