Cross-posted at HotFlashReport.
I couldn't help but be amazed at the Oprah Winfrey press conference this morning about the child abuse alleged at her school in South Africa. Video is HERE.
Oprah was poised. She was dignified. She was direct. She didn't sweep anything under the table. According to the MSNBC correspondent I listened to, she ran a clinic on how a CEO should react to a potentially disastrous scandal.
Unlike...err, well...the Catholic Church. The same Catholic Church who has covered up child abuse by priests for decades. The same Catholic Church who put abusive priests back in situations whereby they would have contact with children.
Oprah elegantly and directly took responsibility for the situation, something that the Catholic Church has never done. She detailed the steps she's personally taken to get to the root of the problem, discover the predator, fire her and those responsible for her, and see that it doesn't happen again.
According to the Canadian Press:
U.S. talk show host Oprah Winfrey said Monday she was devastated by allegations an employee had abused students at a school she started for disadvantaged South African girls, and promised a shakeup.
Winfrey spoke to reporters in South Africa by satellite hook-up hours after the employee, a dormitory matron accused of indecent assault and criminal injury, appeared in court near Johannesburg and was granted bail.
Winfrey said the contract of the school's head mistress would not be renewed and promised "to clean house from top to bottom."
She also indicated school officials had tried to keep the facts of the case from her, saying she had initially been told a girl who accused the matron of abuse had left the school because the girl's mother wanted to spend more time with her.
In a world of men who never take responsibility for unpleasant things (see Bush, the Pope, Scooter Libby, the US Media, Ken Lay, ad infinitum), Oprah joins the ranks of Martha Stewart as a woman who owns up to her "mistakes" and works judiciously to correct them.
From the AP, the "buck stops with Oprah".
Oprah Winfrey said Monday she wept for half an hour when she heard a dorm matron was accused of abusing students at her school for disadvantaged South African girls. She promised to "clean house" starting with the headmistress.
Winfrey said officials at the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls hid facts and told students to "put on happy faces" and not complain to her. Though she said she was not responsible for hiring at the school, she said the screening process was inadequate and "the buck always stops with me."
Oprah showed more courage and leadership this morning than I've seen from any of the people supposedly running this country in Washington.