Back in my carefree college days, I used to watch Oprah quite a bit. She was right up there in the daily rotation along with The Price is Right and the 4PM - 6PM block of The Cosby Show, Family Ties, Cheers, and Night Court re-runs. I liked her show. She was much more relatable than Phil Donahue (too liberal) and Sally Jesse Raphael (too trashy). She seemed smart and didn't take herself too seriously.
Once I got out of college, I stopped watching daytime television. But it's been hard to stay away from news of Oprah during the past 20 years. She seems to never be out of the public eye. Here are a couple of the things that stick with me from that time.
- She talks about the importance of loving yourself as you are but her O magazine cover photos (which used to pile up in the lunchroom at Aetna) just look so obviously airbrushed.
- The "Oprah's Favorite Things" giveaways drive me nuts. Oprah's not giving anything away! The companies that make the products donate them. It's advertising for them. I get that Oprah doesn't claim that she's giving these things away out of her own pocket but it's certainly implied that she is.
- She took an $18 million per year deal with Sirius back in 2006 and gives just 30 minutes per week (for 40 weeks per year) to the channel that Sirius devoted to her. Doesn't she have enough money? I'm a stockholder and I feel like she's ripping me off. Doesn't that run counter to the values she preaches?
