why is Oprah indignant about the book guys fibs & not W's KILLING LIES ??

we got a Wet Brain Alcoholic Drug Addict Lying Sociopath TOTALLY OUT OF CONTROL bankrupting the nation. creating a Fascist Dictatorship, shredding the constitution, and destroying the stability of the entire world and she is giving the Stink Eye to this guy who actually only altered situations but the alterations were not lies.. like the nymphos in the Rehab.. he may not have actually scored with her but everybody else did..!! so F'm what..!! looking at the lies pouring forth constantly for the Bu$h propaganda factory..!!! that are killing soldiers for oil creating terrorists by the thousands on a daily basis.:banghead: :banghead:

maybe I'm in the wrong here thinking that not everything that comes out of her mouth is as good as gospel and contains the wisdom of the ages.

I just don't think she's the be all and end all. That's all.

Here's who she's given to in the past, courtesy of newsmeat.com:

WINFREY, OPRAH
CHICAGO, IL 60600
HARPO PRODUCTIONS
DNC SERVICES CORPORATION/DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE (D) $5,000
primary 11/28/97
WINFREY, OPRAH
CHICAGO, IL 60603
DSCC NON-FEDERAL INDIVIDUALS $10,000
primary 10/25/96

WINFREY, OPRAH
CHICAGO, IL 60610
HARPO STUDIOS BRAUN, CAROL MOSELEY (D)
Senate - IL
CAROL MOSELEY-BRAUN FOR US SENATE 1998 INC $1,000
general 08/04/92

WINFREY, OPRAH
CHICAGO, IL 60601
HARPO INC ENGELEITER, SUSAN S (R)
Senate - WI
ENGELEITER FOR SENATE COMMITTEE $1,000
general 09/15/88

donates to. My viewpoint on Ms. Winfrey has nothing to do with that.

trying to make any kind of "point." Sorry I even posted. Sheesh.

But then again I don't have a vagina. Not saying there aren't men out there who like and get Oprah, just saying I'm not one of them.

Vagina having or lack has nothing to do with. Personally, as a vagina having person, I've gone from "kinda liking her, but not really" to really being impressed with some of her shit, to one big yawn. If something's on her book list I go out of my way not to read it, which is probably silly.
The fact that this guy had to LIE about any part about being hooked on something cracks me up in a way, because man, in that life you don't have to lie about some of the Very Fucked Up shit that can happen to you

More to the point though, Oprah could certaintly be using her considerable clout to point out the lies in this puke-fest of a administation.

No offense was intended by the vagina comment, it was meant in good humor :) I literally know ZERO male Oprah fans (and am convinced the men in her audience were dragged there by their wives & girlfriends or are hoping to get something free under their chair).

You would think she could use her clout to change things, but god forbid anyone attached to Hollywood start expressing their own opinions. They are all owned by those who put them on the air and will never be allowed to use their popularity for the right reason, only for the "needs of the business".

What's worse is this type of senseless hoopla has the opposite effect on her "followers" as it provides distractionary media to draw the public attention away from the real issues in this world. I mean, seriously, when was the last time it was a problem that someone said they smoked more crack than they actually did?

Politicians lie and embellish in their memoirs all the time, no one calls them to carpet for that.

Remember Dan Rather ?

is a gazillionaire.

While I'm not a viewer, she's got a huge bully pulpit and fan base and she could put it to use educating people about what's really been going on if she really wished to.

for her "friend" Maria. I've hated her since then.

What is it with the Oprah bashing? Mike Malloy said something nasty about her (and frankly, women in general) on his show the other night, which shocked me. Misogynist Right Wingnuts have long had a hard-on for her. Oprah is the object upon which they project their scorn and loathing of women. I expect it from them but it's really disheartening to see it from progressives. It's not that I think some billionaire media mogul needs me to defend her. But I really don't think it's about Oprah. It's the underlying venom and woman-hating that I find disturbing.

I was in there swinging during her Katrina shows. The fact that she showed dying people thrown in with corpses on tv is incredible and eye opening.

But her silence on the current state of affairs is deeply disturbing.

I'm not able to reconcile the two. :(

But hey, why doesn't The Man Show talk about the war? :shrug:

Oprah was never meant to be a hard news show, despite her frequent forays into topical issues. It is the so-called REAL news media that have fallen down on the job, let us not forget. Maybe Oprah feels that if she did cover the war and the corruption in the Bush admin it would be counterproductive, that her coverage would be mocked as "fluff" and that would damage the credibility of the anti-Neo Con cause.

Holding them to an equal standard?!

Both shows are light entertainment fare. Oprah delves into serious topics now and then but her talk show is NOT a serious news program anymore than The Man Show is.

Oprah haters act like she is the ultimate female authority. They swear that when Oprah says jump, every woman in this country complies. Well, I hear guys at work quoting the Man Show like it's gospel. (But oh yeah, they're just jooooooking when they trash women :sarcasm: )
So why don't Jimmy Kimmel and and his sidekick start doing serious exposes of the Bush administration?

The point is it's NOT Oprah's or any other entertainer's responsibility to inform the public about serious news issues. If she wants to do nothing but fashion and book shows from now until she retires that's her business.

consider a bad situation, but all the media overage of the 'LIES' being so bad, but at the same time the media does not even question Bare faced sociopathic lies Bu$h makes every time he opens his mouth or every time one of his Minions open their mouths...???!!!

Even those who are pro-feminism. It's an odd phenomenon.

I'm not necessarily accusing all those on DU who hate her so much of this particular fear, although I'm sure quite a few do, but they are jumping on that bandwagon and their frustration about W is causing them to blame her for him/not speaking out against him.

She's all about human rights, as long as they don't mess with her pocketbook. While I applaud her first installment on Katrina - I find she is silent when silence becomes criminal.

And I have been a huge supporter of Oprah.

truth - whether it's a author, a newsman, an common folk like me or a pResident. She should have a program beyond what she just had - all about telling the truth. She shouldn't make it political - but after her treatment of the subject - viewers all over the country will be demanding the truth out of everyone including *.

Oprah is bitching and moaning about Root Canal while Bush continues to cheat, lie, act like a complete idiot, etc and she says NOTHING.

...but I wonder why she doesn't speak out against Bush, which I've wondered about in other posts here

I'm not holding her accountable for it. She is a television personality and a businesswoman, not a politician and not a journalist. She is a black woman in a white male world and the backlash against her for speaking out "too much" on politics is/would be brutal. You want someone to go after Bush?--there are plenty of white males who have far more responsibility for doing so.

I admire her for her abilities and success, and I admire her for offering a REAL apology about Frey. That puts her light years ahead of most of even the best of our corporate executives, including those who run the WaPo and NY Times, and well ahead of quite a few politicians.

voters in Florida in 2000? Or again in 2004? (Where, as misrouted campaign emails revealed, their methodology was called "caging.")

Seems that would be something that would be of concern to her. To some it might be regarded simply as a matter of politics, for others it's a matter of civil rights. Like Katrina, there are subjects she could cast light on if she wished on the basis that they're civil rights and humanitarian issues. She doesn't have to turn her show into some political talkfest to do that. (Although Arnie and Maria surely didn't show up on her show before the recall election in California just because they wanted to say hi and wave to the folks at home.)

And she's in a far better position to take any heat than many others with fewer resources. She's not just some lone black woman with a TV show, she's a media mogul and a billionaire.

someone else to respond to your questions.

She may be a media mogul and a billionaire, but her continued success depends on the support of her viewers, positive press, etc. She has to manage those issues as much as does any other business person.

Why aren't you holding white males who have the same or greater resources as she to the same standard? They would be far less likely to be stigmatized than she would be for the same message.

of the corporate media acting as accomplices to the Bush agenda by not having the guts to tell the truth. They're corporate interests that have a vested interest in Bushco and the Republican Congress. Oh yeah, we're just picking on poor little Oprah. Hardly so, unless you discount all the criticism of the corporate media and their lackeys here which apparently you do.

The point is, Oprah has a bully pulpit that transcends politics and does have a following. And she professes to be concerned about the truth and civil rights, freedom and humanitarianism. She could do more in educating the public, her viewership, if she wished without even getting all partisan. Considering how most of the Dems in Congress have gone along with so much of the Bush agenda and are cowed or compromised themselves, it's not even a matter of partisan politics. She evidently chooses not to. She's got a contract for her TV show through 2011. She's not going to go broke if for example she actually followed up on say the Katrina story and how the government is still dropping the ball on that. It's a human interest story.

But we'll see when Arnold runs for election here in California if she again has her good friend Maria and him on to show what nice folks they really are.

Oprah's a lot more powerful than say, Phil Donahue. Remember him? Remember how he got stimatized for his liberal positions? Seen him around lately? When I last saw him he had a political talk show on MSNBC. He couldn't call the shots on his own program and MSNBC cancelled him although he had the highest rated show on their network.

Oprah's in a particularly strong position to do more with her show than just have Tom Cruise hopping on her couch. How many billions must a self-professed humanitarian have before one cares or dares to tell the truth about our nation? There are a lot more folks in increasing numbers who won't have to worry about what diet to try when they're choosing between buying meds, food and paying their energy bills and rent.

:applause:

Could not have said it better myself!

Oh, what's that you say? She's not a Senator? Wait, what? She's a talk show host? Oh yeahhhhhhh that's right.

I usually don't bother with television news, but I did turn on the PBS Newshour yesterday only to see a segment with over a minute of the Oprah show being shown.

Sorry, I just do not see it as news. They could talk of any of 200 countries and they chose to "inform" us on Oprah. Talk about diversions. I agree with what you are saying. It is really sickening.

You have entertainment that distracts everybody and then you have the news report on entertainment. It would be a good project for a student to see how much time of the 22 minutes of network nightly news is devoted to the Super Bowl.

I kind of would like to know how the fight against illiteracy is going myself. Couldn't we get one report sometime from somewhere? And can anyone produce the pharmaceutical sales for 2005? No, but almost everybody has something to say about Oprah's big deal.

deadly lies

is for us to send her piles of hard copy letters about it. There was a DUer here last year who is a newspaper reporter, and he said that something doesn't become an "issue" unless at least a dozen hard copy letters are recieved about it (authored by differnt people, of course). The Right knows this-but our side always says "nah-the media are all right wing shills. It isn't worth the effort". We'll never know unless we give it a try, right?

her to get him elected governor of California, and the mess in this wake.

Why are we wasting our time with HER? :shrug:

about inconsequential fibs in a F'n book that hurt NO ONE when the Bu$hitCo is Murdering 10's of thousands if not 100's of thousands for War Profits.. while bankrupting the country and turning us into a 3rd world nation of peasants and shredding the Constitution

about what she's up too then?

I mean, aren't we wasting our time by not talking about " the murdering of tens and thousands" ?

See the irony here?

Can you say BANK ACCOUNT

That's totally fair - she can kick this guy's ass twice around the block as far as I'm concerned.

As for your complaint, I've never understood the attitude that says people are wrong if they don't get as angry as I do about the things I'm angry about. There are plenty of things to be indignant about in the world - if Oprah chooses different battles than you or I that's her business and her right. If she chooses not to use her celebrity as a bully-pulpit for the issues you or I care about, that's her business. And if she chooses to be apolitical in public or private, then no one has a right to say she's wrong. Oprah doesn't owe service to any of us or any of our idea(l)s.

One of the sayings I hate most in the world is "If you're not part of the solution, than you're part of the problem" - your post sounds like a restatement of that nonsensical old chestnut.

that's why she cares so much about it. gosh forbid someone makes oprah look bad.
And maybe she cares just a bit about journalistic integrity but I don't know that for certain.

What is aggravating is the media's attention to this story and their disregard of the daily crimes of Bush & Co.

this story has gotten. Some of the news shows turned it into a story about journalistic integrity and I can see that small and minor point but enough already. I firmly believe it got that much attention because Oprah was involved with it. And Queen Oprah wasn't happy that she got conned.
Big deal, so the guy took some creative license. If Oprah hadn't promoted the book in the first place, not many people would've read it. To me, she got what she deserved.

and she has to entertain those who don't agree w. us (the vast daytime audience of fundy wives who will never have to work a day in their lives and you know what like it that way) as well as the women who are not whores -- and yeah, fundies guess what, sleeping w. someone or marrying someone for the $$$ so you don't have to work, that does make you a whore

but she is required to satisfy all and not get TOO political or she is punished, see under the beef/mad cow lawsuit

i don't even agree w. her stance in the lawsuit but for fuck's sake i agree w. her right to speak her opinion which is a valid one shared by many intelligent people i respect

i guess what i'm saying is, you have a job, and on that job, you end up doing things you don't necessarily like

you focus on what you CAN do to help not on what you won't be allowed to do

part time workers, people on a sick day, retired people, wealthy fricking women who made it on their own!!!

Sheesh, do you sound bitter!

All this pretending people have never watched OPRAH, give me a break!!

The rest of your post is great!

She has made out well under these guys, saving her tons of tax dollars. You might as well ask why Regis Philbin or Tony Danza do not rail on the Chimp. Oprah is just another dopey talk show host.

I love her and I hate her. I love her show when she does some seriously good reporting like the post Katrina horrors, but I hate her when she has her "balanced" weeks. I have noticed a pattern on her show. She will have some weeks where she will just concentrate on progressive issues. She will have some weeks where she will be doing the lifestyle nazi thing on some unsuspecting poor fashion victim (of which I happen to be a candidate probably.) Then there are the weeks like last week. She started out the week about how terrified we should be, then went to how worried we should be about bird flu, then she ends the week pretending to rake this drug addict over the coals for lying, kinda sorta, in a book about his drug addiction.

Let's see here. Hmm...He was telling of his experiences as a drug addict. He embellished the truth somewhat to make it less of a yawn factor experience to read his book. Millions bought it and read it on Oprah's insistence. Smoking Gun catches his embellishments and makes a big todo over it. Instead of Oprah or her handlers doing their own fact checking beforehand, she insists that her minions, ahem, I mean millions of fans read the book. It helps many who read it according to her and others in the "live" (big deal) show. A live show, of which she wouldn't shut up telling those of us unfortunate enough to have basic cable with nothing better to watch, that it was "live." It's live remember, it's live she kept saying. Yipppeeeee! Whoop-de-do, it's live, and...??? She first defends the guy, then some other guy rakes her over the coals for defending him, to which she responds by raking the author and the publisher over the coals to shut her critics up. I have a headache just typing what I do know about this whole snafu, yet at the same time I find myself yawning at just how boring this non-news really is.

Like the OP mentioned, there is a sick mo-fo out there lying and screwing the American people, and Oprah's precious book club's reputation is on the line. Of course, she will cover her ass. Getting anyone to make Bush sit still long enough to rake his lying ass over the coals seems impossible. Does anyone have the intestinal fortitude or backbone to actually do it? It seems not.

Yep, :yawn:, I see I missed another boring news week on MSM. Next!

and furthermore, when did Oprah get elected and to what office? I think your head banging is misplaced. Try the media who cooked and the story and keeps it on the front burner.

Who more than Oprah has the power to make a HUGE difference?! But she does not! :grr:

Oprah paints herself as a "humanitarian with great integrity" and yet she turns her back on this country-her country-when thousands of people are dying for Bushs' lies! She turns her back on the millions of people in this country who are living paycheck to paycheck or as the working poor or poor because of Bush & Cos class war that is NOT spoken about by the media at all EVER. She gave lip service to the Katrina victims, but we have heard NOTHING about Katrina from her since and it's been 5 months-almost half a year! Oprah has proven beyond a doubt that she is nothing but an empty materialistic shell! :grr:

Oprah does fluffy shows on Tom Cruise, or plastic surgery or has the Hermes president on her show to appologize to her for his staff closing the store in Paris on her and not allowing her in. Now she wastes more time energy and money on James Frey and his lies. Who gives a damn?! :eyes:

How pathetic too, that poor young idealistic Mattie Stepanek begged her to continue on and "help people" before he died. What an empty promise she made him! :cry:

Oprah is all about and only about protecting herself, her assets and her way of life. Period. Humanitarian? Ha! Don't make me laugh! :puke:

on edit:
Send Oprah your thoughts here. http://www.oprah.com/email/tows/email_tows_main.jhtml
She mentioned that it takes an avalanche of letters to make a difference...let's show her the important topics that she should be basing her shows upon!

Email or FAX every one of these cable shows to express your complaint and your concerns, and the very top of the fax and email state:

I Request this Document be Filed with Public Letters for Public and FCC Inspection.

where she was defending the author, because she loved the book and its message. Then when she probably got dozens of complaints from her fans, she acted all offended. She looked like a hypocrite to me, just like she was accusing him of being.

As for why she doesn't go after Bush? She is a cousin to the the tabloid media, only with a lot of self-help stuff thrown in IMO.

alter situations. In fact his agent originally shopped his book as FICTION!

I think because Oprah endorsed his book as part of her book club, she felt it was her duty to clear up the matter. I'm not that crazy about Oprah but I think she had a perfect right to try and clear up the matter.

As far as Oprah picking and choosing her stories, I have always thought that she likes to have it both ways. By that I mean, her show is really in essence, for entertainment, but she also likes to think she is doing something of great depth.

She has always annoyed me since she likes to play it way too safe. When I see her expounding on something she thinks is important, I scream at the TV, "why don't you get off your big butt and run for office."

I too saw her on location Katrina show and was astounded at how graphic and insightful it was. It's just too bad that she doesn't seem to be interested in politics, she could really do alot of good for people. But of course that is her choice.

Anyway, if the people who are supposed to be going after Bush for his lies were taking care of business then we wouldn't be sitting here wondering whether or not some TV celebrity should be doing so. Why should Oprah have to do the work our politicians should be doing?

Besides, she's an entertainer, and as long as she's making umpteen millions a year, I doubt she's gonna take on any public political agenda.

I will NEVER forgive Oprah for kissing Arnold's ass and REFUSING to give equal time to Gray Davis.

That action showed that Oprah is every bit the lying presstitute that Blitzer, Schieffer, Couric, Laurer, Russert, O Liely, Hannity, Rush, Woodward and Miller are!

Some of you will go to no end.

well being is at risk.

she is protecting her "brand" name. No one can prove how she voted, so why open herself up to an attack from one side or another? It's just another form of Corproate dishonesty. I like Oprah, and I like what her charities do, but I think she's a bit of a hypocrite, politically.

She had Ahnuld on while he was running for the full hour. She had Bush on for the full hour, too. She is an exectutive who knows which side her bread is buttered on.

TC

... care more about their own oxen being gored than they do anyone elses.

She 'endorsed' this book and felt betrayed. I don't blame her for treating the dude like a jackass, he is a freaking jackass.

Nothing in this country can be counted on any more. If you write a book and call it non-fiction, it should be at least more-or-less true. This book is as much fiction as fact, and it is a sleazy dishonesty that is permeating this country.

Yeah, it would be nice if she'd call out some politicians. But get real, if she takes sides in the "culture war" she loses half her audience. It's not going to happen.