Oprah Winfrey Totally Explained

Everything about Oprah Winfrey totally explained

Oprah Gail Winfrey (born January 29, 1954), often referred to simply as Oprah, is an American television host, media mogul, and philanthropist. Her internationally-syndicated talk show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, has earned her multiple Emmy Awards and is the highest-rated talk show in the history of television. She is also an influential book critic, an Academy Award-nominated actress, and a magazine publisher. She has been ranked the richest African American of the 20th century, the most philanthropic African American of all time, and the world's only black billionaire for three straight years. She is also, according to, the most influential woman in the world.
Born in rural Mississippi to a poor unwed teenaged mother, and later raised in an inner city Milwaukee neighborhood, Winfrey was raped at the age of nine, and at fourteen, gave birth to a son who died in infancy. Sent to live with the man she calls her father, a barber in Tennessee, Winfrey landed a job in radio while still in high school and began co-anchoring the local evening news at the age of 19. Her emotional ad-lib delivery eventually got her transferred to the daytime talk show arena, and after boosting a third-rated local Chicago talk show to first place, she's thought to have popularized and revolutionized the tabloid talk show genre pioneered by Phil Donahue, which a Yale study claimed broke 20th century taboos and allowed gays, transsexuals, and transgender people to enter the mainstream. By the mid 1990s she'd reinvented her show with a focus on literature, self-improvement, and spirituality. Though criticized for unleashing confession culture and promoting controversial self-help fads, she's generally admired for overcoming adversity to become a benefactor to others.

Early life

Oprah Winfrey (originally Orpah after the Biblical character in the Book of Ruth), was born in Kosciusko, Mississippi, to unmarried parents. She later explained that her conception was due to a single sexual encounter that her two teenaged parents had; they quickly broke up not long after. (see Jill Nelson, "The Man Who Saved Oprah Winfrey," Washington Post, 14 December 1986; p. W30) There are conflicting reports as to how her name became “Oprah.” According to a 1991 interview with the Academy of Achievement, Winfrey claimed that her family and friends' inability to pronounce “Orpah” caused them to put the “P” before the “R” in every place else other than the birth certificate. However, there's the account that the midwife transposed letters while filling out the newborn's birth certificate. Her parents were unmarried teenagers. Her mother, Vernita Lee, was a housemaid, and her father, Vernon Winfrey, was a coal miner and later worked as a barber before becoming a city councilman. Winfrey's father was in the Armed Forces when she was born. After her birth, Winfrey's mother traveled north and Winfrey spent her first six years living in rural poverty with her grandmother, Hattie Mae Lee who was so poor that Winfrey often wore dresses made of potato sacks, causing the local children to make fun of her. (Paul Harris. "The Observer Profile: Oprah Winfrey." The Observer (London, UK), 20 November 2005, p.27) On the other hand, it was her grandmother who taught her to read before the age of three and took her to the local church, where she was nicknamed "The Preacher" for her ability to recite Bible verses. When Winfrey was a child, her grandmother would take a switch and would hit her with it when she didn't do chores or if she misbehaved in any way.
At age six, Winfrey moved to an inner-city neighborhood in Milwaukee, Wisconsin with her mother, who was less supportive and encouraging than her grandmother had been, due in large part to the long hours Vernita Lee worked as a maid. (Jill Nelson. "The Man Who Saved Oprah Winfrey." Washington Post, 14 December 1986, p. W30) Winfrey has stated that she was molested by her cousin, uncle, and a family friend, starting when she was nine years old (Lee Winfrey, "Praise from All Corners for New Talk Show Host," Syracuse Herald Journal, 9 September 1986, p. 44), something she first revealed to her viewers on a 1986 episode of her TV show, when sexual abuse was being discussed. (Thomas Morgan. "Troubled Girl's Evolution into an Oscar Nominee." New York Times, 4 March 1986, p. C17)
Despite her dysfunctional home life, Winfrey skipped two of her earliest grades, became the teacher's pet, and by the time she was 13 received a scholarship to attend Nicolet High School in the Milwaukee suburb of Glendale, Wisconsin. Although Winfrey was very popular, she couldn't afford to go out on the town as frequently as her better-off classmates. Like many teenagers at the end of the 1960s, Winfrey rebelled, ran away from home and ran to the streets. When she was 14, she became pregnant, but the baby died shortly after birth.

Career and success

Television

In 1983, Winfrey relocated to Chicago to host WLS-TV's low-rated half-hour morning talk-show, AM Chicago. The first episode aired on January 2, 1984. Within months after Winfrey took over, the show went from last place in the ratings to overtaking Donahue as the highest rated talk show in Chicago. It was renamed The Oprah Winfrey Show, expanded to a full hour, and broadcast nationally beginning September 8, 1986. On her 20th anniversary show, Oprah revealed that movie critic Roger Ebert was the one who persuaded her to sign a syndication deal with King World. Ebert predicted that she'd generate 40 times as much revenue as his television show, At the Movies. Already having surpassed Donahue in the local market, Winfrey's syndicated show quickly doubled his national audience, displacing Donahue as the number one day-time talk show in America. Their much publicized contest was the subject of enormous scrutiny. Time magazine wrote, "Few people would have bet on Oprah Winfrey's swift rise to host of the most popular talk show on TV. In a field dominated by white males, she's a black female of ample bulk. As interviewers go, she's no match for, say, Phil Donahue...What she lacks in journalistic toughness, she makes up for in plainspoken curiosity, robust humor and, above all empathy. Guests with sad stories to tell are apt to rouse a tear in Oprah's eye...They, in turn, often find themselves revealing things they wouldn't imagine telling anyone, much less a national TV audience. It is the talk show as a group therapy session."
   TV columnist Howard Rosenberg said, "She's a roundhouse, a full course meal, big, brassy, loud, aggressive, hyper, laughable, lovable, soulful, tender, low-down, earthy and hungry. And she may know the way to Phil Donahue's jugular." Newsday's Les Payne observed, "Oprah Winfrey is sharper than Donahue, wittier, more genuine, and far better attuned to her audience, if not the world." Martha Bayles of The Wall Street Journal wrote, "It's a relief to see a gab-monger with a fond but realistic assessment of her own cultural and religious roots." In the mid-1990s, Winfrey adopted a less tabloid-oriented format, doing shows about heart disease in women, geopolitics with Lisa Ling, spirituality and meditation, and gift-giving and home decorating shows. She often interviews celebrities on issues that directly involve them in some way, such as cancer, charity work, or substance abuse. In addition, she interviews ordinary people who have done extraordinary things or been involved in important current issues.
   In 1993, Winfrey hosted a rare prime-time interview with Michael Jackson which became the fourth most watched event in American television history as well as the most watched interview ever, with an audience of one hundred million. Perhaps Winfrey's most famous recent show was the first episode of the nineteenth season of The Oprah Winfrey Show in the autumn of 2004. During the show each member of the audience received a new G6 sedan; the 276 cars were donated by Pontiac as part of a publicity stunt. The show received so much media attention that even the taxes on the cars became controversial.
   During a lawsuit against Winfrey (see Influence), she hired Dr. Phil McGraw's company Courtroom Sciences, Inc. to help her analyze and read the jury. Dr. Phil made such an impression on Winfrey that she invited him to appear on her show. He accepted the invitation and was a resounding success. McGraw appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show for several years before launching his own show, Dr. Phil, in 2002, which was created by Winfrey's production company, Harpo Productions in partnership with Paramount which produced the show.
   Winfrey recently made a deal to extend her show until the 2010–2011 season, by which time it'll have been on the air for twenty-five years. She plans to host 140 episodes per season, until her final season, when it'll return to its current number, 130.
   In 2005, Harpo Productions released another film adaptation of a famous American novel, Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937). The made-for-television film Their Eyes Were Watching God was based upon a teleplay by Suzan-Lori Parks, and starred Halle Berry in the lead female role.
   She has voiced for Charlotte's Web, the 2006 film as Gussie the goose.
   Winfrey is also the voice of Judge Bumbleden in Bee Movie released in November 2007.

Books and magazines

Winfrey publishes two magazines: O, The Oprah Magazine and O at Home. She has co-authored five books; at the announcement of her future weight loss book (to be co-authored with her personal trainer Bob Greene), it was said that her undisclosed advance fee had broken the record for the world's highest book advance fee, previously held by former U.S. President Bill Clinton for his autobiography My Life. In 2002 Fortune called O, the Oprah Magazine the most successful start-up ever in the industry.

Online

Oprah.com

is a website created by Winfrey's company to provide resources and interactive content relating to her shows, magazines, book club, and public charity.
Oprah.com averages more than 70 million page views and more than six million users per month, and receives approximately 20,000 e-mails each week.
Winfrey initiated “Oprah’s Child Predator Watch List,” through her show and website, to help track down accused child molesters. Within the first 48 hours, two of the featured men were captured.

Radio

On February 9 2006 it was announced that Winfrey signed a three-year, $55 million contract with XM Satellite Radio to establish a new radio channel. The channel, Oprah & Friends, features popular contributors to The Oprah Winfrey Show and O, The Oprah Magazine including Nate Berkus, Dr. Mehmet Oz, Bob Greene, Dr. Robin Smith and Marianne Williamson. Oprah & Friends began broadcasting at 11:00 AM ET, September 25, 2006, from a new studio at Winfrey's Chicago headquarters. The channel broadcasts 24 hours a day, 7 days a week on XM Radio Channel 156. Winfrey's contract requires her to be on the air 30 minutes a week, 39 weeks a year. The 30-minute weekly show will feature Winfrey with friend Gayle King. Winfrey's audience is extremely loyal and XM hopes that the "Oprah Effect" can have the same effect on XM subscription sales that she does on the New York Times Best Seller list, thanks to her book club.

Future projects

In late 2006 Winfrey’s Harpo production and ABC revealed plans to bring two new reality TV shows to the air. One of the series is tentatively titled Oprah Winfrey's The Big Give, and presents 10 people with large sums of money and resources and they must compete to find "the most powerful, sensational, emotional and dramatic ways to give to others." The second show, tentatively titled Your Money or Your Life, will unleash an "expert action team" every week to aid a family in overcoming a crisis through a "total money and life makeover."
On January 15, 2008 Winfrey and Discovery Communications announced plans to transition the current channel Discovery Health Channel into a new network called OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network. OWN will debut at an unspecified time in 2009. It will be available in more than 70 million homes because of the current position of Discovery Health Channel. This was a non-cash deal with Winfrey turning control of her website Oprah.com to Discovery Communications.

Personal life

Homes

Winfrey currently lives on “The Promised Land”, her 42-acre (170,000 m²) estate with ocean and mountain views in Montecito, California, outside of Santa Barbara. Winfrey also owns a house in Lavallette, New Jersey, an apartment in Chicago, an estate on Fisher Island off the coast of Miami, a ski house in Telluride, Colorado, and property on the island of Maui, Hawaii. She also owns a home on the island of Antigua. Winfrey's show is based in Chicago, so she spends time there, specifically in the neighborhood of Streeterville, but she otherwise resides in California. Her Hawaii property was featured on the cover of O at Home and on her TV show. Winfrey also owns a home in the exclusive town of Avalon, New Jersey.

Family

Winfrey and her partner Stedman Graham have been together since 1986. They were engaged to be married in November 1992, but the ceremony never took place. Winfrey believes that the reason she never had children was because her students at South Africa’s Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls were meant to be her daughters:
   In the February 2006 issue of her magazine, O, Winfrey said she felt "betrayed" by her family member, who revealed to the National Enquirer that Winfrey gave birth as a teen to a baby who died in the hospital weeks later.
   Oprah visited Graceland in 2006 while on her cross-country trip with Gayle King. While having dinner with Lisa Marie Presley and her husband Michael Lockwood, Oprah told Lisa Marie that her grandmother's last name was also Presley.
   Winfrey had her DNA tested for the 2006 PBS program African American Lives. The genetic test determined that her maternal line originated among the Kpelle ethnic group, in the area that today is Liberia. Her genetic make up was determined to be 89% Sub-Saharan African. She is part Native American (about 8% according to the test) and East Asian (about 3% according to the test).

Romantic history

Winfrey once dated movie critic Roger Ebert, whom she credits with advising her to take her show into syndication. The relationship of Winfrey and Graham has been documented through the years with numerous romantic tabloid articles often accompanied by color spreads of the couple at home and on lavish vacations. Prior to meeting Graham, Winfrey's love life was a lot less stable. A self-described promiscuous teen who was a victim of sexual abuse, Winfrey gave birth at the age of 14, to a boy who died shortly after. In 1997 a former boyfriend named Randoph Cook tried to sue Winfrey for $20 million for allegedly blocking a tell-all book where he claimed they lived together for several months in 1985 and did drugs. Cook’s claims mark the second time reports surfaced about Winfrey’s involvement in a drug related love affair. In 1995 Winfrey herself confessed to drug use. “And I've often said over the years…in my attempts to come out and say it, I've said many times I did things in my 20s that I was ashamed of, I did things I felt guilty about, but that's my life's great big secret that's always been held over my head,” she explained on her show. “I always felt that the drug itself isn't the problem but that I was addicted to the man.” She added: “I can't think of anything I wouldn't have done for that man.”
   Winfrey's early love life wasn't always so tumultuous. Her high school sweetheart Anthony Otey recalled an innocent courtship that began in Winfrey's senior year of high school, from which he saved hundreds of love notes; Winfrey conducted herself with dignity and as a model student. The two spoke of getting married, but Otey claimed to have always secretly known that Winfrey was destined for a far greater life than he could ever provide. On Valentine's day of her senior year, Otey's fears came true when Winfrey took Otey aside and told him they needed to talk. “I knew right then that I was going to lose the girl I loved,” Otey recalled. “She told me she was breaking up with me because she didn't have time for a relationship. We both sat there and cried. It broke my heart.”Years later, Otey was stunned to discover details from Winfrey's promiscuous and rebellious past at the end of the 1960s, and the fact that she'd given birth to a baby several years before they met. Taylor however was unwilling to leave Nashville with Winfrey when she moved to Baltimore to work at WJZ-TV in June 1976. “We really did care for each other,” Winfrey would later recall. “We shared a deep love. A love I'll never forget.”
   When WJZ-TV management criticized Winfrey for crying on the air while reporting tragedies and were unhappy with her physical appearance (especially when her hair fell out as the result of a bad perm), Winfrey turned to reporter Lloyd Kramer for comfort. “Lloyd was just the best,” Winfrey would later recall. “That man loved me even when I was bald! He was wonderful. He stuck with me through the whole demoralizing experience. That man was the most fun romance I ever had.”
   According to Mair, when Kramer moved to NBC in New York Winfrey became involved with a man who friends had warned her to avoid. Winfrey would later recall:
September 8, 1981, she wrote a suicide note to best friend Gayle King instructing King to water her plants.
   According to Winfrey, such emotional ups and downs gradually led to a weight problem:
Vanity Fair wrote:
Bill O'Reilly said:
Biographer Kitty Kelley states that she's always been “fascinated” by Winfrey:
mad cow disease with Howard Lyman (aired on April 16, 1996), Winfrey exclaimed, "It has just stopped me cold from eating another burger!" Texas cattlemen sued her and Lyman in early 1998 for "false defamation of perishable food" and "business disparagement", claiming that Winfrey's remarks subsequently sent cattle prices tumbling, costing beef producers some USD$12 million. On February 26, after a trial spanning over two months in an Amarillo, Texas court in the thick of cattle country, a jury found Winfrey and Lyman were not liable for damages. (After the trial, she received a postcard from Roseanne Barr reading, “Congratulations, you beat the meat!”) In June 2005 the first case of mad cow disease in a cow native to the United States was detected in Texas. The USDA concluded that it was most likely infected in Texas prior to 1997.
   In 2005 Winfrey was named the greatest woman in American history as part of a public poll as part of The Greatest American. She was ranked #9 overall on the list of greatest Americans.
   Winfrey's reach extends far beyond the shores of the U.S., where 49 million U.S. viewers see her talk show weekly. The show airs in 117 countries around the world “from Australia to Zimbabwe.”

Media counterculture

While Phil Donahue has been credited with pioneering the tabloid talk show genre, what has been described as the warmth, intimacy and personal confession Winfrey brought to the format is believed to have both popularized and revolutionized it. In the scholarly text Freaks Talk Back, Yale sociology professor Joshua Gamson credits the tabloid talk show genre with providing much needed high impact media visibility for gays, bisexuals, transsexuals, and transgender people and doing more to make them mainstream and socially acceptable than any other development of the 20th century. In the book's editorial review Michael Bronski wrote "In the recent past, lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgendered people had almost no presence on television. With the invention and propagation of tabloid talk shows such as Jerry Springer, Jenny Jones, Oprah, and Geraldo, people outside the sexual mainstream now appear in living rooms across America almost every day of the week."
   An example of one such show by Winfrey occurred in the 1980s where for the entire hour, members of the studio audience stood up one by one, gave their name and announced that they were gay. Also in the 1980s Winfrey took her show to West Virginia to confront a town gripped by AIDS paranoia because a gay man living in the town had HIV. Winfrey interviewed the man who had become a social outcast, the town's mayor who drained a swimming pool in which the man had gone swimming, and debated with the town's hostile residents. "But I hear this is a God fearing town," Winfrey scolded the homophobic studio audience; "where's all that Christian love and understanding?" During a show on gay marriage in the 1990s, a woman in Winfrey's audience stood up to complain that gays were constantly flaunting their sex lives and she announced that she was tired of it. "You know what I'm tired of", replied Winfrey, "heterosexual males raping and sodomizing young girls. That's what I'm tired of." Her rebuttal inspired a screaming standing ovation from that show's mostly gay studio audience.
   Gamson credits the tabloid talk show fad with making alternative sexual orientations and identities more acceptable in mainstream society. Examples include a recent Time magazine article describing early 21st century gays coming out of the closet younger and younger and gay suicide rates plummeting. Gamson also believes that tabloid talk shows caused gays to be embraced on more traditional forms of media. Examples include sitcoms like Will & Grace, primetime shows like Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and Oscar nominated feature films like Brokeback Mountain.
   While having changed with the times from her tabloid talk show roots, Winfrey continues to include gay guests by using her show to promote openly gay personalities like her hairdresser Andre Walker, makeup artist Reggie Wells, and decorator Nate Berkus who inspired an outpouring of sympathy from middle America after grieving the loss of his partner in the 2004 tsunami on the Oprah Winfrey Show. Winfrey's "therapeutic" hosting style and the tabloid talk show genre has been credited or blamed for leading the media counterculture of the 1980s and 1990s which some believe broke 20th century taboos, led to America's self-help obsession, and created confession culture. The Wall Street Journal coined the term "Oprahfication" which means public confession as a form of therapy.
   In April 1997, Winfrey played the therapist on the sitcom Ellen to whom the character (and the real-life Ellen DeGeneres) said she was a lesbian. In 1998, Mark Steyn in the National Review wrote of Winfrey "Today, no truly epochal moment in the history of the Republic occurs unless it's validated by her presence. When Ellen said, 'Yep! I'm gay,' Oprah was by her side, guesting on the sitcom as (what else?) the star's therapist."

Communication style

By confessing intimate details about her weight problems, tumultuous love life, and sexual abuse, and crying alongside her guests, Time magazine credits Winfrey with creating a new form of media communication known as "rapport talk" as distinguished from the "report talk" of Phil Donahue:
Bill Clinton's empathetic speaking style. Columnist Maureen Dowd commented on the symbolism of Bill Clinton seeking an "Oprah-style" talk show when he left the presidency:
Newsweek stated:
Roseanne Barr, Rosie O'Donnell and Star Jones. The November 1988 Ms. magazine observed that "in a society where fat is taboo, she made it in a medium that worships thin and celebrates a bland, white-bread prettiness of body and personality...But Winfrey made fat sexy, elegant — damned near gorgeous - with her drop-dead wardrobe, easy body language, and cheerful sensuality."

Oprah's Book Club

Oprah's Book Club. The segment focused on new books and classics, and often brought obscure novels to popular attention. The book club became such a powerful force that whenever Winfrey introduced a new book as her book-club selection, it instantly became a best-seller (known as the Oprah Effect); for example, when she selected the classic John Steinbeck novel East of Eden, it soared to the top of the book charts. Being recognized by Winfrey often means a million additional book sales for an author.
In, Kathleen Rooney describes Winfrey as "a serious American intellectual who pioneered the use of electronic media, specifically television and the Internet, to take reading — a decidedly non-technological and highly individual act — and highlight its social elements and uses in such a way to motivate millions of erstwhile non-readers to pick up books."
Oprah's Book Club has occasionally chosen books which have proven to be controversial. Most notably, Jonathan Franzen questioned the Club's selection process and credibility, and there was a live television confrontation over allegations of fabrication regarding James Frey's A Million Little Pieces.

Spiritual icon

In 2002, Christianity Today published an article called "The Church of O" in which they concluded that Winfrey had emerged as an influential spiritual leader. "Since 1994, when she abandoned traditional talk-show fare for more edifying content, and 1998, when she began 'Change Your Life TV', Oprah's most significant role has become that of spiritual leader. To her audience of more than 22 million mostly female viewers, she's become a postmodern priestess—an icon of church-free spirituality." The sentiment was seconded by Marcia Z. Nelson in her book The Gospel According to Oprah. On the season premier of Winfrey's 13th season Roseanne Barr told Winfrey "you're the African Mother Goddess of us all" inspiring much enthusiasm from the studio audience. The animated series Futurama alluded to her spiritual influence by suggesting that, a thousand years from now, a religion known as "Oprahism" exists.

Fan base

The audience for her magazine is considerably more upscale than those who watch her show, earning US$63,000 a year (well above the median for U.S. women). Although Winfrey's audience is sometimes spoofed for their fanatical devotion by shows like Saturday Night Live, Winfrey has been very protective of them and gets very offended when they're publicly disparaged.
Although Winfrey's audience is 75% female, some of Winfrey's fans are gay males. For example, one of the stars of the reality TV show The Benefactor was a gay African American man named Kevin who was so obsessed with Winfrey that he'd ask "What would Oprah do?" before making any strategic decision.
Winfrey's fan base transcends national borders. The Wall Street Journal reported that MBC 4, an Arab satellite channel, centered its entire programming around reruns of her show because it was drawing record numbers of female viewers in Saudi Arabia.

Philanthropy

In 1998, Winfrey began Oprah's Angel Network, a charity aimed at encouraging people around the world to make a difference in the lives of underprivileged others. Accordingly, Oprah's Angel Network supports charitable projects and provides grants to nonprofit organizations around the world that share this vision. To date, Oprah's Angel Network has raised more than $51,000,000 ($1 million of which was donated by Jon Bon Jovi). Winfrey personally covers all administrative costs associated with the charity, so 100% of all funds raised go to charity programs.
   Although Winfrey's show is known for raising money through her public charity and the cars and gifts she gives away on TV are often donated by corporations in exchange for publicity, behind the scenes Winfrey personally donates more of her own money to charity than any other show-business celebrity in America. In 2005 she became the first black person listed by Business Week as one of America's top 50 most generous philanthropists, having given an estimated $303 million. Winfrey was the 32nd most philanthropic.
   In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Oprah asked her viewers to open their hearts—and they did. As of September 2006, donations to the Oprah Angel Network Katrina registry total more than $11 million. Homes have been built in four states—Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama—before the one year anniversary of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Winfrey also matched her viewers' donations by personally giving $10 million to the cause.
   Winfrey has also put 250 African-American men through college
   Winfrey was the recipient of the first Bob Hope Humanitarian Award at the 2002 Emmy Awards for services to television and film.
   To celebrate two decades on national TV, and to thank her employees for their hard work, Winfrey took her staff and their families (1065 people in total) on vacation to Hawaii in the summer of 2006.

South Africa

In 2004, Winfrey and her team filmed an episode of her show entitled Oprah's Christmas Kindness, in which Winfrey, her best friend Gayle King, her partner Stedman Graham, and some crew members travelled to South Africa to bring attention to the plight of young children affected by poverty and AIDS. During the 21-day whirlwind trip, Winfrey and her crew visited schools and orphanages in poverty-stricken areas, and at different set-up points in the areas distributed Christmas presents to 50,000 children, with dolls for the girls and soccer balls for the boys. In addition, each child was given a backpack full of school supplies and received two sets of school uniforms for their gender, in addition to two sets of socks, two sets of underwear, and a pair of shoes. Throughout the show, Winfrey appealed to viewers to donate money to Oprah's Angel Network for poor and AIDS-affected children in Africa, and pledged that she personally would oversee where that money was spent. From that show alone, viewers around the world donated over $7,000,000.
Winfrey invested $40 million and much of her time establishing the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls near Johannesburg in South Africa. The school opened in January, 2007. Nelson Mandela praised Winfrey for overcoming her own disadvantaged youth to become a benefactor for others and for investing in the future of South Africa.

Political advocacy

Winfrey has recently exerted political influence, endorsing presidential candidate Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election. This is the first time she's publically made such an endorsement. Winfrey held a fundraiser for Obama on September 8, 2007 at her Santa Barbara, CA estate. In December 2007, Winfrey joined Obama for a series of rallies in the early primary states of Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. The Columbia, South Carolina event on December 9, 2007 drew a crowd of nearly 30,000, the largest for any political event of the 2008 presidential election season thus far.

Criticisms and controversies

Although Winfrey has continually changed the focus of her show since the mid-1990s, her success has been seen as popularizing of the "tabloid talk show" genre, and turning it into a thriving industry that has included Ricki Lake, The Jenny Jones Show, and The Jerry Springer Show. Sociologist Vicki Abt criticized tabloid talk shows for redefining social norms. In her book Coming After Oprah: Cultural Fallout in the Age of the TV talk show, Abt warned that the media revolution that followed Winfrey's success was blurring the lines between "normal" and "deviant" behavior.
   Leading up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Winfrey's show received criticism for allegedly having an anti-war bias. Ben Shapiro of Townhall.com wrote:
In 2006, Winfrey recalled such controversies:
However antiwar activist Michael Moore came to Winfrey’s defense, praising her for showing antiwar footage no other media would show and begging her to run for president. A February 2003 series Winfrey did, in which she showed clips from people all over the world asking America not to go to war, was interrupted in several east coast markets by network broadcasts of a press conference in which President George W. Bush, joined by Colin Powell, summarized the case for war.
   In June 2005, Winfrey was denied access to the Hermès company's flagship store in Paris, France. Winfrey arrived fifteen minutes after the store's formal closing time, though the store was still very active and high end stores routinely extend hours for VIP customers. Winfrey believed she'd have been allowed in the store if she were a white celebrity. “I know the difference between a store that's closed and a store that's closed to me,” explained Winfrey. In September 2005, Hermès USA CEO Robert Chavez was a guest on The Oprah Winfrey Show and apologized for a rude employee.
   On December 1, 2005, Winfrey appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman to promote the new Broadway musical The Color Purple, of which she was a producer, joining the host for the first time in 16 years. The episode was hailed by some as the “television event of the decade” and helped Letterman attract his largest audience in more than 11 years: 13.45 million viewers. Although a much-rumored feud was said to have been the cause of the rift, both Winfrey and Letterman balked at such talk. “I want you to know, it's really over, whatever you thought was happening,” said Winfrey. On September 10, 2007, David Letterman made his first appearance on "The Oprah Winfrey Show", as its season premiere was filmed in New York City.
   In 2006, rappers Ludacris, 50 Cent and Ice Cube criticized Winfrey for what they perceived as an anti-hip hop bias. In an interview with GQ magazine, Ludacris said that Winfrey gave him a "hard time" about his lyrics, and edited comments he made during an appearance on her show with the cast of the film Crash. He also claimed that he wasn't initially invited on the show with the rest of the cast. Winfrey responded by saying that she's opposed to rap lyrics that "marginalize women", but enjoys some artists, including Kanye West, who appeared on her show. She said she spoke with Ludacris backstage after his appearance to explain her position, and said she understood that his music was for entertainment purposes, but that some of his listeners might take it literally.
   Winfrey has also been criticized for not being "tough" enough in questioning celebrity or politician guests on her show that she appears to like. Lisa de Moraes, a media columnist for The Washington Post, stated, "Oprah doesn't do follow-up questions unless you're an author who's embarrassed her by fabricating portions of a supposed memoir she's plugged for her book club."
   In early 2007, Winfrey was criticized for building a $40 million school complex for girls in South Africa. The school will have an initial enrollment of 152 but will gradually accommodate 450, and features such amenities as a beauty salon and yoga studio. It has been argued that the money would be better utilized to educate a larger number of children in either North America or South Africa; however, Winfrey insists that beautiful surroundings will inspire greatness in the future leaders of Africa.
   Recently, Winfrey has been accused by magician and skeptic James Randi of being deliberately deceptive and uncritical in how she handles paranormal claims on her show.
   In 2007, Winfrey began to endorse the controversial self-help program The Secret. The Secret claims that people can change their lives through positive thoughts, which will then cause vibrations that result in good things happening to them. Critics argue that this idea is pseudoscience and psychologically damaging, as it trivializes important decisions and promotes a quick-fix material culture, and suggest Winfrey's promotion of it's irresponsible given her influence.

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Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:

<a href="http://oprah_winfrey.totallyexplained.com">Oprah Winfrey Totally Explained</a>

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