I was chain firing right up until my last clip, but the bullets either went through her or bounced off her, or sometimes inexplicably both. But with the last clip I had to be careful to count the shots just in case I had to leave one for myself. Anyway, a frontal assault clearly wasn't working on the Dark Queen. She was too big, too impregnable, and too damn happy to let a flurry of 130 grain Hate-bullets slow her down.
Hail (of bullets) to the Queen.
Oprah is big. Messiah big. 14 million viewers a day big, most of them female and suburban. Her influence over the past 25 years on tens of millions of people has spawned terms like Oprahisation and Oprahism. She has well and truly leapt above your average tv celebrity icon - the Lenos, Lettermans and O'Briens. She has her own entire tv network. And presumably a massive underground base with lasers and spaceships.
Here's the story...
Oh, and she's also nice. Not normal nice like when I pay a hooker in exact change, but big nice. Internationally philanthropic nice. All the worst people hate her for this - the Christian Right crowd, the hardline militarists, and of course the Sex Detectives. When all the bad people hate you, then all the nice people like you by default. She is considered benign royalty in popular culture, a sensitive, empathic, generous black woman in America who is worth billions but who strives to maintain a direct and personal connection with the common people. Major churches have tried to proselytise her, parties have tried to convince her to run for president. I'm not making this shit up. But her niceness transcends politics and religion. The only side Oprah is ever going to back is her own. And it works. Her ratings have never suffered, she is always popular. She's not just a houshold name, she's a household ritual where by summoning her very presence with the push of a remote brings both drama and serenity to countless lives each day. She has been likened to a god, such is her soft, fuzzy, yet vast power.
Well, I'm an atheist, and I worship no one and no thing, media-made Earth Mothers included. See, it took me a while but I finally figured out the source of her majesty. Oprah is not just a mind-blowingly successful, business-minded media master, she's an empire of media specialists - top-rate production teams, publicists, public relations experts, researchers and agents. Combine that with a 'class versus crass' theme to your daytime talk show and you end up with a type of 'anti-Jerry Springer' format that makes her target demographic (women at home during the day) mistake what she does (entertainment) for a spiritual education show. How? Not by preaching or carousing or agitating, but by facilitating.
And that's what she is and why she rules, she is the world's greatest facilitator, a factory where dreams are made real when you step into her public group therapy session. She's like a big-haired King Midas. Everything she touches or talks to turns to gold. Actors on her show seem to gain greater depth and popularity. Every book she mentions invariably hits the New York Times best-seller list within hours. Every cause she endorses explodes with incoming donations. Not by spruiking, or with pandering uncritical review, just by being nice to whomever she's talking. Hell, even potential presidents were graced with her touch.
Oprah side-steps responsibility by being the ultimate hostess. Every quack, freak, burnout and crack-pot with a familiar name can ressurrect whatever fame they lost just by sitting down with Oprah for a few minutes and talking about their feelings. She humanizes them, and across the female middle-class millions swoon.
But I figured someone this big needed big spiritual beliefs. Enter Eckhart Tolle, German born spiritual teacher and author who changed Oprah's theological life. Personally I find this boring hippie to be quietly insane, but Oprah embraced his ideas and collaborated with him. They softly push their somewhat mundane pantheist beliefs that meld God, Jesus, the universe, that plant over there by the porch, and every human being into one. Fundamentalists are outraged, understandably, because the Tolle/Winfrey 'religion' treats everything and everyone in the Bible as a metaphor of self. Christ's suffering during crucifixion is a parable of overcoming personal challenge, for instance, instead of a magical message of wizardly sacrifice.
Eckhart's constant message is "Be in the present",
but you wouldn't guess that judging by his wardrobe.
Now, when you or I disagree, modify or completely redefine the message of fundamentalists they usually shout you down, take pity on you or have you exorcised. But if you mess with their shit and you happen to be Oprah fucking Winfrey, then BAM, the fundamentalists are up against the nicest competitor that popular culture has to offer.
Similar shit went down soon after 9-11 when she ran a series of shows on the diversity and, well, niceness of Islam. Yes, it's important to realise that the vast majority of Muslims are fine people, I guess, but they're not the ones we were worried about. Oprah, being so infuriatingly nice, also took a graphically strong anti-war stance. So you can just imagine just how much the Bush Administration loved her. Actually, they probably still did love her because that's what she does to people.
The Nice it burns!
So, that's where I was, facing down the omnipotently kind and cordial she-devil, Time Magazine's 'person of the year' cover-girl for 4 years running (2004-2007). A woman who peddles moral convenience and who believes God is a concept that we all should share.
Then it struck me like a fluffy thunder-bolt. God isn't the metaphor, she is. She's your mum when you scrape your knee. She makes the Earth a sane place for you just by being there. She's the safe place you picture when the world's gone to hell around you. She's the fount of sympathetic wisdom, the boss that treats you as an equal and buys you a beer after a hard day at work. You like her she says what you're thinking, that she says what you want or need to hear. "Be in the present, don't think about the past or future."
But that's not how the world works.
Because you've got it ass backwards, fools. You're actually just thinking what she says. You don't need her words, her words need you.
I slammed the last clip into my gun and released the slide with a satisfactory click while the collective ethereal spirits of her fan base argued in my head.
But she's a really nice person...
And I'm a cunt.
She's done so much good in the world...
Then she should leave some for the rest of you to do.
She's changed so many lives...
Only because she convinced them they needed changing.
But she doesn't judge or persecute...
Because there's a millions-strong jury to do it for her..
Even the famous and powerful love her...
No, they just need her, like some kind of parasitic synergy of popularity.
Still, you know you can't hurt her with Hate-bullets...
The bullets ain't for her no more.
Th-then who are they for...?
You.
And that's where it all falls down, people. Oprah presides over a royal court where her very sovereignty validates all who attend it. She's a walking marketing tool, running a stage where all who appear on it (the charlatans, gimmick-gurus, pseudo-scientists. sob stories and batfuck crazy idealists) are given equal coverage to promote their shit. She doesn't discriminate between the good, bad and ugly, and as a result neither do her viewers. There is no meritocracy at play here, no quality control, just popularity. And popularity, by sheer fucking definition, can only be blamed on the populace. Somehow 14 million of you per day decided to opt for a nice world instead of a real one. That's why I can't hurt her - she's simply just a collective projection of your social conscience. An anthropomorphised symptom of your disease.
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