Despite being the richest self-made woman in America, and the richest black person on the face of the planet, Oprah has demonstrated an impressive progressive record. Though she is careful to be seen as non-partisan, her campaign contributions have been 95% Democratic, she's been ranked as one of the 10 most influential liberals in America, and ultra-progressive film maker Michael Moore famously begged her to run for president in his book DUDE WHERE'S MY COUNTRY. In the ensuing diary, I discuss Oprah's progressive record in three broad areas: Foreign policy, Economic issues, and Social issues.
PART I: Foreign Policy
Spoke out against Islamophobia in the immediate aftermath of September 11th
In the immediath aftermath of September 11th, when anti-Arab racism and Islamophobia was sweeping the nation, Oprah demonstrated extreme courage, integrity and intelligence by doing a show called Islam 101, in which she argued that Islam was a religion of peace. She was shaprly criticized by conservatives.
Opposed the war in Afghanistan
Also within weeks of September 11th, Oprah did a show called "IS WAR THE ONLY ANSWER?" which sparked the worst hate mail of her entire career. Several months later, after the war in Afghanistan started, Oprah infuriated conservatives by declining George W. Bush's invitation to lead a tour of Afghanistan with him. Bush was looking to put a softer face on the war on terror and needed Oprah's help, and many were outraged that Oprah would decline a sitting president during a time of war; an act which took considerable courage given Bush's sky-high approval ratings at the time. When Oprah refused Bush cancelled the trip because he could not find antother woman of Oprah's stature to take her place. Oprah fired back by telling the media she felt very used by the Bush administratation.
Turned agains the war in Iraq as early as Nov 2002
While Oprah did not show the courage and wisdom of Al Gore and Barack Obama who spoke out against the war as early as Oct 2002, she was not too far behind. Stll recovering from the conservative backlash from opposing the war in Afghanistan and declining Bush's invitation to go there, she was extremely fearful to dissent and for a while her show was extremely careful not to be seen as unpatriotic and she even allowed pro-war voices to appear on her show. But when a woman in her audience questioned the propaganda the media was feeding them Oprah was initially dismissive but quickly realized she had a moral responsibility.
By November 2002, she gathered enough courage to do a show challenging her audience to question their government's foreign policy. The show challenged Americans to be skeptical about their government’s foreign policy. For this, Oprah was praised by anti-war Michael Moore for being the only mainstream media at the time to show 1980s footage of Donald Rumsfeld shaking Saddam Hussein’s hand. On page 87 of DUDE WHERE'S MY COUNTRY Moore wrote:
When she showed Rumsfeld all lovey with Saddam, there was an audible gasp in the studio audience. Everyday, average Americans were shocked to see that the devil was actually our devil. Thank you, Oprah.
Moore argued that the footage was especially important for Americans to see because the rest of the mainstream media was only showing much older footage of Jacques Chirac shaking Saddam Hussein’s hand in the 1970s, seemingly to imply France opposed a war with Iraq because they were friendly with Hussein
Then on February 6 & 7 2003, while the rest of the media was praising Collin Powell's United Nation's speech, Oprah told her audience that now more than ever was the time to speak out. It was a crucial time to speak out because public opinion had been against the war prior to Powell's speech. Oprah showed clips from average people all over the world begging America not to go to war. She showed clips of Nelson Mandella & Pope John Paul II denouncing war. She interviewed the founder of Patriots for Peace. She hosted a debate between Thomas Friedman and anti-war activist Jessica Mathews who informed her audience that there were no links between Saddam and Al Quada & even Friedman conceded that Iraq was not a security threat to the U.S. At the end of the debate Oprah agreed with Mathews that the case for war had not been made. The show was so anti-war that it was allegedly taken off the air half way through in some markets. In the following clips, Oprah argues that most Americans are opposed to going to war, defends the right of Americans to disagree with their government, and then shows clips of everyday people in Iraq opposing war. Oprah asked CNN correspondents all around the world to interview everyday people for her to air on the show:
In the ensuing clip Oprah shows that even the citizens of America's closest allies are stronly opposed to war, and promotes the anti-war campaign of Patriots for Peace:
After the show aired, Academics for Justice released an aticle claiming the showed had been interrupted in some markets for suspicous reasons:
Today, Oprah Winfrey started a two-part series focusing on the impending U.S. war on Iraq. About halfway through the show the broadcast was pre-empted by coverage of Pres. George Bush, with Colin Powell at his side, reading a prepared statement on Iraq. The coincidental timing of this pre-emptive press statement raised immediate questions about the motives of the White House war strategists. Students of the Civil Rights Movement will recall an incident in 1964 when activist Fannie Lou Hamer sat before a live television audience and gave a riveting account of the oppression she and other Blacks faced in the South. President Lyndon Johnson was so convinced of the power of her appeal to undermine his own political/racial agenda, that he hastily called a press conference to pull cameras away from Hamer’s impassioned revelations...The pre-emption of Winfrey’s show today should be seen in the same light. Oprah’s audience is a vast and powerful—but largely apolitical—force of middle-class white women. It is likely that most did not watch Colin Powell’s live testimony at the U.N. yesterday. In fact, it is likely that this huge audience was being oriented to the issues of the Iraq war for the first time...The first 30 minutes of the show was decidedly anti-war and highlighted not only worldwide unanimity in opposition to the war but presented many of the heretofore unheard voices of ordinary people speaking forcefully against Bush’s motives
Amazingly Oprah shocked the media by continuing to air dissent right up until 2 days before the war began, even after George W. Bush had given Sadam Hussein a 48 hour dead-line. On March 18, 2003 she invited anti-war Middle East professor Fawaz Gerges and spent an entire segment showing shocking antiwar clips from Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine followed by anti-war commentary from Moore. The show was praised as an extraordinary act of intelligence by the Canadian press.
Oprah did everything in her power short of career suicide to prevent a war. Donahue spoke out against war too, but he had a tiny audience on MSNBC. Oprah was the ONLY major media to join the anti-war movement and she deserves an enormous amount of credit for that. Not only is she a symbol of the American dream and the most philanthropic African-American of all time, but she was on the right side of history too.
PART II: Economic Issues
The most sincere measure of a person's economic values is their own personal philanthropy, and according to Business Week, Oprah is the most philanthropic black in American history, and also the most philanthropic performer in show business, having overcome extreme poverty, illegitimacy, sexual abuse, teen pregnancy, drugs, a weight problem, racism, and sexism to have given HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of her own hard earned money to charity. While many celebrities raise money, Oprah also gives her own money in record numbers. She's personally sent hundreds of African American men through college and given millions and millions to victims of Katrina. But unlike right-wing nationalists who insist on helping only their own country, Oprah has reached out to South Africa to help a poor country where blacks were only recently liberated in attempt to help them take advantage of a historic opportunity. Nelson Mandella calls Oprah his personal hero.
But beyond being personally generous, Oprah has used her show to passionately support Michael Moore's crusade to get universal health care:
PART III: Social Issues
Helped make gays mainstream
While Phil Donahue has been credited with pioneering the tabloid talk show genre, what has been described as the warmth, intimacy and personal confession Oprah brought to the format is believed to have both popularized and revolutionized it causing Time magazine to name Oprah one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century. In the scholarly text Freaks Talk Back Yale sociology professor Joshua Gamson credits the tabloid talk show genre with providing much needed high impact media visibility for gays, bisexuals, transsexuals, and transgender people and doing more to make them mainstream and socially acceptable than any other development of the 20th century. In the book's editorial review Michael Bronski wrote "In the recent past, lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgendered people had almost no presence on television. With the invention and propagation of tabloid talk shows such as Jerry Springer, Jenny Jones, Oprah, and Geraldo, people outside the sexual mainstream now appear in living rooms across America almost every day of the week."
An example of one such show by Oprah occurred in the 1980s where for the entire hour, members of the studio audience stood up one by one, gave their name and announced that they were gay. Also in the 1980s Winfrey took her show to West Virginia to confront a town gripped by AIDS paranoia because a gay man living in the town had HIV. Winfrey interviewed the man who had become a social outcast, the town's mayor who drained a swimming pool in which the man had gone swimming, and debated with the town's hostile residents. "But I hear this is a God fearing town," Oprah scolded the homophobic studio audience; "where's all that Christian love and understanding?" During a show on gay marriage in the 1990s, a woman in Winfrey's audience stood up to complain that gays were constantly flaunting their sex lives and she announced that she was tired of it. "You know what I'm tired of", replied Winfrey, "heterosexual males raping and sodomizing young girls. That's what I'm tired of." Her rebuttal inspired a screaming standing ovation from that show's mostly gay studio audience.
Gamson credits the tabloid talk show fad with making alternative sexual orientations and identities more acceptable in mainstream society. Examples include a recent Time magazine article describing early 21st century gays coming out of the closet younger and younger and gay suicide rates plummeting. Gamson also believes that tabloid talk shows caused gays to be embraced on more traditional forms of media. Examples include sitcoms like Will & Grace, primetime shows like Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and Oscar nominated feature films like Brokeback Mountain.
While having changed with the times from her tabloid talk show roots, Oprah continues to include gay guests by using her show to promote openly gay personalities like her hairdresser, makeup artist, and decorator Nate Berkus who inspired an outpouring of sympathy from middle America after grieving the loss of his partner in the 2004 tsunami on the Oprah Winfrey Show. Winfrey also sent a platoon of helicopters to South Asia to search for Berkus' lost partner. Recently Winfrey announced that Berkus, who already has a show on Oprah's XM radio station, would be host of her new reality TV show. Winfrey's "therapeutic" hosting style and the tabloid talk show genre has been credited or blamed for leading the media counterculture of the 1980s and 1990s which some believe broke 20th century taboos, led to America's self-help obsession, and created confession culture. The Wall Street Journal coined the term "Oprahfication" which means public confession as a form of therapy.
In April 1997, Oprah recieved some of the worst hate mail of her career when she played the therapist on the sitcom Ellen to whom the character (and the real-life Ellen DeGeneres) said she was a lesbian. In 1998, Mark Steyn in the National Review wrote of Oprah "Today, no truly epochal moment in the history of the Republic occurs unless it is validated by her presence. When Ellen said, 'Yep! I'm gay,' Oprah was by her side, guesting on the sitcom as (what else?) the star's therapist."
Helped replace religion with spirituality
One of the best predictors of being a republican is how frequently one attends church, and religion is one of the biggest sources of homophobia and traditional values. Hence Oprah's influence in guiding America away from the dogma of the church and instead towards an open-minded liberal inclusive and tolerant spirituality is a development of great importance.
Helped make literature accessible to the masses
According to Oxford scholar Kathleen Rooney, Oprah through her book club has pioneered the use of electronic media to make literature accessible to the masses. This is a highly progressive development given that Oprah reaches a lot of women and African Americans, and that she has used her book club to promote women and people of color such as Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison.