"Our Oprah, which art on TeeVee,
hallowed be thy name;
thy kingdom come;
thy will be done,
on earth as it is in Chicago.
Give us this day our daily "Aha".
And forgive us our makeovers,
as we forgive them that makeover against us.
And lead us not into temptation;
but deliver us from Judge Judy.
For thine is the kingdom,
the power, and the glory,
for ever and EVAH!"
Amen.
I'm not sure what exactly I expected from Oprah's last show but I certainly didn't expect to be going to church. But that's exactly what it was, a one hour sermon from the High Priestess Herself, Pope Oprah the First... P'Oprah.
I was an infrequent Oprah viewer at best, but I had planned to watch her final shows this week. Then I discovered Monday's and Tuesday's shows were just pre-taped highlights from last week's Oprahpalooza in Chicago, most of which had already made their way online and on the news. So I passed on those, but I still planned on carving out an hour yesterday to watch the Grand Finale.
She was definitely preaching to the choir. When the show started and she quickly announced there would be no guests and nobody was getting anything, no cars, no vacations, no nothing, I thought "Then why the hell are we here?" Maybe it meant something to the True Believers, but to me it seemed like an hour of Oprah reading off Hallmark cards, broken up only by commercials for Sizzler and Mattressland. And there was something deeply unsettling about a Billionaire media mogul lecturing people to find "their bliss" and live a simple life of love and light. Or maybe I'm just terminally cynical.
At one point I accidentally leaned on the remote and the channel changed to the BBC World News, and even they were doing a report on her but they kept pronouncing her name "Opera", which made me laugh and gave me the title for the post.
I tried to stick with it but after about 20 minutes I threw in the towel and went back to work.
Don't get me wrong, I like Oprah. I think she's done a lot of good in the world and brought attention to a lot of worthy causes. But the orgy of Oprah these past few weeks and months has been overkill on steroids. By the time the show started yesterday I kept thinking "How can we miss you if you won't ever go away?"
But now she's gone. So she says. It'll be interesting to see how long that lasts.
