Let's See If You Believe In Me...

Back in the summer, when Obama clinched the nomination, J in Baltimore asked me to expand on a thought I'd offered in this post back when Oprah endorsed Barack Obama - now that he'd won, would she be affected? How would her own place in the culture be changed?

I've thought about that question a lot - that's the nature of having my best friend challenge me - but didn't have a complete answer. Then, on election night, TV cameras found a teary-eyed Oprah deeply moved by Obama's speech, and I knew I had to revisit the topic.

But something else happened along the way: apparently, Oprah' personal struggle with her weight reached a crisis point, and that has become her new crusade.

And in it, I think, is the problem and promise of Oprah's current celebrity.

For one thing, Oprah's return to personal development over politics and creating a bond of identification with her audience brings her back to what I suggested at the time of her endorsement: that her foray into politics was a nice diversion, but not likely to stick. As I wrote at the time:

I suspect her "endorsement"  of Obama was not necessarily ill considered, but sort of pleasantly naive; the initial foray of a well intentioned, but not necessarily deeply politically savvy, person who does not see the enormity of the leap she's making into the center of our political life. I'm not sure that's enough to justify the move she's made, and I would guess either she's going to turn out to be fairly unserious about the broader implications of her role (and thus, retreat very soon back into her comfortable perch on daytime TV) or she's going to get seriously burned down the road and take her toys and go home, sadder, and possibly wiser.

Either way, I find it hard to imagine that Oprah's foray into politics has legs much into next year; but the distortions she manages to introduce into our media and our politics in just a short time may well do damage enough. Not because she alone may be able to drag Obama into office on celebrity and little else (though I worry about that too), but because the questions she raises, and then fails to answer, will leave room for more quasi-celebrity involvement in politics that will make further mischief... and that won't come, necessarily, with Oprah's good intentions.

At first, the observations about Oprah's weight were the stuff of tabloids; but by November, when she acknowledged it on her show, it was clear that things had changed. I tend to agree with others, like the folks at Shakesville and Kate Harding, that part of the problem here is Oprah's buy-in to a culture relentlessly focused on diet and weight loss. Should we really care what size Oprah is? Why should it matter?

Ah, those questions... lurking in the question of her weight is the larger question - why we should care about Oprah's journey of self discovery? Or anyone's? One of her great skills - arguably the reason her celebrity has grown and endured as it has - is Oprah's ability to turn her "journey" into a universalized appeal. We read what she reads, decorate the way she decorates... eat the way she eats.

Vote the way she does.

It's a rare kind of celebrity that can take self-involvement on this scale and make it seem so universal, so self-uninvolved. It was sort of weird to see that this season, as the financial crisis hit just days before her season premiere episode, that Oprah canned her "my favorite things" episode, a triumph of wish fulfillment and consumerism (that led to the famous "everybody gets a car!" episode). One could argue how utterly backwards her decision was: after years of embodying the kind of relentless shop and acquire consumerism driven by credit cards (which made her embrace of practical-minded Suze Orman's financial advice all the more ironically perfect), at a moment when many in her audience could use some items most as gifts... she wasn't there to give them.

As interesting as it will be to see Oprah navigate all the changes of the coming year - a political scene much more in tune with her own sense of politics, a financial crisis bound to hit her kind of enterprise hardest, as it is so advertiser driven - I suspect, now, that the question will come down to two intertwined dilemmas, one's Oprah has had all along: one being whether she can still relate to an audience whose economic circumstances will diverge wildly from her own, and second whether America is prepared to breathlessly follow her every personal development with quite the fascination its had so far.

Backing off from the kind of overt political stance that she took last year is probably wise; Oprah's succeeded best and most effectively by following her enthusiasms with a kind of charming naivete. Watching her in Grant Park, moved beyond words to tears, one could see that she, like most of us, took a chance on supporting something, not entirely knowing how it would shake out. To pursue politics further, she'd have had to take sides, take stands... act with far more knowing intent to cause a particular result. But retreating into the highly personal may be an over-correction; I'd bet now is not the time to ask the American public to share in the travails of a rich, pampered life... one that got, in just a few months, even more out of reach than it ever was (or at least, that the illusions of similar consumer habits could camouflage such a distance).It makes me wonder if the moment has come for the next guard: if the scrappy striving of Tyra Banks might find more resonance... or if Rachael Ray's more kitchen-sink, seat of the pants, make do with less, type of approach might be the more realistic.

Lurking behind Oprah's relentless push for self-improvement, after all, is a value judgment: you should Live Your Best Life... because that's not what you're doing now. You could be better, live better, do more. I suspect the appeal of that harangue is fading, that we're coming to an "I'm trying pretty damn hard, thanks, and the life I have is going to have to do, for now." We may believe in Oprah... the question is, does she believe in us?

Comments

[Cari from ditch diets]

I'm sure hoping that if a few good things can come out of our current financial crisis, it's that we'll be less frantic about weight, and that maybe because we can't afford all that processed food we'll resort to growing our own veggies and eating healthier.