Oprah Winfrey. I was thinking first of writing about Mother Theresa (but that has been done) or Serena Williams — the Lance Armstrong of tennis — but decided to turn to Oprah at the end.
Not a big step from Uncle Lance indeed.
(Bear with me.)
The queen of quacks
One of the most famous MDs of the United States is Dr. Oz for sure, a man who was been featured in a segment “Everybody Poops” on Winfrey’s show in the mid 2000s, and called “America’s doctor” by Oprah.
Quoting Wikipedia[1]:
He is a proponent of alternative medicine, and has been criticized by physicians, government officials, and publications, including Popular Science and The New Yorker, for giving non-scientific advice and promoting pseudoscience. In a Senate hearing on weight loss scams, Senator Claire McCaskill chided Oz, saying: "The scientific community is almost monolithic against you in terms of the efficacy of the three products you call miracles". In 2014 the British Medical Journal examined over 400 medical or health recommendations from 40 episodes of his program and found that only 46% of his claims were supported by reputable research, while 15% of his claims contradicted medical research and the remainder of Oz's advice were either vague banalities or unsupported by research.
Oh yeah, did I mention his “magic beans,” reparative therapy for homosexuals, and besides the beans his many other miraculous weight-loss programs ?
(How can somebody like Oprah, who is in a life-long struggle against weight problems, promote his bean crap ? Should she — at least — know better ? Or is it a money thing ?)
(The wizzard.)
She kept supporting him throughout various episodes of scandal, but at the end, she decided to pull the plugs on his radio show.[2] She kept occurring in his T. V. shows though (so apparently has no problem with his calling being gay a disease).
Vaccines and Jenny
Oprah Winfrey boosted Jenny McCarthy’s crusade against vaccination; McCarthy was and is convinced that vaccines might cause autism (she has a son who suffers from autism-related symptoms).
Just to be sure that you heard me — you could be in shock after reading this, and I understand — McCarthy is an activist against vaccination !
And Winfrey helped McCarthy every which way to let her sell that story.
(I kind of like(d) Jenny McCarthy. But not for her mental capacity. Sure, many beautiful women and men can be smart, but let’s not generalize a wee bit too much, shall we ?)
Dear Jenny: any claimed connections between autism and vaccinations have been debunked hundreds of times by scientific methods.
On the other hand: chain-smoking during pregnancy (as Jenny in fact did), definitely increases the chance that your baby has various diseases and disorders (who knows, even autism). Growing too much weight during pregnancy is also not that well, dear Jenny.
(A dazzling woman, unfortunately in more than one way.)
After Dr. Oz and Jenny, I start to feel very weird when thinking about Oprah’s mental health. Why is she endorsing these dangerous quacks ?
The Secret
Oh no, yet another quack story ?
Winfrey has advocated a mystical self-help system called “The Secret,” which claims that thinking good thoughts (and as the Washington Post wrote “buying DVDs”)[3] can cure various (emotional, financial, physical) problems.
Apparently, Winfrey’s advocacy made a believer of breast cancer patient “Kim Tinkham,” who eventually refused classical medical treatment (including immediate surgery), and died.[4]
One could mention that Winfrey tried to talk Tinkham out of these ideas, and simply combine The Secret with surgery, but I argue that she shouldn’t have talked about such delicate questions in the first place.
Oprah, Oprah, what have you done (again) ?
Dump, Harvey, dump !
Yes, her friend Harvey Weinstein — that’s the one ! I do not want to go in much detail about the persona of Weinstein (but I do not think he is a rapist, more a sexual Wolverine with too much power, and he is certainly not a paedophile such as Asia Argento), so I will be short.
Winfrey was/is a very good friend of Weinstein, and reportedly — says Harvey — she supported him during the storm of allegations. Mind you, it was no secret in the Showbizz corridors that Harvey’s penis led a life on its own, so it would be strange to suppose that Oprah of all people was unaware of that.
Eventually she dumped him publicly, so that was that. Problem solved.
(In better times.)
More, more, more !
When starting to do more reading about some of the people and things Oprah endorsed, I must admit that I was … astonished by the sheer volume of cons of the purest kind, often simply dangerous people for public health.
I am only able to mention a couple of things out of the massive heap of dirt she has supported, and let the others (lesser gods) believe.
Why is she constantly doing this ? Shouldn’t great powers come with great responsibility ? Is it the hunger for money and power ?
There seems to be an absolute lack of morality surrounding her.
And for me, it is very hard to believe that a sane, intelligent person would endorse so much (dangerous) crackpot ideas.
Actress, brand, icon
Oprah Winfrey is a good actress, above everything else. She is not a real, I mean really real, good talkshow host. Her questions and interpretations of answers of her guests, are not always really deep (nor correct), and although she tries, the conversations are of the lighter kind. No problem there.
But she acts herself through these conversations as if she really — yes, that word again — understands, and above all, cares, and the public loves that.
And then she started to believe in her own greatness, and used that power to spread and support lies. So many lies.
(No hard feelings, though, Oprah. Check out my writings, and make me famous — I could de-quack you !)
No comments:
Post a Comment