Oprah Winfrey

Oprah Gail Winfrey (born January 29 1954) is best known as the multiple-Emmy Award winning host of The Oprah Winfrey Show, the highest rated talk show in television history King World press release Retrieved July 13, 2006. She is also an influential book critic, an Academy Award-nominated actress, and a magazine publisher. According to Forbes magazine, she was the richest African American of the 20th century and the world's only Black billionaire by 2004.Forbes (2006). The World's Richest People: Oprah Winfrey. Retrieved June 22, 2006.

Early life

Winfrey was born in Kosciusko, Mississippi to a Baptist family. Her parents were unmarried teenagers. She was originally named Orpah Gail Winfrey, after the Bible's Book of Ruth. There are conflicting reports as to how her first name became "Oprah". According to a 1991 interview with the Academy of Achievement, Winfrey said that when she was born, people didn't know how to pronounce "Orpah", so they put the "P" before the "R" in every place else other than the birth certificate. However, there is the account that the midwife transposed letters while filling out the newborn's birth certificate. Her mother, Vernita Lee, was a housemaid, and her father, Vernon Winfrey, was a coal miner and later worked as a barber before becoming a city councilperson. Winfrey's father was in the Armed Forces when she was born. After her birth, Winfrey's mother travelled north and Winfrey spent her first six years living in rural poverty with her Grandma Hattie Mae. Winfrey's grandmother taught her to read before the age of three and took her to the local church, where she was nicknamed "The Preacher" for her ability to recite Bible verses. When Winfrey was a child, her grandmother would take a switch and would hit her with it when she didn't do chores or if she misbehaved in any way.

At age six 1/2, Winfrey moved to a Milwaukee inner city ghetto with her mother, who was less supportive and encouraging than her grandmother. Winfrey has stated that she was raped by her cousin, uncle, and a family friend. Despite her dysfunctional home life, Winfrey skipped two of her earliest grades, became the teacher's pet, and by the time she was thirteen received a scholarship to attend a prestigious all white high school in the suburbs. Although Winfrey was very popular, she couldn't afford to go out on the town as frequently as her rich classmates. Like a lot of teenagers at the end of the 1960s, Winfrey rebelled, ran away from home, and ran the streets. At age 14 her frustrated mother sent her to live with her father in Nashville, Tennessee. Vernon was strict but encouraging, and made her education a priority. Winfrey became an honors student, was voted "Most Popular Girl" and joined her High School Speech Team, and she placed 2nd in the nation in Dramatic interpretation. She won an oratory contest which secured her a full scholarship to Tennessee State University, a historically black institution, where she studied communications. At age 18, Winfrey won the Miss Black Tennessee beauty pageant.

Winfrey's grandmother has said that ever since Winfrey could talk, she was "on stage". In her youth she played games interviewing her corncob doll and the crows on the fence of her family's property. But her true media career began at age seventeen, working at a local radio station while attending Tennessee State University.

Working in local media, she was both the youngest news anchor and the first black female news anchor at Nashville's WTVF-TV. She moved to Baltimore's WJZ-TV in 1976 to co-anchor the six o'clock news. She was then recruited to join Richard Sher as co-host of WJZ's local talk show, People Are Talking, which premiered on August 14 1978. She also hosted Dialing for Dollars there as well.

Career and success

Television

In 1983, Winfrey relocated to Chicago, Illinois to host WLS-TV's low-rated half-hour morning talk show, AM Chicago. The first episode aired on January 2, 1984. Within months after Winfrey took over, the show went from last place in the ratings to overtaking Donahue as the highest rated talk show in Chicago, was renamed The Oprah Winfrey Show, expanded to a full hour and broadcast nationally beginning September 8, 1986. Having surpassed Donahue in the local market Winfrey quickly doubled her national audience, her show replacing his as the number one day-time talk show in America. Their much publicised contest was the subject of enormous scrutiny.

TV columnist Howard Rosenberg said "She's a roundhouse, a full course meal, big, brassy, loud, aggressive, hyper, laughable, lovable, soulful, tender, low-down, earthy and hungry. And she may know the way to Phil Donahue's jugular."

Newsday's Les Payne observed, "Oprah Winfrey is sharper than Donahue, wittier, more genuine, and far better attuned to her audience, if not the world."

Martha Bayles of the Wall Street Journal wrote, "It's a relief to see a garbmonger with a fond but realistic assessment of her own cultural and religious roots." In the mid-1990s Winfrey adopted a much less tabloid format doing shows about heart-disease in women, geopolitics with Lisa Ling, spirituality and meditation, and gift-giving and home decorating shows. She often interviews celebrities on issues that directly involve them in some way, such as cancer, charity work, or substance abuse. In addition, she interviews ordinary people who have done extraordinary things or been involved in important current issues.

During a lawsuit against Winfrey (see Influence), she hired Dr. Phil McGraw's company Courtroom Sciences, Inc. to help her analyze and read the jury. Dr. Phil made such an impression on Winfrey that she invited him to appear on her show. He accepted the invitation and was a resounding success. McGraw appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show for several years before launching his own show, Dr. Phil, in 2002, which was created by Winfrey's production company, Harpo Productions in partnership with Paramount which produced the show.

Perhaps Winfrey's most famous recent show was the first episode of the nineteenth season of The Oprah Winfrey Show in the fall of 2004. During the show each member of the audience received a new G6 sedan; the 276 cars were donated by Pontiac as part of a publicity stunt. The show recieved so much media attention that even the taxes on the cars became controversial.

Winfrey recently made a deal to extend her show until the 2010 – 2011 season, by which time it will have been on the air for twenty-five years. She plans to host 140 episodes per season, until her final season, when it will return to its current number, 130. Ophra Winfrey Signs with King World Productions for New Three-Year Contract to Continue as Host and Producer of The Oprah Winfrey Show through 2010-2011. kingworld.com, August 5 2004. Retrieved July 14 2006.

The 2004 Nobel Peace Prize Concert was hosted by Oprah and Tom Cruise. There were musical performances by Cyndi Lauper, Andrea Bocelli, Joss Stone, Chris Botti, Diana Krall, Tony Bennett and others. The concert was broadcasted in the United States on Dec. 23, 2004 by E!. An unofficial Winfrey fanclub also organized a petition drive in 2005 to nominate Oprah for the Nobel Peace Prize.

As well as hosting and appearing on television shows, Winfrey co-founded the women's cable television network Oxygen. She is also the president of Harpo Productions (Oprah spelled backwards).

Film

In 1985, Winfrey co-starred in Steven Spielberg's epic film adaptation of Alice Walker's award-winning novel The Color Purple. She earned immediate acclaim as Sofia, the distraught housewife. The following year Winfrey was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, but she lost to Anjelica Huston. Many believe this was due in part to the Academy's "anti-Spielberg" bias, thinking the film would have been better directed by an African-American. The Color Purple has now been made into a Broadway musical and opened late 2005, with Winfrey credited as a producer.

In October 1998, Winfrey produced and starred in the film Beloved, based upon Toni Morrison's Pulitzer Prize winning novel of the same name. To prepare for her role as Sethe, the protagonist and former slave, Winfrey experienced a 24-hour simulation of the experience of slavery, which included being tied up and blindfolded and left alone in the woods. Critics said this would not even come close to the experience. Despite major advertising, including two episodes of her talk show dedicated solely to the film, and good critical reviews, Beloved opened to poor box-office results, losing approximately $30 million. Many have suggested that the film was too long and complex for the movie going public, and the subject matter too politically sensitive. Despite the film's depressing themes, Winfrey managed to keep the cast motivated and inspired. "Here we were working on this project with the heavy underbelly of political and social realism, and she managed to lighten things up," said costar Thandie Newton. "I've worked with a lot of good actors, and I know Oprah hasn't made many films. I was stunned. She's a very strong technical actress and it's because she's so smart. She's acute. She's got a mind like a razor blade." (Vogue Magazine Oct, 1998)

In 2005, Harpo Productions released another film adaptation of a famous American novel, Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937). The made-for-television film Their Eyes Were Watching God was based upon a teleplay by Suzan-Lori Parks, and starred Halle Berry in the lead female role.

Books and magazines

Winfrey publishes two magazines: O, The Oprah Magazine and O at Home. She has co-authored five books; at the announcement of her future weight loss book (to be co-authored with her personal trainer Bob Greene), it was said that her undisclosed advance fee had broken the record for the world's highest book advance fee, previously held by former U.S. President Bill Clinton for his autobiography My Life.. In 2002 Fortune Magazine called O, the Oprah Magazine the most successful start-up ever in the industry. The Business of Being Oprah. Fortune, April 8 2004. Retrieved July 7 2006.

Online

Oprah.com is a website created by Winfrey's company to provide resources and interactive content relating to her shows, magazines, book club, and public charity. Through Oprah.com Winfrey raised over 3 million dollars for Katrina victims and helped to capture 4 accused child predators. Oprah.com averages more than 100 million page views and more than three million users per month.

Radio

On February 9 2006 it was announced that Winfrey signed a $55 million, 3-year contract with XM Satellite Radio to establish a new radio channel. The channel will be called Oprah & Friends and will feature popular contributors to The Oprah Winfrey Show and 'O' Magazine including Nate Berkus, Dr. Mehmet Oz, Bob Greene, Dr. Robin Smith and Marianne Williamson. Oprah & Friends will air 24/7 on XM Radio Channel 156. Winfrey's contract requires her to be on air 30 minutes a week, 39 weeks a year. The 30-minute weekly show will feature Winfrey with friend Gayle King. Winfrey's audience is extremely loyal and XM hopes that the "Oprah Effect" can have the same effect on XM subscription sales that she does on the New York Times Best Seller list, thanks to her book club. The channel will be broadcast from a new studio at Winfrey's Chicago headquarters and is set to air in September 2006.

Future projects

Winfrey's latest television project will be developing and producing a new talk show for popular Food Network celebrity chef, Rachael Ray, which will begin airing sometime in 2006.

Winfrey will voice the part of Gussy the Goose in the upcoming Charlotte's Web movie.

Personal life

Winfrey currently lives on "The Promised Land", her 42 acre (170,000 m²) ocean and mountain view estate in Montecito, California, outside of Santa Barbara. Rumors state that Winfrey was at a party the previous owners were throwing and so fell in love with the estate that she was reported to have purchased it by writing a personal check for $50,000,000 USD, although it was not for sale. Winfrey also owns a house in Lavallette, New Jersey.

Winfrey has never married, but it is widely assumed that she has lived with her partner Stedman Graham for almost twenty years and is the mother of adopted orphans who live in Africa. She previously dated movie critic Roger Ebert who she credits with advising her to take her show into syndication. The relationship of Winfrey and Graham has been documented through the years with numerous romantic tabloid articles often accompanied by color spreads of the couple at home and on lavish vacations. Prior to meeting Graham, Winfrey's love life was a lot less stable. A self-described promiscuous teen who was a victim of sexual abuse, Winfrey became a mother at the age of 14, though her son died while still in infancy. A relationship with a married man caused Winfrey to contemplate suicide in her twenties and an ex-lover from that same period tried to write a tell-all book in which he claimed that he and Winfrey smoked crack together.

Her celebrity status notwithstanding, the billionaire Winfrey served in 2004 on a murder-trial jury. The trial was held in Chicago, Illinois, and involved a man accused of murder after an argument over a counterfeit fifty-dollar bill. The jury voted to convict the man of murder.[http://news.elitestv.com/pub/2004/Aug/EEN41246835e91bd.html

In June 2005, Winfrey was denied access to the Hermès company's flagship store in Paris, France. Winfrey arrived fifteen minutes after the store's formal closing time, though the store was still very active and high end stores routinely extend hours for VIP customers. Winfrey believed she would have been allowed in the store if she were a white celebrity. "I know the difference between a store that is closed and a store that is closed to me," explained Winfrey. In September 2005, Hermès USA CEO Robert Chavez was a guest on The Oprah Winfrey Show and sincerely apologized for a rude employee.

On December 1 2005, Winfrey appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman to promote the new Broadway musical The Color Purple, of which she was a producer, joining the host for the first time in sixteen years. The episode was hailed by some as the "television event of the decade" and helped Letterman attract his largest audience in more than 11 years: 13.45 million viewers.^* Although a much-rumored feud was said to have been the cause of the rift, both Winfrey and Letterman balked at such talk. "I want you to know, it's really over, whatever you thought was happening," said Winfrey.

Winfrey's show is based in Chicago, Illinois, so she spends time there, specifically in the neighborhood of Streeterville, but otherwise resides in California. Reportedly, she has recently purchased several properties on Maui, Hawaii.

For the 2006 PBS program, African American Lives, Winfrey had her DNA tested. This genetic test determined that her maternal line originated among the Kpelle ethnic group, in the area that today is Liberia. It was also determined that she is part Native American (about 8 % according to the test) and East Asian (about 3% according to the test).

To celebrate her African American herritage and to honor her cultural and political heroines of the civil rights era, Winfrey hosted the Legends Weekend; a televised ball that took place at her California home and was watched by 11 million viewers. Among the most prominent honorees were civil rights icons Rosa Parks and Coretta Scott King who both died less than a year after being honored.

Wealth and philanthropy

Born in rural poverty, then raised by a welfare mother in the ghetto, Winfrey became a millionaire at age 32 when her talk show went national. Because of the amount of revenue the show generated, Winfrey was in a position to negotiate ownership of the show and start her own production company. By 1994 the show's ratings were still thriving and Winfrey negotiated a contract that earned her nine figures a year. Considered the richest woman in entertainment by the early 1990s, at age 41 Winfrey's wealth crossed another milestone when with a net worth of $340 million, she replaced Bill Cosby as the only African American on the Forbes 400. Although blacks are 12% of the U.S. population, Winfrey has remained the only black wealthy enough to rank among America's 400 richest people nearly every year since 1995. (BET founder Bob Johnson briefly joined her on the list from 2001-2003 before his ex-wife reportedly acquired part of his fortune.) ^*

With a 2000 net-worth of $800 million, Winfrey is believed to have been the richest African American of the 20th century. To celebrate her status as a historical figure, Professor Juliet E.K. Walker of the University of Illinois created the course "Oprah the tycoon".^*

Forbes' international rich list has listed Winfrey as the world's only black billionairefor the past three straight years and as the first black woman billionaire in world history.[http://www.thisdayonline.com/archive/2003/03/02/20030302news06.html Winfrey's 2006 net-worth of $1.4 billion USD placed her as the 562nd richest person in the world.

In 1998, Winfrey began Oprah's Angel Network, a charity aimed at encouraging people around the world to make a difference in the lives of underprivileged others. Accordingly, Oprah's Angel Network supports charitable projects and provides grants to nonprofit organizations around the world that share this vision. To date, Oprah's Angel Network has raised more than (US)$51,000,000. (1 Million dollars donated by Jon Bon Jovi on 6/21/06) Winfrey personally covers all administrative costs associated with the charity, so 100% of all funds raised go to charity programs. The Angel Network

Although Winfrey's show is known for raising money through her public charity and the cars and gifts she gives away on TV are often donated by corporations in exchange for publicity, behind the scenes Winfrey personally donates more of her own money to charity than any other show business celebrity in America. In 2005 she became the first black listed by Business Week as one of America's top 50 most generous philanthropists, having given an estimated $250 million. Despite being the 235th richest American in 2005,[http://www.forbes.com/lists/2005/54/O0ZT.html Winfrey was the 32nd most philanthropic.

Winfrey was the recipient of the first Bob Hope Humanitarian Award at the 2002 Emmy Awards for services to television and film. In 2004, Winfrey and her team filmed an episode of her show entitled Oprah's Christmas Kindness, in which Winfrey, her best friend Gayle King, her partner Stedman Graham, and some crew members travelled to South Africa to bring attention to the plight of young children affected by poverty and AIDS. During the 21-day whirlwind trip, Winfrey and her crew visited schools and orphanages in poverty-stricken areas, and at different set-up points in the areas distributed Christmas presents to 50,000 children, with dolls for the girls and soccer balls for the boys. In addition, each child was given a backpack full of school supplies and received two sets of school uniforms for their sex, in addition to two sets of socks, two sets of underwear, and a pair of shoes. Throughout the show, Winfrey appealed to viewers to donate money to Oprah's Angel Network for poverty-stricken and AIDS-affected children in Africa, and pledged that she personally would oversee ^* where that money was spent. From that show alone, viewers around the world donated over (US)$7,000,000.

Influence

Rankings as world's most influential woman

Winfrey was called "arguably the world's most powerful woman" by CNN and Time.com. Time Magazine named Winfrey one of the 100 people who most influenced the 20th century, as well as one of the 100 most influential people of 2004, 2005, and again in 2006. Winfrey and Bill Gates are the only two people in the world to make all four lists. At the end of the 20th century Life magazine listed Winfrey as both the most influential woman and the most influential black person of her generation, and in a cover story profile the magazine called her "America's most powerful woman". [http://www.life.com/Life/boomers/50boomers01.html#05 Ladies Home Journal also ranked Winfrey number one in their list of the most powerful women in America. In 2003 Winfrey edged out both Superman and Elvis to be named the greatest pop culture icon of all time by VH1.In 2005 Forbes named her the world's most powerful celebrity.[http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/06/16/entertainment/main702512.shtml Columnist Maureen Dowd seems to agree with such asessments:

"She is the top alpha female in this country. She has more credibility than the president. Other successful women, such as Hillary Clinton and Martha Stewart, had to be publicly slapped down before they could move forward. Even Condi has had to play the protege with Bush. None of this happened to Oprah — she is a straight ahead success story." ^*

Vanity Fair wrote:

"Oprah Winfrey arguably has more influence on the culture than any university president, politician, or religious leader, except perhaps the Pope."^*

Winfrey's influence reaches far beyond pop-culture and into unrelated industries where many believe she has the power to cause enormous market swings and radical price changes with a single comment. During a show about mad cow disease with Howard Lyman (aired on April 16 1996), Winfrey exclaimed, "It has just stopped me cold from eating another burger!" Texas cattlemen sued her and Lyman in early 1998 for "false defamation of perishable food" and "business disparagement," claiming that Winfrey's remarks subsequently sent cattle prices tumbling, costing beef producers some States dollar|USD$" target="_blank" >^*12 million. On February 26, after a trial spanning over two months in an Amarillo, Texas court in the thick of cattle country, a jury found Winfrey and Lyman were not liable for damages. (After the trial, she received a postcard from Rosanne Barr reading, "Congratulations, you beat the meat!") In June 2005 the first case of mad cow disease in a cow native to the United States was detected in Texas. The USDA concluded that it was most likely infected in Texas prior to 1997. ^*

In 2005 Winfrey was named the greatest woman in American history as part of a public poll as part of The Greatest American. She was ranked #9 overall on the list of greatest Americans.

Media counterculture

While Phil Donahue has been credited with pioneering the tabloid talk show genre, what has been described as the warmth, intimacy and personal confession Winfrey brought to the format is believed to have both popularized ^*^*" target="_blank" >In the scholarly text Freaks Talk Back Yale sociology professor Joshua Gamson credits the tabloid talk show genre with providing much needed high impact media visibility for gays, bisexuals, transsexuals, and transgender people and doing more to make them mainstream and socially acceptable than any other development of the 20th century. In the book's editorial review Michael Bronski wrote "In the recent past, lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgendered people had almost no presence on television. With the invention and propagation of tabloid talk shows such as Jerry Springer, Jenny Jones, Oprah, and Geraldo, people outside the sexual mainstream now appear in living rooms across America almost every day of the week."[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226280659/103-0089019-5779069?v=glance&n=283155" target="_blank" >^*

An example of one such show by Winfey occurred in the 1980s where for the entire hour, members of the studio audience stood up one by one, gave their name and announced that they were gay. Also in the 1980s Winfrey took her show to West Virgina to confront a town gripped by AIDS paranoia because a gay man living in the town had HIV. Winfrey interviewed the man who had become a social outcast, the town's mayor who drained the swimming pool because the man had gone swimming, and debated the town's hostile residents. "But I hear this is a God fearing town" Winfrey scolded the homophobic studio audience, "where's all that Christian love and understanding?" During a show on gay marriage in the 1990s, a woman in Winfrey's audience stood up to complain that gays were constantly flaunting their sex lives and she announced that she was tired of it. "You know what I'm tired of," replied Winfrey, "heterosexual males raping and sodomizing young girls. That's what I'm tired of." Her rebuttal inspired a screaming standing ovation from that show's mostly gay studio audience.

Gamson credits the tabloid talk show fad with making society more socially progressive towards sexual nonconformists. Examples include a recent Time magazine article describing early 21st century gays coming out of the closet younger and younger and gay suicide rates plummeting. Gamson also believes that tabloid talk shows caused gays to be embraced on more traditional forms of media. Examples include sitcoms like Will & Grace, primetime shows like Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and Oscar nomianted feature films like Brokeback Mountain. While having changed with the times from her tabloid talk show roots, Winfrey continues to include gay guests by using her show to promote openly gay personalities like her hairdresser, makeup artist, and decorator Nate Berkus who inspired an outpouring of sympathy from middle America after grieving the loss of his partner in the 2004 Tsunami on the Oprah Winfrey Show. Winfrey's "therapeutic" hosting style and the tabloid talk show genre has been credited or blamed for leading the media counterculture of the 1980s and 1990s which some believe broke 20th century taboos, led to America's self-help obsession, and created confession culture. The Wall Street Journal coined the term "Oprahfication" which means public confession as a form of therapy.

In April 1997, Winfrey played the therapist on the sitcom Ellen to whom the character (and the real life Ellen DeGeneres) confessed she was a lesbian. In 1998, Mark Steyn in the National Review wrote of Winfrey "Today, no truly epochal moment in the history of the Republic occurs unless it is validated by her presence. When Ellen said, 'Yep! I'm gay,' Oprah was by her side, guesting on the sitcom as (what else?) the star's therapist. She is, of course, therapist to an entire nation. If only it weren't so hard for the rest of us to get an appointment. Asked to explain the cause of the 1992 riots, one angry black looter from South Central said: 'We had to do something to get Oprah to Los Angeles'"

Communication style

By confessing intimate details about her weight problems, tumultuous love life, and sexual abuse, and crying along side her guests, Time Magazine credits Winfrey with creating a new form of media communication known as "rapport talk" as distinguished from the "report talk" of Phil Donahue:

Winfrey saw television's power to blend public and private; while it links strangers and conveys information over public airwaves, TV is most often viewed in the privacy of our homes. Like a family member, it sits down to meals with us and talks to us in the lonely afternoons. Grasping this paradox, ...She makes people care because she cares. That is Winfrey's genius, and will be her legacy, as the changes she has wrought in the talk show continue to permeate our culture and shape our lives.

Observers even noted the "Oprahfication" of politics by noting "Oprah-style debates" and Bill Clinton's empathetic speaking style. Columnist Maureen Dowd commented on the symbolism of Bill Clinton seeking an "Oprah-style" talk show when he left the presidency:

There is a delicious symmetry in Clinton's exploring the idea of a daytime syndicated talk show: the man who brought Oprah-style psychobabble and misty confessions to politics taking the next step and actually transmogrifying into Oprah.

^* Winfrey's intimate confessions about her weight (which peaked at 108 kg (238 lb), also paved the way for other plus sized women in media such as Roseanne Barr, Rosie O'Donnell and Star Jones. The November 1988 Ms. magazine observed that "in a society where fat is taboo, she made it in a medium that worships thin and celebrates a bland, white-bread prettiness of body and personality...But Winfrey made fat sexy, elegant - damned near gorgeous - with her drop-dead wardrobe, easy body language, and cheerful sensuality."

Oprah's Book Club

In the late 1990s, Winfrey introduced a new segment on her television show: Oprah's Book Club. The segment focused on new books and classics, and often brought obscure novels to popular attention. The book club became such a powerful force that whenever Winfrey introduced a new book as her book-club selection, it instantly became a best-seller (known as the Oprah Effect); for example, when she selected the classic John Steinbeck novel East of Eden, it soared to the top of the book charts. Being recognized by Winfrey often means a million additional book sales for an author.^*

In The book club that changed America, Kathleen Rooney describes Winfrey as "a serious American intellectual who pioneered the use of electronic media, specifically television and the Internet, to take reading-a decidedly non-technological and highly individual act-and highlight its social elements and uses in such a way to motivate millions of erstwhile non-readers to pick up books."

Oprah's Book Club is so powerful that, when she selected his memoir Night in 2006, just a few months later Time Magazine named author Elie Wiesel as one of the 100 most influential people on the planet. Winfrey and Wiesel travelled together back to the Auschwitz concentration camp with Wiesel telling Winfrey that he would not have made the trip with just anyone and that it was probably his last trip there. "What you did was so respectful," Wiesel told Oprah. 50,000 high school students competed to be part of a follow-up show in which only 50 winners of an essay contest were selected to meet Winfrey and Wiesel. Consistent with the book's theme, many of the winning students had endured their own forms of discrimination including homophobia and surviving the Rwanda Genocide (and being reunited with lost family on the show). The students were surprised to learn that AT&T had given them all a $5000 scholarship to the college of their choice, and even more surprised when Winfrey decided to double their scholarships herself by adding an additional $5000.

Spiritual icon

In 2002, Christianity Today published an article called "The Church of O" in which they concluded that Winfrey had emerged as an influential spiritual leader. "Since 1994, when she abandoned traditional talk-show fare for more edifying content, and 1998, when she began 'Change Your Life TV,' Oprah's most significant role has become that of spiritual leader. To her audience of more than 22 million mostly female viewers, she has become a postmodern priestess—an icon of church-free spirituality."The Church of O. Christianity Today, March 22 2002. Retrieved July 7 2006. The sentiment was seconded by Marcia Z. Nelson in her book The Gospel According to Oprah.^* On the season premier of Winfrey's 13th season Rosanne Barr told Winfrey "you're the African Mother Goddess of us all" inspiring much enthusiasm from the studio audience.

Fan base

Winfrey's audience is mostly female, especially consisting of stay at home moms. Winfrey has said many times that she considers being a mom to be the hardest job on Earth and that mothers are the "true spiritual leaders". Her audience is racially and economically diverse but Fortune described her show as appealing to the "middle-aged, middlebrow audience that advertisers such as Procter & Gamble, Sears, and Wal-Mart are eager to reach". The audience for her magazine is considerabley more upscale, earning US$63,000 a year (well above the median for U.S. women).^* Although Winfrey's audience is sometimes spoofed for their fanatatical devotion by shows like Saturday Night Live, Winfrey has been very protective of them and gets very offended when they are publicly disparaged.

Winfrey is unique among entertainers and other talk show hosts in that she doesn't actively seek a young audience, instead reaching out more to fans her own age. Winfrey prefers shows relating to health problems related to ageing. Still Winfrey remains popular among young viewers. When professor Juliet Walker polled students at her university, female students were generally positive, although male students often dismissed Winfrey as a "messiah for stay at home moms". Many of Winfrey's biggest fans are gay males, and she has been described as a gay icon. Many gay men are attracted to Oprah's theatrical touchy-feely personality, her over the top facial expressions, her flamboyant body language, her church-free spirituality, her broadway musical The Color Purple, her enthusiastic support for the Oscars and share her admiration for Mary Tyler Moore, Barbra Streisand and Meryl Streep. One of the stars of the reality TV show The Benefactor was a gay African American man named Kevin who was so obsessed with Winfrey that he would ask "What would Oprah do?" before making any strategic decision. Another gay man included Oprah on his published list of women worshipped by gay men and asked, "What gay man hasn't watched at least 1,000 episodes of The Oprah Winfrey Show?"^*

Criticisms and controversies

Though since the mid 1990s Winfrey has changed the focus of her show, her success has been blamed for popularizing the "tabloid talk show" genre and turning it into thriving industry that has included Ricki Lake, The Jenny Jones Show, and The Jerry Springer Show. Sociologist Vicki Abt criticised tabloid talk shows for redefining social norms. In her book Coming After Oprah: Cultural Fallout in the Age of the TV talk show, Abt warned that the media revolution that followed Winfrey's success was blurring the lines between normal and deviant behavior.

Leading up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Winfrey's show received criticism for having an anti-war bias. Ben Shapiro of Townhall.com wrote:

"Oprah Winfrey is the most powerful woman in America. She decides what makes the New York Times best-seller lists. Her touchy-feely style sucks in audiences at the rate of 14 million viewers per day. But Oprah is far more than a cultural force -- she's a dangerous political force as well, a woman with unpredictable and mercurial attitudes toward the major issues of the day."

In 2006, rappers Ludacris, 50 Cent and Ice Cube criticized Winfrey for what they perceived as an anti-hip hop bias. In an interview with GQ magazine, Ludacris said that Winfrey gave him "hard time" about his lyrics and edited comments he made during an appearance on her show with the cast of the film Crash. He also claimed that he wasn't initially invited on the show with the rest of the cast. Winfrey responded by saying that she's opposed to rap lyrics that "marginalize women," but enjoys some artists, including Kanye West, who appeared on her show. She said she spoke with Ludracris backstage after his appearance to explain her position and said she understood that his music was for entertainment purposes, but that some of his listeners might take it literally.

Oprah's Book Club

Oprah's Book Club has occasionally chosen books which have proven to be controversial. Most notably, Jonathan Franzen questioned the Club's selection process and credibility, and there was a live television confrontation over allegations of fabrication regarding James Frey's A Million Little Pieces.

Works

Television

Year	Title	Role	Other notes
1997	Before Women Had Wings	Miss Zora	(also producer)
1993	There Are No Children Here	LaJoe Rivers
1992	Lincoln	Narrator	(documentary)
1990 - 1991	Brewster Place	Mattie Michael
1989	The Women of Brewster Place	Mattie Michael	(also executive producer)
1986 - present	The Oprah Winfrey Show	Herself

Movies

Year	Title	Role	Other notes
2006	Charlotte's Web	Gussy
2005	Emmanuel's Gift	Narrator	(documentary)
2004	Brothers of the Borderland	Narrator	(short subject)
2003	Unchained Memories: Readings from the Slave Narratives	Narrator	(documentary)
1998	Beloved	Sethe
1990	Listen Up: The Lives of Quincy Jones		(documentary)
1987	Throw Momma from the Train		(cameo)
1986	Native Son	Janet Thomason
1985	The Color Purple	Sofia

Books

Make the Connection : Ten Steps to a Better Body and a Better Life, by Bob Greene and Oprah Winfrey, 1999; ISBN 0786882980.
Journey to Beloved, by Oprah Winfrey and Ken Regan, 1998; 0786864583.
The Uncommon Wisdom of Oprah Winfrey : A Portrait in Her Own Words, by Bill Adler (ed) and Oprah Winfrey, 1997; ISBN 1559724196.
A Journal of Daily Renewal : The Companion to Make the Connection, by Bob Greene and Oprah Winfrey, 1996; ISBN 0786882158.
In The Kitchen With Rosie: Oprah's Favorite Recipes, by Rosie Daley and Oprah Winfrey, 1994; ISBN 0679434046.

References

External links

Gourt Home::Gourt :: Oprah Winfrey

Early life

Career and success

Television

Film

Books and magazines

Online

Radio

Future projects

Personal life

Wealth and philanthropy

Influence

Rankings as world's most influential woman

Media counterculture

Communication style

Oprah's Book Club

Spiritual icon

Fan base

Criticisms and controversies

Oprah's Book Club

Works

Television

Movies

Books

References

See also

External links