Stranger than Fiction

After twenty-five years Oprah ended her talk show by delivering an hour-long “love letter”.   I, with millions of others watched. 

She impacted many people either directly or indirectly.  I hate to admit it, no really. I really hate to confess that she had an impact on me in spite of my conscience efforts to the contrary.   If Oprah endorsed it, I would immediately walk away from it.   It was not personal to Oprah the person, I think she is a lovely lady, but it is more of a reaction to the industry that is Oprah. 

I am a type of person that abhors trends, groupies, or fads. The whole “Oprah craze" was way too cultish for my liking.  People were following her every word, liking her “favorite things” joining her book club, without a critical mind or second thought.  My point, if Oprah endorsement it you bet that it would go to the top.   This type of power given to one person goes against everything I believe.  Admittedly, that is not Oprah's fault. 

I think, there are two camps of people where Oprah is concerned, in one camp people Love her, and in the other people hate her.  Personally, I think hate is too strong a word.  Perhaps, they don’t hate her in as much as they don’t place her on a pedestal or think that her word is gospel.   I belong to neither camp.  I didn’t love her, nor did I hate her.  I felt she was so far removed from my life that she held no relevance to me.  That is, until the spring of 2008!

It began with a book gifted from hubby.  Horror of horrors, he gave me a book recommended by Oprah.  What was he thinking?  It sat untouched for a few weeks, and then one day, I picked it up and started reading. 

Intrigued, I decided to google the author and that led me to Oprah.   Oprah was doing her first online web course with the author, Eckhart Tolle.  I signed on for the full ten weeks.  But that is not the most interesting part. 

It was through the comments section that I met Carol who because we had so much in common became friends.  The crazy thing is, we were more connected than we could have imagined.  

Coincidently, she knew my niece who is living in Australia.  Furthermore, she also knew an aboriginal elder I visited on a previous trip to Austraila. In fact, believe it or not,  she lived right next door to him! Moreover, over two million people were on that message board and the messages where changing quickly.  How we ever connected, being from different time zones, in different countries, is beyond chance and incredibly Oprah facilitated it.   I had the good fortune to traveled to Australia that fall but my schedule was too hectic for me to meet Carol in person, it would have been heaven to have tea and cookies with her.

I blogged about it here but didn’t give Oprah credit for being the conduit to this amazing introduction. 

Indeed, life is a mystery.  Oprah, from the bottom of my heart, thank you.  Could we ever cross paths again and maybe this time in person?  Who knows, life can be stranger than fiction. 

Oprah is human, not an Icon!

Oprah represents all of us who have a dream, but what sets her apart from most of us is her tenacity and perseverance (Not to mention, she is rich beyond our wildest dreams). She never gives up until her dream becomes reality, and then she dreams some more…

In my head, I am Oprah’s best friend and like all friends we’ve have our disagreements. I’ve composed long letters in my head to her setting out my reasons for disagreeing with her and hopefully compelling her to see it from my point of view. For example, I had some serious concerns with how she was setting up her school for girls in South Africa. In particular, taking children from their families to give them "a better life" without any regard for their culture smacks too much like how the the residential schools in Canada were managed by the church.

Our serious conversations (in my head) are most often about how the boundaries between her public life and personal life are blurred. And as she becomes more isolated the two become one leaving little room for her to be her “authentic self” and who to trust becomes increasingly difficult.

Along comes Kitty Kelly Unauthorized Oprah Biographer. (interview with Matt Lauer and Erica Jong, Oprah, Kitty and Me)

I read the book, and by-in-large feel that Kelly did a balance job of writing about Oprah’s life in spite of the difficulty in getting sources. However, Kelly writes mostly the tantalizing and sensational bits of Oprah’s life, which are dated before Oprah became “Oprah”. Maybe that’s what she thinks sells, but it does not make a great book.

The argument biographers have in supporting writing about someone, especially if it is unauthorized, is that this person is in the “public” and the public has the right to know. I think this premise is wrong. I really don’t care if she (Oprah) had a tremulous and rebellious teenage phase, who hasn’t. Indeed, fragments of our past does not create a clear picture of who we are in the present.

I would much prefer to read an authorized biography than an unauthorized one for exactly the reason that it is their life and it is up to them what they want shared publicly. It is no wonder Oprah has to go to extremes to keep her life private. And in my head it will always be just Oprah and me, can't get much more private than that. We only have one life and she, my best friend (in my head), Oprah, is living her life, which needs no apology.