As you may have guessed, that rarely happens–seeing as how many of Time’s columnists and I do not really, shall we say “see eye to eye” on things.
But this is a gem I couldn’t pass up passing along:
Oprah is perhaps the closest thing America has to a secular religious figure (“She was like the pope,” a professor told the New York Times) or even, let’s be honest, a goddess. She inspired worship and devotion. She guided her flock spiritually. She anointed disciples (Rachael Ray, Dr. Phil) and sent them out into the world.
…
In the past few years, however, coinciding roughly with her ratings slump, Pentateuch Oprah has seemed to get the upper hand. Oprah has always reinvented herself every now and then—tabloid Oprah, literary Oprah, confessional Oprah. And her latest incarnation has become increasingly bossy and inclined to issue stone-tablet commandments.
Sort of reminds me of something I said ten years ago…
“The show used to be “kind of like having a girlfriend over when you [didn't] have time to have a girlfriend over,” says turned-off viewer Katherine Coble. “Now it’s like church.”
“But a bad church with no God…Instead of God, God is Oprah.”
—“Uprising at the Church of Oprah ” by Joal Ryan Oct 17, 1998, 11:00 PM PT E! Online News
