Let me disclose my biases openly and transparently. I watched The Oprah Winfrey Show every weekday for most of its 25-year run. The show debuted in 1986, when I was five years old, and ended in 2011, when I was pregnant with Amos. I don’t remember the first time I watched Oprah. I only know I was always watching Oprah. I remember the first Book Club (Deep End of the Ocean!). I remember the first Favorite Things episode. I remember Tom Cruise jumping on the couch. I watched the show in high school, college, law school, and on the small TV that set on my desk as a legislative assistant in the U.S. Senate. I actually attended a taping in 1999, and Oprah gave every member of the audience a Christopher Radko ornament I still hang on my Christmas tree every year.
I often tell people Oprah raised me. It is only with the slightest bit of hyperbole. So much of how I operate in the world is informed by what I learned watching an hour of Oprah every weekday of my life for decades. Certainly, my career as a person who talks for a living is inextricably linked to what I watched Oprah do and what I continue to watch Oprah do: read voraciously, really listen to people’s pain, ask the hard or crazy or silly question, love the world. What I thought was possible and what I thought was possible for me cannot be separated from this woman.
I love Oprah. I love her very, very much, and I talk about it a lot and, in the past several years, I have started getting a pretty standard response.
What about Dr. Oz and Dr. Phil?
The critique goes like this: Oprah holds responsibility for platforming Dr. Oz and Dr. Phil. Whatever good Oprah has done is outweighed by how much harm these two men have caused.
I want to be clear. Oprah absolutely did platform these two men. I still remember the beef trial and Dr. Phil’s presence on the shows surrounding it. I still remember the first time Dr. Oz came on and told us what our poop should look like. Also, in fairness, these two are not the only problematic people Oprah platformed over the years. She was devoted to Bill Cosby. She hosted Jenny McCarthy when her memoir came out and let her share all her theories about vaccines and developmental disorders. We all remember The Secret.
Over 25 years and 4,561 episodes, Oprah’s success rate is not perfect. Dr. Oz, in particular, has chosen a dark path for a career as a public figure that Oprah helped him launch. However, when a legacy as deep and wide as Oprah’s is gets reduced in this way, I suspect some other forces are at play.
What else got platformed in those thousands of episodes?
While we all swim in an ocean of celebrity book clubs, there would be no Reese or Jenna or Dua Lipa without Oprah. When she decided to launch her television book club, people told her she was insane. It felt a little insane at the time, unless you were the child of a librarian, and then you were thrilled! Oprah picked hard books, challenging books. The Deep End of the Ocean is about a kidnapping, for goodness sakes! My favorite is when she would pick a classic and bring in all these literary professors and experts. I read Anna Karenina thanks to Oprah and loved every page.
I wouldn’t be the reader I am without Oprah, and she platformed hundreds of authors and revived the publishing industry along the way. Toni Morrison was already a genius, but Oprah made her a best-selling author. In the final decade of the show alone, 22 million+ copies of Oprah-branded editions of her book club selections sold in the US and around the world.
22 million.
Or what about Oprah’s Favorite Things? Her Christmas episode featuring her favorite products became a cultural juggernaut that platformed small business owners from around the country and the world. They were often women-owned or Black-owned companies who would experience up to a 10,000% jump in sales. These people paid off loans and sent their kids to college and employed thousands of people thanks to Oprah’s platforming.
Beyond money spent and careers changed, I truly believe Oprah’s legacy will always be letting people be heard, often around topics no one else was talking about. She was talking about AIDS when so many politicians still wouldn’t even say the word. She hosted Ellen’s coming-out moment. She disclosed openly her own childhood history of sexual abuse and continued to normalize speaking out. The law creating the national database of child abusers is called the Oprah Bill after she came to Congress to testify in 1991.
Every Oprah fan has their own story. The episode on safety (Never let yourself be taken to a second location!) that saved their lives. The conversation that convinced them to follow their dream or leave an abusive marriage or change the way they parented. And that’s just on the audience. What about on media? The impact from her philanthropic pursuits? People dedicate entire dissertations and careers to analyzing Oprah’s impact. The fact that I’m even trying to sum it up here is absurd. Almost as absurd and as trying to reduce it down to Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz.
Oprah’s legacy is robust, and honestly, she doesn’t need me to defend her. (You can hear her defend herself in this recent interview.) Not to mention, it’s ongoing. She’s still out here sharing books and her favorite things and talking about things that need to be talked about! (Here’s one of my recent favorites!)
However, what I learned from Oprah is to listen, and what I hear people saying when they use Dr. Oz and Dr. Phil as some kind of gotcha is this: Women, no matter how successful they are, will always be held responsible for the men in their lives. I hear that accountability is not proportional. That women operate in a zero-sum environment. It doesn’t matter how much you got it right if you screw up in a way we find unacceptable.
But I know that’s not true. I know that why people do what they do is complicated, even Dr. Oz, and that we lose nothing by centering people’s humanity. Making people easy villains and then sentencing those around them for their crimes is no path to justice.
I know that Oprah is flawed and human (remember the Tina Turner wig!?) and she’d be the first to tell you so. It was her being so willing to share that vulnerability that made her the cultural juggernaut that she is. It’s why people opened up to her. It’s why we all wanted to listen. It’s why we all still listen to her. Honestly, Oprah’s legacy is secure, but it’s not pure.
No one’s is, and we should stop requiring it to be.
I love Oprah. Period. Full stop. Thank you for sharing. She is so wise and thoughtful and thought provoking. She had made us all better humans!
What about Bezos' wedding?? As a Black woman in the USA, THAT is what did it for me. HARD STOP.