An Open Letter to Oprah Winfrey

www.michaeladelberg.com

Let’s get a few things straight: I don’t like your show. I don’t like the way you fawn over celebrity guests; I don’t like your calculated tear-jerker moments; I don’t like your self-help bromides or Peter Pan spirituality. I have never made it through a full hour of one of your shows, even when I was genuinely interested in your guest.

However, I understand that you’re a very big deal—the giant of day-time television—so I DVR-ed your finale and watched more than half of it, and then spent a good chunk of time reading about you. I think I now know enough to conclude something about you: You’ve been very good for America.

Here’s why:

In the 90s, television talk shows entered into an arms race to find the most dysfunctional guests and raunchiest topics. Today, we all know about Jerry Springer’s freak show, but easily forget that there was a time when more respectable programs, even you, the sainted Oprah, all lurched toward shows built around: “I slept with my sister’s fiancée” and “my husband’s beating my kid.” Television talk shows blurred the line between normal and deviant behavior and turned Schadenfreude into a ratings engine.

Then you pulled out of the arms race and went (relatively) high brow. You brought back long interviews with serious people, and introduced the nation to good books. To the degree you still dealt with tawdry and titillating topics, at least you frequently had real experts on your panels to balance the silliness with some adult conversation. You gambled that an increasingly well-educated daytime audience would reward you for going uptown while all your competitors wallowed in the mud. Your bet paid off and the sleaze bags went away or steered toward a more respectable course. Your impact on day-time television was hugely positive.

You certainly are not the first African American to attract white fans. By the time you came along in the 80s, white America had grown comfortable with African Americans as celebrity icons (i.e., Michael Jordan, Eddie Murphy). But their popularity came with an unstated quid pro quo—spare the rap about the “the black experience.” You, along with Denzel Washington, brought African-American stories into the whitest corners of America, and made those stories okay. Maya Angelou is the best known poet in America because of you; Toni Morrison is read by large white audiences because of you. The term “diversity” is now diluted to the point of triteness, but it can be argued that you’ve championed diversity (on more than just racial lines) in America in a more meaningful way than anyone since the 60s.

I understand that there’ve been some unpleasant episodes in your personal life. I don’t care. What I do care about is your affirming American story: pulling yourself up from poverty and becoming a billionaire on your talents and instincts. I also care about your remarkable record of philanthropy. I am fascinated by the essays about your importance and the terms you’ve inspired, i.e., the “Oprah Effect” and “the Secular Church of Oprah.”

I am not a fan, but I guess I can call myself an admirer.