Showing posts with label Oprah Winfrey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Oprah Winfrey. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Taking OWNership of exploitation


Oh, Lord, won't you find me a sibling to hawk?

A secret one is better, 'cause ratings do talk.

Worked hard all my lifetime to be a billionaire.

So Lord, won't you find me a sibling to hawk?


THAT'S ALL, everybody -- apart from the requisite apologies to the late Janis Joplin, et al -- because Lisa de Moraes pretty much has said all that needs to be said about Oprah Winfrey's "big secret" in The Washington Post:
Lest ratings lag this week, Oprah announced on her show Monday - after her triumphant visit to Australia - that she has a half sister she never knew about.

Modestly billing it as "the miracle of all miracles," Oprah Winfrey said that she learned last fall about Patricia, her half sister who was given up for adoption by their mother shortly after she was born in 1963. Oprah and Patricia met on Thanksgiving Day.

Winfrey was just 9 and living with her father when her mother gave birth to Patricia and gave her up for adoption. Oprah told her studio audience this on the show in its final season of making her queen of syndicated daytime talk TV.

Oprah said she never even knew her mother was pregnant.

Winfrey made "home video" of her first meeting with her half sister; she and partner Stedman Graham drove to Milwaukee to finally meet Patricia, she explained.

Well, that could not have worked out more neatly if one of the pair had been some kind of queen of daytime TV.

And speaking thereof, Winfrey told her audience that she chose to make the announcement herself - so that the media would not exploit it.

We'll give you a minute to savor that one.


(snip)


The "new" Patricia looked so much like Oprah's other, deceased half sister named Patricia that "it was 'a "Beloved" moment, if you know what that means - a daughter who comes back from the dead in the movie 'Beloved,' " Oprah explained.

A move that stars: Oprah Winfrey.

And which was produced by: Oprah Winfrey.

Oprah got choked up when she began to tell her studio audience about how this Patricia differs from the other Patricia, who, Oprah reminded the crowd, sold Oprah's teen-pregnancy story to a tabloid.

Oprah also got choked up as she told her studio audience how so many people have betrayed her since she became a celebrity, and that it really moved her that this Patricia kept the secret of her relationship to Oprah quiet all this time - until it best suited Oprah's final-season scheduling plans.
LISA DE MORAES, I bow down before thy truth-telling abilities. American TV viewers, meantime, are bowing down before something else entirely.