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Arts and Culture

Oprah for Senator?

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Posted on Jan 26, 2009
Oprah
canada.com

Thanks, but no thanks: Oprah Winfrey says she’s not interested in adding “senator” to her list of credentials.

Say what you want about Rod Blagojevich, but the man knows how to cause a public ruckus. After hitting the airwaves with various startling pronouncements, like his self-comparisons to Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi, the beleaguered Illinois governor revealed on “Good Morning America” on Monday that he had considered offering Oprah Winfrey the U.S. Senate seat vacated by President Barack Obama. But would she have bitten?

No, she wouldn’t, as it turns out.


Chicago Sun-Times:

Winfrey called into Gayle King’s Sirius XM radio show to react to the news that the embattled governor considered Winfrey for the Senate seat, replacing President Obama, that Blagojevich is accused of trying to sell.

Blagojevich, speaking on ABC’s “Good Morning America” this morning, said he considered offering Winfrey Illinois’ once-vacant U.S. Senate seat, but that she “probably wouldn’t take it.”

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By don knutsen, February 2 at 3:44 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

Why is this still being shown ? Is anyone really at all interested in the hypothetical prospects of Oprah ? I know her vast wealth has convinced her that she is a major shaper in all our lives….but there are some of us out here who still don’t ask her what we should think. Fer God’s sake, show us something of interest…this is banality. Are you gonna start giving us updates on who wants to marry whatver next ? If she wanted to be a senator she wouldv’e already bought the position right ? Isn’t that all it takes ?

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By CJ, February 2 at 3:34 am #

Whenever I read of or hear of Oprah Winfrey, I think of P.T. Barnum, America’s greatest (now erstwhile) practitioner of philosophy known as “Pragmatism.” (All apologies to Pierce, James and Dewey, whose philosophies suffer by those philosophers’ sincere down-to-earthed-ness. None could have known by their relatively innocent, indeed more practical, times of lengths to which power could and would go in process of maintaining a particular world-view in the interest of maintaining a certain class-based order.)

Now I’m supposed to believe—based solely on Winfrey’s latest claim via call-in to Sirius (not serious) XM radio (?)—that she’d have turned down a Senate Seat?

Not that, according to Winfrey, she couldn’t do the job (What job? More than her current “jobs”?), including treadmilling (flour anyone?) and meditating. Is the day-time TV gig ongoing? I watched once many years ago. For a few minutes. Otherwise, wasn’t it her couch upon which Cruise did that thing over his current girlfriend? Jumping up and down like a stereotypical Freudian hysteric?

P.T. seems ever more quaint in retrospect. I’m now trying to rethink priorities.

Political theater, indeed, Stephen, but more serious as symptomatic.

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By howie bledsoe, February 1 at 1:30 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

Well, if Oprah sold the presidency to Obama, then why not take blago`s offer?

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By racetoinfinity, January 29 at 11:53 pm #

After watching Oprah’s softball interview of Ted Haggard, which made Larry King look like a tiger (she never challenged his assertion that gays are “sinners” and flawed people because of their sexual orientation; she didn’t seem to be able to focus on that, despite his saying it many times forthrightly, and, from knowing her, her total disagreement with that untruth/myth), I’m not sure I’d want her as a Senator.

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By C.P.T.L., January 28 at 2:57 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

This is just stupid on top of stupid, not to mention the category, Arts and Culture; a mention of Oprah’s name causes it to be called ‘culture’? In our puddle-shallow wasteland of broken critical thinking it’s probably the most accurate and sensible aspect of the piece.

The fool, as cited by Good Morning America, that sensational fountain of trivial drivelous American morning mind-rot, “revealed” a fantastic thing unsubstantiated and not possible to substantiate, thus not credible - and it was not even possible, thus all-the-more not credible; Oprah has made it plain she is not interested in political office - not, “as it turns out”, as you say, but as she said quite a while ago when she established her position publicly.

Let’s see TruthDig, you have approximately 25 pieces up at any given time and you devoted one of them to this - that’s 4% crap. Add Eugene Robinson’s latest and you’re up to 8% crap. Yo-Yo Ma* 12%, Skateboarding in Afghanistan…


*Nothing personal Yo-Yo, Itzhak - we love you. And by the way, “the other two musicians” are worthy of naming, Gabriela Montero and Anthony McGrill.

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By Tolafins, January 27 at 6:11 am #
(Unregistered commenter)

Why not?
It all falls in place,
Its Pay time.
Without this block-head, The One, would have possibly been only a two.

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By Stephen Smoliar, January 26 at 9:42 pm #

The best thing is to think of this as political theater in the 21st century:

http://therehearsalstudio.blogspot.com/2009/01/playing-fool.html

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