a wry comedienne (or was it a disgruntled author not chosen for her book club?) predicted that come time a group of warmongering aliens invade our planet and demand from the average joe or jane to take them to our supreme leader, he or she would lead them at once to the household of oprah winfrey.
this couldn'’t be funnier if it doesn't have any grain of truth to it. oprah indeed matters to a whole lot of sane people and inordinately most of the times.
a former editor of mine in manila emailed me yesterday. this was her first after not having had any form of communication with this highly erudite woman for almost five years now.
and in only her second paragraph of her rather curt email, the only piece of americana that she wanted to know from me was the all important question of "have you been to the oprah show already?"
let me try to set things straight here, although i'’m afraid i really couldn’'t. first of all, she knew i am not working in chicago where the oprah winfrey show is being churned out. and two, this woman teaches investigative journalism in the state university in manila. what gives?
last saturday, i whittled some of my precious downtime at the union square barnes and noble, in its unruly magazine section. in my fifteen minutes or so there, i swear to god, i saw at the very least a dozen people, women and men, picking up the fifth anniversary issue of O, the oprah magazine. i was so taken by this phenomenon that i couldn’'t help but grab myself the rather hefty issue.
it'’s not that i'’ve never seen any episode of her show. i have. a disproportionately lot of times, if i may admit so. but still i am shocked at the cultish adoration of this tv personality by her minions which, most unfunnily, include my esteemed hard boiled editor.
why does oprah matter? and somehow, matters a lot to a whole lot?
centuries from now, social anthropologists would still continue to debate the sociological preeminence of this tv personality in the academe or, unsurprisingly, on tv. but until a definitive tome get published about oprah’'s importance to the world, including straight men, most shockingly, i would just be content with speculations the way people find comfort in them conspiracy theories.
in fact, i have this feeling that oprah and her singular phenomenon works much like a well conceived conspiracy theory.
we humans have this deep need to explain the unexplainable, to have this semblance of control over the uncontrollable. that’'s why there’'s a plethora of conspiracy theories floating around. hold on, i know i am about to lose you now on this. but just hold on.
but conspiracy theories, in a way, give us the faux power to rein in what are inherently unmanageable. the way oprah, perhaps, gives her followers some semblance of control over their seemingly ungovernable lives.
"understand that the right to choose your own path is a sacred privilege. use it. dwell in possibility." so said oprah, the unofficial pope of millions, a pope without the shackles of any conniving religious hierarchy or confining tenets.
as a thank you token to their millions of subscribers on their fifth anniversary, the editors of O decided to republish oprah'’s end page columns into one sleek freebie paperback.
the best of oprah'’s what i know for sure. to the uninitiated, what i know for sure is how oprah calls her column. and her editors urged the readers to keep this freebie close "“for when you need a bolt of energy or a dose of wisdom."”
in a world of uncertainties, it’s comforting for millions somehow to know there'’s this loquacious woman who can dispense this zing of vitality and, most importantly, this dollop of unalloyed enlightenment to their drifting, desperate lives.