As someone who has always disliked Oprah’s touchy-feely, anti-intellectual approach, which I think has seriously lowered the tone of American discourse, I applaud this letter that the American Thinker published, especially the first two paragraphs. (I’m not sure if I agree with the third, since I think part of her attraction to Obama’s candidacy is definitely racial, but part of it is the same touchy-feely, ignorant anti-intellectualism I just decried.)
Much of what is wrong with Western Civilization today can be summed up in two words—Oprah Winfrey. With Oprah, facts, reality and logic mean nothing, it is only how you feel about a matter that is important. She was an evil John the Baptist who prepared the way for Bill Clinton and his “I feel your pain” nonsense; and today she is operating as a female Rasputin in her relationship with Obama, whose only qualification for being President is the emotional effect he has on his followers.
Our next President will face the hard realities of a world in crisis. Our next President must lead us against vicious enemies who are unmoved by anyone’s personal charisma; enemies who honor only the emotions of hatred. The last thing we need in such a time is the Oprah and Obama feel-good fantasy falsehood.
In refusing access to her very influential show to all candidates except Obama, Oprah is also revealing her racist inclinations. She built her media empire by manipulating and mesmerizing millions of Caucasian women, but now her prejudices against them have come to light. Oprah is a sign of the times. We must wake up, take her influence seriously, and sound an alarm.
mike sutton
UPDATE: The Captain has more on the Oprah effect.
Filed under: Bits and Pieces | Tagged: 17, 692 |
Bookworm Room (ARCHIVES) 
Greetings:
Growing up in the Bronx, back in the joy of my youth, basketball was the primary way I preferred to waste my time. As I got better at it, a handful of the local guys and I would travel around looking for games and competition in other neighborhoods some of which were quite far and ethnically different from our home ground.
When word of this got back to parental headquarters, I received the customary direction from my mother that my “father wants to talk to you in the living room.”
Now, my father had grown up in Ireland and had been in this country about 30 odd years at this point. He was a practicing Catholic and had no particular bone to pick with blacks that I was able to identify. He wanted to know where I was going and with whom I was going. Some of the places were considered “rougher” neighborhoods than ours and he asked if I thought I could handle any eventualities. I told him that usually we knew someone where we went as that was how the games were arranged.
I think that I gave him enough information for him to calm my mother’s worries, but at the end of our discussion, he told me not to ever expect the blacks to stand up for me against their own people, regardless of right or wrong. He said, “it may happen, but it’s nothing to count on.”
Oprah’s modus operandi highlights the distinction between liberals and conservatives. Liberals base decisions on emotion, conservatives do so on reason. This is why the Left is so ends-oriented. If it gets them where they want to go (i.e., if it makes them feel good about something), any means are justified. Conservatives, on the other hand, use reason, and will deny their desires for the individual in favor of the needs of society as a whole. Most notably, conservative judges, often originalist by nature, will apply the law as written, even if the result in a given case is “unjust” to the individual. They respect the process of society’s enactment of policy. They do not substitute their beliefs for that of the proper voice of societal norms, the legislature.
Oprah peddles a false kind of emotional fulfillment and many Americans lap it up. Emotion and desire versus discipline and reason. Sort of makes you think of the protagonist with a little devil perched on one shoulder and an angel on the other. The devil encouraging our hero to do what would give him pleasure. “Go ahead, nobody will know. ” Meanwhile the angel protests that right and wrong are not relative terms, the meaning of which may be ignored at whim.
Oprah is telling everyone to give in and eat a few more brownies. The diet can wait another for day.
I’m logical and I feeeeeeeel good.Best of both worlds !
Oprah likes little girls. Little African girls in Africa. They have had problems at her school. Like Michael Jackson problems. Oprah vacations at the school…..