"No one person should have that kind of power to affect markets, politics or anything else," says Debbie Schlussel, a lawyer, conservative columnist and blogger.
Ken Lay did. The G-dub does. Osama did. Haliburton does. Rush does, almost. The Southern Baptist Convention tried to. MLK did. So did King George, and Thomas Jefferson, and Hoover, and Steve Jobs, and .... Hush now Debbie. Don't get all post-historical on me here.
In a free market, in the media in the free market, anyone who can manage to brand themselves with moral authority, which they can back up with substance (bc. Americans have not quite forgotten about substance), and then choose to use it, is perfectly free to do so, and to profit in the bargain. Free markets cut both ways. They are amoral. They cater to profit and flow.
So, if Oprah can get people to follow her, instead of following her advice, then okey-doke.
Spiritual leader? Oprah has some good advice, a conscience, tries to get insulated middle-class Americans to wake up and smell the real every once in a while. Bully for her. Does she cater to the middle classes, yes. Why? She's in business. She's not a prophet, she's a talk show host. Why the M-classes? Because they are the ones who need to wake up and smell the real and just might be got to do so. The uber-classes, whom she knows, being one them, are not influencable in these ways.
I wish she'd spend more time on the real, for my part. With juice like hers, she could mobilize A LOT of action. Which, is exactly why she stops short of doing just that.
What she has modeled for many people, over the years and with an honesty that you just have to respect, is what it's like to live your life consciously, make mistakes, go down paths that are not right for you, backslide, regroup, get it together and grow into one's own spirit and power. She's smart, so she realized that her life-in-public is an allegory, and proceeded to treat it that way.
I'm thinking that other spiritual leaders have come to the same realization. Sorry, not thinking so, have read them, bios of them: know so.
She's realized that she now has astronomical levels of cultural and political juice, and so she's going to use it. Why not? Most people at that level of the game do. What's the matter? That she's a talk show host? That she's smart? That's she's a woman? That she's black? That she's liberal and feminist in a mostly non-treatening way?
Conservatives should be much more concerned about her politically than spiritually. Oh, right, except that wingers are the one's the conflated the two things. Right.
OF COURSE she' gets to use her influence. That's How It Works. Don't insist on a game and then get all upset when a player on the other side starts to advance in it. Sourpuss.
Spritual leader? I hope not. Lots of people have taken a clue from O's consciously and intentionally lived life. She's offered them some tools to do that For Themselves. I hope they do that FOR THEMSELVES. I hope they don't sit there, enthralled, waiting for Oprah to tell them what to think/do/care about every day at 3 or 4 pm, and again at 8, and on the after show. I hope they go find the purpose/meaning/truth of their own lives, insist on it, stand tall in that power, flourish.
But, if they wait for St. Oprah to tell them who to be, and what's good and right, then those people will have failed in their own spirituality -- merely trading one earthly soul-boss for another. What she's shown us is what it looks like to do the hard work of creating yourself in a world that does not want people to create themselves. But, if there comes a world of O-clones, that will be just as tragic/damaging/horrible as any other unthinking/uncritical/enslaved cult.
Which is never what the spiritual leaders wants to create.
What America seems to be hungering for, and thinks it has found in Oprah, is what this article descrives: Someone who walks their talk. In other words, she's the node on the cultural network that seems to be, well, sincere. Not a hypocrite. Trustworthy. And strong, unapologetic, uncowed by power, generous, compassionate, outraged at oppression and neglect of the the meek and the poor, interested in liberating people in their fullest existence --- wait, she really does have much in common with spiritual leaders.
She does in life what G-dub promised to do in the White House, and isn't doing. So, yeh, if I were you, Debbie, I'd be feeling pretty defensive too.
Watch your butt, wingers. The Christain with the juice is a liberal, a feminist, rich as all get out, and nearly bulletproof politically. Aw.
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