I haven’t seen her show for 15 years or so, and only saw it a few times back then, but I’ve got a lot of respect for a person (a black woman to boot) who could rise from her birth to a poor single teen mother, a childhood of abuse and deprivation, with no “connections” of any kind, to becoming one of the wealthiest, most successful, most influential people in the entertainment business, rising completely on her own merits (those merits being the fact that she’s bright, articulate, likable, incredibly driven, and knows how to “connect” with millions of other “ordinary” people striving for something better).
Good for her.
Dragonbones is right of course that it’s still just TV and people should get off their fat asses and go out in the real world and doing something real. But as TV entertainment goes, I think she was probably fairly good. And as a person she deserves a heckuva lot of respect. One can’t deny that she’s been a monumental success.
Quentin, every time you post something approaching normal, such as over in tommy’s ‘Why do people call me a dick? thread’, you then take ten steps back.
Women aren’t all 25, pretty, clever, interesting and thin. Yet they still have the right to do what they like, and make TV shows if they like, just as every fat, balding, thick, boring male has the right to go and pursue whatever their heart desires.
You’re right, DB. I never used to watch TV in Taiwan unless I was at someone else’s house. I didn’t even own a TV for more than 10 glorious years. People who found that out thought that I was so odd and would ask what in the world I did. That was really, really sad. Of course, these people never read, or made gingerbread houses, or painted, or took walks, or learned to read or play music, or colored a picture with their kids. That stuff never occurred to them.
TV can suck the life out of you in a very literal way!
so can a giant industrial vacuum pump, or sitting next to a small aircraft window when it pops at 36,000 feet, but that’s not likely to happen to most people.
[quote=“housecat”]You’re right, DB. I never used to watch TV in Taiwan unless I was at someone else’s house. I didn’t even own a TV for more than 10 glorious years. People who found that out thought that I was so odd and would ask what in the world I did. That was really, really sad. Of course, these people never read, or made gingerbread houses, or painted, or took walks, or learned to read or play music, or colored a picture with their kids. That stuff never occurred to them.
TV can suck the life out of you in a very literal way![/quote]
I never did that stuff either. I sure wish i could have been watching Grange Hill. I used to love going to friends’ houses!
I know. I’m wierd. But I didn’t miss a moment of the TV I was missing. (Well, except when I thought about watching Friends with my friends, but now that’s on DVD, so it’s all good.)
I am weird too…don’t watch TV and raising kids without TV. No cartoons, no fairy tales no discovery…ofcourse everyone thinks I am a loser, but somehow we just don’t have the time. In our schedules, there is just no TV time. Even on the rainiest of days, we put on music and dance or bake or sth. Once in a while hubby will sow the kids a video of kiddy songs butthats like 15 mts in 2-3 months.
And even then, my kids know mickey and sponge bob, and peter rabbit and all the princesses and cars coz we have books.
Only the ones who put her on the world’s most influential people’s list or Time’s richest people list and ofcourse a few million people who watched her…for 25 years. This is not a 15 min. fame that we are talking about.
Only the ones who put her on the world’s most influential people’s list or Time’s richest people list and ofcourse a few million people who watched her…for 25 years. This is not a 15 min. fame that we are talking about.[/quote]
And, I suspect, many of those viewers may be poor and/or single and/or struggling and/or mothers and/or victims of abuse, who received a great deal of comfort, support, healing and inspiration just from watching the flickering pixels that make up her image on the screen, or from reading the books she promoted.
So, while strong, healthy people can blather on about how TV’s a pathetic vaccuum on ones soul and one should get out and do capoeira or cook paella or ride a cinelli, and that may be true for most people, perhaps for some who are too weak or emotionally damaged, she may have been a very positive influence, helping people to better their lives.
It would be hard to gauge the level of lethargy she induced and weigh that against the genuine, life-affirming inspiration she brought to her fans and precisely determine which way the scales fall, so I’ll just have to assume she was a positive influence for many. Others were free to turn off the TV and walk outside if they wished.
[quote=“Mother Theresa”]And, I suspect, many of those viewers may be poor and/or single and/or struggling and/or mothers and/or victims of abuse, who received a great deal of comfort, support, healing and inspiration just from watching the flickering pixels that make up her image on the screen, or from reading the books she promoted.
So, while strong, healthy people can blather on about how TV’s a pathetic vaccuum on ones soul and one should get out and do capoeira or cook paella or ride a cinelli, and that may be true for most people, perhaps for some who are too weak or emotionally damaged, she may have been a very positive influence, helping people to better their lives.
It would be hard to gauge the level of lethargy she induced and weigh that against the genuine, life-affirming inspiration she brought to her fans and precisely determine which way the scales fall, so I’ll just have to assume she was a positive influence for many. Others were free to turn off the TV and walk outside if they wished.[/quote]
Yeah, Oprah’s probably a good thing.
In my experience, neither income nor race has anything to do with her appeal. Instead women just love her and her show. The step-father of one of my best friends is an oil patch lawyer and probably owns like half the mineral rights in the state of Kansas. Their family ‘keeps a boat’ in the US Virgin Islands and because he’s a Yalie and came into the city often as an undergrad, they all gather once a year at the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan to help him relive his youth; i.e., drink in the bar and take in the latest on Broadway. Etc. And my friend loves Oprah like ice cream. I also know two female corp vp’s, one in insurance and one in aircraft, who just might drop everything when the cleaning girl comes into the office in the evening and just gush together over Oprah. Oprah’s a great equalizer that way, I think. Oprah helps women lock onto their jesus-where’s-the-pub, female bandwith frequency and relate communally to the experience.
Drives me utterly batshit to catch even a stray minute of it in a doctor’s office, btw. It’s like the air around the television is saturated in estrogen. For many males I think her appeal is baffling, for many females it’s perfectly natural.
Quentin, every time you post something approaching normal, such as over in tommy’s ‘Why do people call me a dick? thread’, you then take ten steps back.
I used to love going to friends’ houses!