American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture
EM writes on the cult of Oprah hosting the Obama Christmas special:
Don’t get me wrong, I envy her a little. Who wouldn’t want to be the person millions of gullible people turn to for advice on all the wrong things?
Indeed, and Oprah ought to be credited for having made more marriages miserable than most anyone else in history.
Which reminds me of Peter Drucker’s phrase,
The only reason the word guru is so popular is because charlatan is so hard to spell.
The Anchoress writes about Sarah Palin on Oprah:
It was like watching two lightly muzzled Doberman Pinschers, behaving because they have to, but with an undergrowl that translates, roughly, into “if we’re ever alone together in the yard, you’re going down…”
Go read the rest.
William Jacobson’s advice for Andrew Sullivan and others who liveblogged it: Live Blogging Sarah — Get a Life People.
Video clip via the HuffPo
UPDATE
RightPundits has the first part of the show,
Last week, Roman Polanski; today, the perversion du jour, at the Church of Oprah:
Somehow I had managed to not know about Mackenzie Phillips’s heroin addiction and her 10-yr long incestuous sexual relation with her own father.
Ten years. The word wrong doesn’t begin to describe it.
Evil, no matter how you look at it.
How more revolting can it get? Well, she can write a book now that he’s dead, and go on Oprah to sell it. This means big bucks for Mac, large viewership of enablers for Oprah, and yet another instance of the Church of Oprah granting non-judgmental indulgences to the unrepentant perverse – after a full hour’s worth of wallowing in the sordid details (granted, the phrase sordid details doesn’t come close).
Kurt Schlichter makes the case for ending the Celebrity Dysfunction Complex:
Ladies and gentlemen, Mackenzie Phillips, who as an adult, shot smack and banged her dad – thanks for sharing your amazing journey!
But shame is so old-fashioned. It makes people feel bad. And who wants to make people feel bad? Probably those mean old conservatives who have nothing better to do. No, it’s easier to simply normalize dysfunction, to rationalize wrong, to mainstream evil.
You get to be the good guy, the nice guy. You get to be Oprah.
That’s how the Celebrity Dysfunction Complex works. The Complex encompasses talk shows, tabloids, web sites – anything that embraces the dysfunctional, caresses them, pats them on the head, assuring them they are blameless while displaying their dysfunction for our amusement. And by doing so, the Complex whittles away at the differences between the dysfunctional and the functional until they can’t be told apart.
This requires a rejection of judgment. Oprah would never be judgmental. That’s too emblematic of a narrow-minded worldview where all you see are black and white instead of moral relativism’s gauzy, comforting gray.
But Schlichtler points out that recognizing right from wrong is difficult. It carries a price (in cash, for Mac & Oprah):
Right and wrong are troublesome concepts because they impose limits on what one can and can’t do. This is against everything that the Celebrity Dysfunction Complex stands for, because if people start judging those they see wasting their lives and their talents on drugs, alcohol, perversions and all manner of other debauchery, then the circus is over. When Lindsey Lohan sobers up, the party ends. When the mutants from the Springer-type talk shows stop living like the crew from Deliverance, the gravy train derails. And the Celebrity Dysfunction Complex depends on a never-ending supply of new human train wrecks.
The task of bringing down the Celebrity Dysfunction Complex falls to us. You have a remote that goes with that big screen. Up near the top is a red button. When some degenerate comes on your screen, supported and approved of by media demigods, spouting off about how being a stripper is empowering, push that button.
No, I don’t watch Oprah. I suggest you don’t, either.
Stop buying what Oprah’s selling.
Time to say, Enough.
