I'd never give one to a kid today, but there's a delightful sound to 19th Century names, isn't there? "George W. Bush" or "Bill Clinton" just isn't as euphonius as "Rutherford B. Hayes" or "Millard Fillmore."

__________________
Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

That would depend on what day of the week it is, and where she is at in her own personal yo-yo cycle.

__________________
Don of Borg - Cool, Calm, Collective.

"Within the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

Because 9 out of 10 humans are mindless drones 90% of the time. The other one engages thoughtfully with the rest of the world 90% of the time. It is work to be the one, it is easy to be one of the nine. These proportions are just my personal observation and speak volumes to me about our society.

p.s. - A furor? The fact that a person whose celebrity is based on feel-good TV programming could cause a furor speaks even more about the huddled masses. It oocurs to me that the bulk of humans spend most of their time waiting to be told what to do next.

p.p.s. - If you ran a magazine, what are the chances you would plaster your own mug on every single monthly cover? What kind of incredibly over-the-top ego issues must this person have? I'd love to have a real peek into her closet of skeletons.

__________________
Don of Borg - Cool, Calm, Collective.

"Within the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

Mmm. Oprah has really been irritating my darkside over the past few years. She has built up a huge amount of influence. More influence than any one person should ever have (which has been historically shown time and again to inevitably end up being a Profoundly Bad Thing[tm])

I grant she's responsible enough to not use it maliciously (although I can name a few incidents that have been quite petty). But, she does not use it responsibly. Even the misunderstood appearance of an endorsement (or lack thereof) on her part can cause measurable tremors on national economies. (I'm thinking the beef thing, which should have been a big wake-up call for her. She learned nothing from it.)

What's damaging my calm is that my mother has been making noises like an Oprah-Zombie over the last five years or so. My mother is gullible. Oprah is credulous. She'll buy into anything at all so long as it's unscientific and sounds spiritual. And my mother will parrot it. And she won't listen to me even when I demonstrate the science. If my mother has a personal god and savior, it's name is Oprah. Like all mothers do, she's spent half her life (and nearly all of mine) tuning me out. What conscientious son could possibly function under those circumstances?

There are only three people in my life of whom I'm protective. And I'm talking adrenaline-fueled rampaging-bear protective. My mother is one of them. (My last surviving grandmother and my new goddaughter are the other two.)

I am profoundly unhappy (in the borderline-enraged sense) that Oprah has her woo-claws embedded in my mother's life.

__________________
In Fallout 3, 'happiness' is a warm junkyard dog and a loaded gun. It's mostly the loaded gun.
- Moose's one-line review.

"your going to regret that one. You are now a colonoscope...
- Chrissy, corrupting PraedSt's wish.

Suntrack is not American. If the choice is between comercials and Oprah, I'll pick Oprah, too.

Saying that Oprah's message is that you just have to wish for things, and they'll happen, seems like a gross distortion and a straw man. Obviously, you have to do something about it. But I think what Oprah realises, and most posters here clearly don't, is that the human mind can create hurdles for itself, and it takes inner strength to overcome that.

Having said this, I have mixed feelings about shows like Oprah's, and especially Dr. Phil's. My biggest objection to them is that I don't like the general idea of exposing one's personal problems in public. It seems a little... I don't know... exploitative? humiliating? self-serving? exhibitionist? Take your pick.

Then again, perhaps it works better than anything else, for some people.

__________________
"All your bias are belong to us." Ara Pacis
"A witty saying proves nothing." Voltaire

You'd be mistaken in that appraisal. She openly endorses "The Secret". "The Secret" advocates precisely that message. It's not a straw man at all if it's literally true.

A brief review of the "The Secret" DVD, as reported by a Swift reader.

All of the above. I'd add "morally bereft". I sincerely wish I could add "criminal convicted of fraud".

__________________
In Fallout 3, 'happiness' is a warm junkyard dog and a loaded gun. It's mostly the loaded gun.
- Moose's one-line review.

"your going to regret that one. You are now a colonoscope...
- Chrissy, corrupting PraedSt's wish.

I was referring to Oprah's general message, not to the "The Secret". While she may endorse "The Secret" misguidedly, that doesn't mean that her whole life philosophy is contained in it.

__________________
"All your bias are belong to us." Ara Pacis
"A witty saying proves nothing." Voltaire

She has a life philosophy that doesn't change every month depending on what happens to be trendy and marketable? It doesn't show.

__________________
In Fallout 3, 'happiness' is a warm junkyard dog and a loaded gun. It's mostly the loaded gun.
- Moose's one-line review.

"your going to regret that one. You are now a colonoscope...
- Chrissy, corrupting PraedSt's wish.

Not sure what her life philosophy is, and have no reason to believe it is what she says it is. That is the problem with commercial entertainment. Without a certain level of intimacy, which is completely non-existent in an entertainer/audience member relationship, you can only guess as to what makes her tick. (As mentioned before, the fact that she feels the need to plaster her face everywhere really makes me wonder about what drives her).

She is a marketeer's dream. She is very much flavor of the day, well; maybe flavor of the month. She is an entertainer. Her job is to get and hold viewers, to increase ratings, and sell commercial time. I think people who are taken in by her emotionally forget that. They grant her credibility and accept her wisdom in areas in which she clearly has no authority. Much of her advice is no different than if one of her viewers read a book, liked the content, then went out and insisted everyone read it (and consider it gospel). The biggest difference being that she has learned to market herself (to a very susceptible audience).

__________________
Don of Borg - Cool, Calm, Collective.

"Within the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

She is a marketeer's dream. She is very much flavor of the day, well; maybe flavor of the month. She is an entertainer. Her job is to get and hold viewers, to increase ratings, and sell commercial time. I think people who are taken in by her emotionally forget that. They grant her credibility and accept her wisdom in areas in which she clearly has no authority. Much of her advice is no different than if one of her viewers read a book, liked the content, then went out and insisted everyone read it (and consider it gospel). The biggest difference being that she has learned to market herself (to a very susceptible audience).
I don't like her, or dislike her. I don't think what she does is immoral or wrong. She's just an entertainer, and she apparently does it very well. The problem is our culture seems to think that if someone's a celebrity, their opinions are more meaningfull than someone who is sans-spotlight. I've made this rant before--but it really bugs me when celebrities try to make this or that political statement and people take it seriously because they are a celebrity.

I have no problem with a person using their position to promote a view; but thier views carry no more weight than yours or mine. I just wish more people would realize that.

__________________
I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.

What bugs me about her is that she exploits other women's insecurities to make herself rich, and then presents herself to the world as someone who "helps" women. Then gives her audience cars to make them like her. The same with Dr. Phool. He makes money off of other people's personal problems, and in return gives them public humiliation and a few glib, facile comments on how they were stupid and got themselves into trouble.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Well, okay--it was a furor in literary circles, actually. There are literally thousands of good books, and Oprah-says-so does indeed carry a lot of weight. So to speak. So all those people who were actually reading because Oprah-says-so heard that there were no books worth reading and didn't, and that does indeed hurt revenue at bookstores. And again, there are thousands of books, with dozens more coming out every year (out of hundreds, of course!) that are worth reading.

Well, I wouldn't, but I have self-esteem issues. So there we are, I suppose.

But Oprah doesn't bother me half so much as "Dr." Phil. What he does is morally reprehensible. I can't watch his show, because he ought to be sued for malpractice. You can't cure someone's deep-seated psychological problems by yelling at them. It takes more than five minutes to help someone. His solutions are simplistic and more than a little wrong most of the time. And, yes, someone should actually be in their own ideal weight range before they yell at other people to lose weight and claim there's no excuse not to.

__________________
Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

She's an evangelist for post-modernism.

Conveniently enough here's an article on "The Secret" from CNN today. I've heard of the power of positive thinking, but this is just stupid. We all think that stuff like this is a bunch of bunk yet it's still here. There's proof that what's proclaimed in this book doesn't work anyway

__________________
I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.

Oh, that's hilarious. A genie! The only thing that could possibly be funnier would be if the "scientist" and the genie were played by the same actor. The genie of Quantum Physics.

There's just so much to mock about it!

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

The genie of Quantum Physics.

__________________
If it's just us, it seems like an awful waste of space.
Contact Carl Sagan

It's yet another of those "you-have-to-laugh-to-keep-from-screaming-your-head-off-in-horror-at-how-stupid-people-are" things I seem to run into six or eight times a week.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort