Abandon All Hoprah

Highlight: audience laughs when Tyson quips about wanting to punch his wife.

A recent CNBC exposé profiles, well, it really just profiles money, and one massive funnel through which it flows: Oprah. CNBC has no other function besides aggrandizing markets, so there aren’t any pesky nuggets of culture or thoughtful moments, but this is actually perfect. The idea that one woman who has succeeded at becoming both a brand name and a god – something every company strives for with its own brand – works mostly to incubate other brands that strike her fancy, is ice-cold cynical business, and should not be viewed in the blinding light of the woman’s halo. All the new age spirituality, all the human moments, it all exists in the service of a titanic mechanism of industry. It conjures a very science fiction image, that there is a team of people dedicated to sourcing products that Oprah will like enough to endorse, so that she may, in turn, drink of their solid gold slurry herself. She could just puncture their necks with a tube and suck their innovating brains through a straw, but that would be too obvious.

Stedman and Gail stand by for instructions and a feed

It is no wonder the cult of Oprah has flourished so mightily despite the wickedness that surrounds it, when a group of educated businessmen can gather in a room and compare their redesign of the Pepsi logo to the invention of algebra, AS SEEN BUT NOT BELIEVED HERE. So perhaps this isn’t as simple as vampires gathering to discuss how to best drain every living human of their physical and spiritual essence. Perhaps they really are deranged beyond belief and need our help.

Someone please go check on the Arnell Group advertising agency. They might be a danger to themselves or others at this point. If the seeping mollusks at Advertising Age think you’ve gone overboard, you might want to grab that life vest floating by.

READ THIS.

As sure as you’re going to wake up and eat leftover mashed potatoes for breakfast, Oprah is standing by her man. He might be down in the polls, but he’s aaaall up in her heart. Nothing gets this peasant in the holiday spirit like a TV tour of my favorite aristocrat’s opulent, taxpayer-subsidized mansion!

"Gurl, you better work!" (and pay taxes, to keep the gingerbread White House lights on)

Just as Madonna is lauded for her evolving style, Winfrey finally completes her final phase of alchemy, and takes her purest form as an Oprah-shaped, golf cart-sized brick of gold.

Fox News has used the tag line “fair and balanced” for so long it’s outlived even its comedic value. Defenders of the blatant right-wing propaganda machine have defended the slogan by deriding the bias on other news stations. They don’t understand that by underlining their rectitude, by calling attention to it, they draw more scrutiny than they would if they just went by “The Pro-War, Invisible Hand Job, White Christian Resentment Network.”

So too is Oprah caught in the infinite loop, forever slipping on the same banana peel, but it is only political in her mind, as there are no consequences outside the very public response that perpetuates her obvious and interminable quest to atone with herself by getting more control more control more control. Her collection of souls is impressive to say the least. The laughter is faint compared to the commotion of her million moonie march as they dive headlong in a bid to be the first to spare Oprah’s powerful peanut brittle ego. It is because She Whose Name We Shall Not Speak has pulled off the most dastardly manipulation of her viewers; the kind of emotionally calculating grift pulled by a child abuser, politician, or pope. She has managed to tie our fates to her own, so that even her stature as the most powerful woman in the world begets her tears of sympathy, and credit swipes of confirmation.

Here is a woman whose wealth has ballooned to such obesity, she is philanthropic out of sheer boredom. Of course this gains peasant favor, as though a person of such means should do anything other than occasionally flick a shilling at the feet of an orphan. But then, competitive eating is also a thing.

Going back and forth about whether fat jokes are permissible in reference to Oprah, you don’t want your criticism dismissed on the basis of lazy humor. But like Fox News, Oprah draws the eye, emphasizes her success, and then fails over and over. We are supposed to be charmed by her bungling, as though we all have a stake in cheering the woman along in her public weight battle. The day you begin sleeping in bedsheets spun from the pubes of one thousand seraphs is the day you should relate to Oprah. You look at her and see humanity where there is none. You believe she has retained the same early earthiness that was simply the alluring coarseness of a still-dangling soul. She capitalized on that, used her true beginnings as currency in her sure-as-a-dick-hardens inevitable dominance. She’s as pathological as the subjects of Hoarders, if a dumptruck full of liquid gold careened into their smelly living rooms and soaked their 40 year-old daughter’s ancient tutu.

But hey, nothing washes out the stain of guilt quite like a tidy new ager who can’t wait to ride your 2XL coattails to the finish line by building a religion that justifies your extravagant narcissism. Supply and demand dictates it.

"do you know how many poops it took to finish this?"

skinny jeans

I-vor-y and Eb-ony

From his website: “Eckhart’s profound yet simple teachings have already helped countless people throughout the world find inner peace and greater fulfillment in their lives. At the core of the teachings lies the transformation of consciousness, a spiritual awakening that he sees as the next step in human evolution. An essential aspect of this awakening consists in transcending our ego-based state of consciousness. This is a prerequisite not only for personal happiness but also for the ending of violent conflict endemic on our planet.”

The recipe for New Age success:

1. Rip off the language and serene demeanor of every Buddhist from Leonard Cohen to the Dalai Lama.

2. Sprinkle in some feel-good Road Less Traveled/Tony Robbins/Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Uranus I’m-okay-you’re-okay spice.

3. Place in the oven of a fearful and intellectually uncurious American society, and bake until you’re a fucking multi-millionaire and Oprah wants to be your pimp.

Chicken farts for the soul: a brief look at incoherence in the snake oil industry:

“I cannot tell you any spiritual truth that deep within you don’t know already. All I can do is remind you of what you have forgotten.”
**Anyone seen my spiritual truth lying around?

“all the things that truly matter — beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace — arise from beyond the mind”
**Beyond the Mind!

last time i went beyond the mind, i puked all over some bitch's prom dress

“Life is now. There was never a time when your life was not now, nor will there ever be.”
**Hey, Eckhart. I liked you better as Ram Dass.

the alternate universe offspring of Mr. Bean and that redhead from Buffy

Our heroine spends one evening every week on a conference call to Sigourney Weaver, Zooey Deschanel, Blythe Danner, Condoleeza Rice, and the daughter of Ima Hogg, for their weekly support group. When Oprah heard about Kim Basinger’s support group for people with wine-colored birthmarks, she couldn’t just sit by and do nothing about the global deficit of Famous Women of Influence with Weird Names Support Group. With each admission of suffering despite wealth and privilege, Oprah’s arousal mounts.

i'm tired of playink zee game

“In my previous piece, I presented the data—gathered and analyzed in the paper ‘The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness’ — revealing the surprising and dreary fact that, over the past 40 years, women’s happiness has trended downward as compared to men’s, this despite gradual increases in power and prosperity.”

I own you yaaay!

This man has crafted a short questionnaire so that we might take inventory of our day, and focus on how we could be happier, even though we’ve got more money and power than ever. Oprah graciously provided her own answers for our guidance.

1. How often do you get to do things you really like to do?
–Every day, my personal ritual gives me immense joy. I look through my stock portfolio and count how many children my assets could have sent to college. Then I have that many children killed. It’s the little things.
2. How often do you find yourself actively looking forward to the day ahead?
–With each fresh dawn I discover a new opportunity to root out the rebels infiltrating my federation. And drink Constant Comment with Steds before he goes off to collect my freshly harvested tapering leaf maple oil from our sherpa, Ang Nyi-ma.
3. How often do you get so involved in what you’re doing you lose track of time?
–I am the nucleus.
4. How often do you feel invigorated at the end of a long, busy day?
–I’m rich, girl!
5. How often do you feel an emotional high in your life?
–Every time Dr. Pangloss readjusts my serenity chip.