At the risk of violating our social lèse-majesté laws, I will just put this out there: I despise Oprah Winfrey. I think she is a narcissistic and shameless self-promoter who would wrap her own children in raw meat and feed them to a bear if she thought it would garner media attention. If one stops and thinks about, she has added very little value to the world and the areas where she has have been surrounded the pomp and circumstance of a Roman Emperor.
I haven’t always had such a loathing of Ms. Winfrey, however. It’s just her fairly recent validation of three repugnant characters: Jenny McCarthy, Suzanne Somers, and, just this week, Sarah Palin.Giving appearances to the first two is just irresponsible. Ms. McCarthy, whose claim to fame is spreading her legs for Hugh Hefner’s cameras, is a recent anti-vaccine crusader who blames her son’s autism on the Measles-Mumps-Rubella (MMR) vaccine. It is important to note that the assertion of a connection between the MMR vaccine and autism has been debunked several times over by reputable studies and that Ms. McCarthy’s son’s brain damage is more likely due to her prolonged inaction when he was experiencing febrile seizures. A fever can follow the receipt of this vaccine, as any pediatrician will tell you, but proper management of a fever probably could have avoided Ms. McCarthy’s son’s seizures and subsequent condition.
Being that it is much more convenient for Ms. McCarthy to blame someone else for her son’s condition rather than herself, Ms. McCarthy has embarked on her crusade and opportunistic figures like Ms. Winfrey have wasted no time in providing her an outlet. Ms. Winfrey has further insulted rationality by appeasing Ms. McCarthy’s absurd and intellectually lazy demand that no doctor (or anyone who would question her ridiculous assertions) appear with her when she pontificates. What a way to debate!
Ms. Winfrey’s confirmation of Suzanne Somers is just as short-sighted and dangerous. Ms. Somers’ latest offering to the masses is the idea that a positive attitude will cure breast cancer and that chemotherapy actually makes cancer worse. Nobody has to tell me how excruciating chemotherapy is and that in some cases its effects are, momentarily, worse than the cancer itself. But, to assert chemotherapy is nothing but a negative and that your attitude and diet (Suzanne Somers sells a suite of snake oil masqueraded as diet food) will be what cures your cancerous ails is stupid, if not disingenuous. Ms. Winfrey knows better and knows that perhaps thousands of women will follow this lemming off the cliff in denying themselves potentially life-saving treatment because they “saw on Oprah that it’s bad.”
The straw that broke the camel’s back for me was Monday’s appearance of Sarah Palin. Unlike the aforementioned who offer something (albeit something stupid), Mrs. Palin offers absolutely nothing. Oh wait, that’s not right, she offers a book which highlights the ultra-moral life she has chosen to live alongside blithering, yet stinging, insults of everyone who has given her anything short of glowing praise. This might be the best testament of Ms. Winfrey’s opportunism, as she is validating the self-proclaimed nemesis of all things Barack Obama, whom she supposes she anointed with her golden endorsement.
It’s hardly a surprise that an egoist and self-seeker like Oprah Winfrey would be able to resist someone like Sarah Palin. Every time she crawls out from under her rock to mouth-fart, she creates a media firestorm. Each new publicity stunt demonstrates that she is afraid of becoming irrelevant which, deep down, Ms. Winfrey fears, as well. While (God willing) it is possible that Sarah Palin may soon fade away permanently to obscurity, I doubt seriously this phobia will come true for Ms. Winfrey. It is a shame.
No comments:
Post a Comment