Where Has Oprah Taken Us? by Stephen Mansfield

Author:Stephen Mansfield
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Thomas Nelson Inc.
Published: 2011-09-14T16:00:00+00:00

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Oprah’s Spiritual Family

You done went and found you a guru,

In an effort to find you a new you.

—TOWER OF POWER, “WHAT IS HIP?”

In her encyclopedic biography of Oprah Winfrey, Kitty Kelley suggests that Oprah has created a new family to replace the embarrassing and troubled one life first handed her. In place of the demanding and lazy Vernita, for example, Oprah has chosen the poetess Maya Angelou. “I think that Maya Angelou was my mother in another life,” Oprah has said. “I love her deeply. Something is there between us. So fallopian tubes and ovaries do not a mother make.”1 It is telling that Oprah keeps Angelou’s monthly itinerary in her purse so she can reach her alternate mother any time of the day or night.

In the role of beloved uncle, Oprah has chosen Quincy Jones. “I truly learned how to love as a result of this man,” Oprah insists. “It’s not the first time I came to terms with, ‘Yes, I love this man, and it has nothing to do with wanting to go to bed with him or be romantically involved. I unconditionally love him and . . . I would slap the living shit out of somebody who said anything bad about Quincy.’”2

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Rather than the drug-addicted and betraying Patricia Lee, Oprah has chosen Gayle King, her constant companion, to be the sister of her dreams. Rather than Jeffrey Lee, the gay brother who died of AIDS, Oprah chose John Travolta, Kelley insists. And as a New Age father to replace the severe and Bible-spouting Vernon, Oprah chose famed actor Sidney Poitier: “I call Sidney every Sunday and . . . we talk about life, we talk about reincarnation, we talk about the cosmos, we talk about the stars, we talk about the planets, we talk about energy. We talk about everything.”3

This is the nature of Oprah Winfrey. She is a social being who lives life in relational terms, whose soul ever reaches for vital connection. She draws her inspiration and creativity from others. She siphons from them, drinks from their lives so as to strengthen her own. She is not unlike a race car that drafts from faster cars on the racetrack, using them to propel her forward faster than she could ever achieve on her own. She is the classic extrovert, whose inner battery charges through social contact. This is what makes her an intriguing interviewer: she is genuinely eager to feed from the lives of others while making her audience want to do so too.

Yet there is danger in this. It is possible for someone of this personality to find there is nothing inside them except what has come from others. It is possible there is no authentic self, nothing original, nothing that has not been borrowed. In Oprah’s case, this is very much a concern. Her most significant experiences, her most defining turning points, and her most life-changing realizations have all been generated through contact with other people. One wonders if Oprah in a

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