America's ONLY black billionaire Oprah Winfrey ( http://www.forbes.com/... )recently did an interview with Access Hollywood. Host Shaun Robinson mentioned the speech that President Obama gave on Tuesday to children around the country and the enormous controversy surrounding it. Shaun asked Oprah if she understood the concerns that many people had about President Obama speaking to their children.
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Oprah response:
"No, I do not. No, no, no, no and no. I’m just really stunned by people who feel that the President, the leader of our country and of the free world, saying to your children it’s important for your success, the success of your families and our country for you stay in school, that education is vital to your well-being... I don’t understand it. I do not understand it."
Oprah was also asked how she feels about the children who stayed home to avoid the president.
Oprah's response:
"I think those children missed out and I think that’s the message we’re trying to send. If you’re a country that doesn’t want your children to hear that message, then who are we really? That’s what I think."
Source: http://www.accesshollywood.com/...
Of course it's not surprising that Oprah would defend Obama since she played a very decisive role in helping him get the Democratic nomination, and by extension the presidency ( http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.co... ).
Oprah has become extremely political in recent years. Last year Oprah had Michael Moore on her show not once but twice to promote his film SICKO which she claimed every American needed to see. And on September 22nd Oprah plans to promote "Capitalism: A Love Story" which is Moore's magnum opus on the terrible impact of corporate dominance on the lives of most Americans.
Oprah & Michael Moore go way back. In Moore's book DUDE WHERE"S MY COUNTRY he started a campaign to get Oprah to run for president. On pg 87 Moore praised Oprah for being the only mainstream media to host anti-war shows during the run-up to war with Iraq, most controversial was this shocking two day anti-war show she broadcast the day after Colin Powell made his case for war to the United Nations:
Though she no Keith Olbermann or Rachel Maddow, Oprah is actually one of the most progressive voices in media today. She got her start popularizing the tabloid talk show genre pioneered by Phil Donahue & through her success, unleashed an entire indurstry of clones like Ricki Lake, Jenny Jones, & Jerry Springer. While at the time these shows were dismissed as trash TV, causing even Oprah to distance herself from the genre she popularized, looking back we see that Oprah was the leader of a major counter culture movement. Indeed Yale scholar Joshua Gamson argues in FREAKS TALK BACK that the tabloid talk show genre Oprah popularized did more to make gays mainstream than any other development of the 20th century causing Ellen to cast Oprah as the therapist she came out of the closet to on her sitcom & causing Time magazine to rank Oprah as the most influential woman in the world.
Since distancing herself from her tabloid roots, Oprah started a book club which has brought literature (including many books written by women & minorities such as Toni Morrison) to the masses on a scale not seen since the invention of the printing press, & has challenged religious dogma by embracing secular liberal church-free spirituality epitomized by books like A NEW EARTH. Business Week ranks her as the most philanthropic African American of all time. Oprah continues to evolve & reinvent herself.