According to an article in Newsweek, Oprah Winfrey had been a member of Chicago’s Trinity United church until the mid-nineties — when she stopped attending services there, in part because of the inflammatory rhetoric of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. “Winfrey was never that comfortable with the tone of Wright’s more incendiary sermons, which she knew had the power to damage her standing as America’s favorite talk-show host,” writes Alison Samuels in the May 12 issue, and then quotes an old friend of Winfrey’s: “Oprah is a businesswoman first and foremost… She has always been aware that her audience is very mainstream, and doing anything to offend them just wouldn’t be smart.”
It’s interesting that long before Barack Obama knew he would be running for national office, Oprah already knew she was running for whatever weird sister-confessor role she has held for decades — and she knew she could never stop running. I still think Obama and his people were naive not to think that Wright would come back to haunt the candidate but his victory in North Carolina and near victory in Indiana would seem to indicate that this isn’t the controversy that’s going to sink him. Even Newt Gingrich warned Republicans that they were going to need something better than the scary pastor in the closet to beat the Democratic candidate in November. Willie Horton won’t spook no more.
I guess I should say presumptive Democratic nominee, since Hillary is now engaged on the last, and possibly strangest, phase of her campaign: the dance macabre. It reminds me of a Randy Newman song: she’s dead but she don’t know it. Or maybe she does, since every pundit and pollster pretty much pronounced her such after she failed to deal a mortal blow to Obama. But after weeks of having meat tenderizer poured on him because of his relationship to Wright, she is the one with the fork being put in her. Watch for her surrogates and winged monkeys to continue to talk up her historic candidacy and the importance of every vote but did you catch Bill’s expression while she was delivering her victory speech in Indiana? When he wasn’t smiling and clapping with the crowd he appeared to be hearing a song of his own, over the hill and very far away…
It must be hard to live your whole life as if you are running for something when you’re not sure what it is; Oprah wanted to be queen of America and damned if she isn’t. Hillary wanted to be president but it’s unlikely she’s going to get another shot. And after that, every other job title just sounds kind of weak. Maybe she can take up preaching.