MacFormat 1996 July/macformat-039.iso/DATABASE/POWER/CU184.TXT

Text File | 1996-01-29 | 16.9 KB | 388 lines | [TEXT/????]

1.5
Whether you are a wife
beater or a wife beaten,
the killer of a father or
the lover of a mother,
there's always room on
the Oprah Winfrey
Show to tell all to
millions. The public
washing of dirty linen
has become, in her
hands, a multi-million
dollar business; she is
prosecution and
defence counsel as she
prowls around her
audience and demands a verdict on the personal
behaviour of the people who queue up to be so judged. Ms
Winfrey's qualifications for her job are never called into
question, perfect though they are. She is the female black
raised in the dominantly male white Southern state of
Tennessee; the girl sexually assaulted at the age of nine
and sent to a detention home at 13 . . . and, hey, if that
doesn't teach her the meaning of problems, she even has a
widely publicised struggle with her weight. Her human
frailties and personal triumphs make just the right balance
to allow her to probe into everyone else's: she can be stern
of gaze or unashamedly tearful in sympathy; she'll
wheedle, coax or demand an answer - "So you broke up -
why?" There appear to be few concessions to sensibilities:
one couple appeared on her show where the woman had
had her first baby three weeks earlier. Winfrey not only
produced the husband's girlfriend, but drew out the
information that the girlfriend also had a baby by the
same man. She's the first woman to own and produce her
own talk show, the youngest person to win the Broadcaster
Of The Year award, and the first black person to own a
large television studio
@
2.3
Whenever people spot Oprah Winfrey on the streets of
Chicago, they don't finger their autograph books nervously,
whispering "It's her...it's her".  They grab her arm and say:
"Wait right there while I get a pen." Winfrey, the most
successful chat show host on American television, is
everybody's friend; in a synthetic world she has succeeded
in syndicating sincerity.

Yet Winfrey is so warm, so comfortably plump ("Whenever
I see a fat black woman waddling towards me, I think,
'Here comes another woman who's always being told she
looks just like me',") so confident with her defiantly tight
scarlet pants and sweater, chunky gold jewellery and great
big glamorous smile, that she makes other hosts look like
shrinking violets.

The Oprah Winfrey Show goes out live from Chicago five
days a week and deals with real people, raw feelings.  She
won't have politicians on her show "They don't tell the
truth"- or writers and actors publicising their latest work.
The show went national five months ago, is already the
number one syndicated daytime programme in America,
and, according to Variety magazine, Winfrey is expected to
earn about £19 million this year from the deal.

"I believe what you are and who you are is settled by
third grade," she says.  "In class I was always the first to
raise my hand, the first in this, first in that; the person
everyone turned to and told their troubles to.  It's still the
same today."

The difference is that today, when people tell Winfrey
their troubles, they do so live on television.  The woman
who says she came home and found her husband in bed
with her mother, the fresh-faced schoolboy telling of how
he was forced into Satanist rituals, are confiding their
experiences and anxieties to 92 per cent of America.

Winfrey forestalled any suggestion that she exploits the
guests on her show, by confessing, early on, that she was
raped by a baby-sitter when she was nine and regularly
sexually abused by three family friends after that.  In the
same programme, she burst into tears and threw her arms
around a middle-aged woman who was trying to describe
how she gave birth to her father's autistic child.

"The reason I came out and said I'd been sexually abused
is that if nobody talks about it, you think you're the only
one it's ever happened to.  I didn't know it was rape.  I
didn't know what it was called.  I just knew it must be
something I was doing wrong and I couldn't tell anyone
about it."

Today, the studio audience are sharing their sex secrets
with the nation.  A woman gets up and says: "I had three
men as well as my husband, and I can tell you it was
great." Winfrey rolls her eyes admiringly.  "Boy, you have
got a lot of stamina."  Occasionally she gets angry.  Hand on
hip, she thrusts her microphone at the man who's just
announced that women should stay at home and look after
their husbands and children. "What century do you live
in?"

She once asked Sally Field if Burt Reynolds wore a toupee,
questioned Dudley Moore about the technical intricacies of
sleeping with tall women, and quizzed a porn movie actor:
"Don't you get sore?"  An admiring woman in the audience
says: "She comes out with what you want to come out
with."

Replying to Shirley Maclaine, who made earnest
pronouncements about how losing weight would make
Winfrey happier with herself as a person, she said briskly
"I don't know about all of that.  I just want to get into a
pair of size 10 Calvin Klein jeans." She weighs 180 lb on a
good day, and is always on some sort of diet.  "I eat when
I'm depressed and I eat when I'm happy.  Sometimes
when I can't decide whether I'm tired or hungry, I make
the decision while I'm eating." People keep urging her not
to lost weight, saying she'll lose her personality.  "Honey, it
ain't in my tights," she replies.

"Straighten up and fly right,'" is her positive message to
the people who tell her they can't cope with life.  "I did a
whole show about people with negative addictions and
was absolutely frustrated."  She stamps her feet, one, two,
three, to emphasise her frustration.

"There's this woman who says she can't help the fact that
she goes out and picks up men. Aargh, I don't relate to
that.  I'm screaming blue murder on that show, crying
'Don't say can't, it's so dumb.  You can do anything.  Do you
hear me? Anything. Of course you can.'"

She is a fine example of her own philosophy.  Born in
Mississippi 33 years ago, the result of a "one-day fling
under an oak tree", she spent her first six years with her
grandmother ("She could whip me for days and never get
tired"), and was shuffled about between relations until she
ended up with her father, a Nashville barber and part-
time city councillor, when she was 13.  He gave her
stability, discipline and worried that she never did any
homework.  "What does it matter?" said Winfrey, "I get
first grades."  She still gets criticised for not doing her
homework, but knows she does best relying on her
instinct.

In 1971 she won the Miss Fire Prevention contests, got a
reporting job on the local radio station while she was still
in highschool, and then a scholarship to Tennessee State
University.  "I hated it, hated it.  It was an all-black college
and it was 'in' to be angry.  Whenever I hear the words
'community organisation' or 'task force', I know I'm in
deep trouble.  I still get a lot of stick for not backing
women's or black groups.  I intend to do a grand job, not
because I'm black or a woman, but because I'm me."

Winfrey and her team are planning to do a segregation
story in Atlanta, Georgia.  She'll let the racists speak
because she knows it will be better propaganda than any
march; better television too.  She rolls her eyes at one of
her producers.  After that, she's flying to Washington to
give a talk at the Pentagon.  It's Black History Month and
Caspar Weinberger is a fan.  `What's he doing watching
Oprah Winfrey in the afternoons when he should be
running the country?'

Her audience, besides the Defence Secretary, is mostly
middle-aged white housewives and her sponsors are food,
beauty and fashion firms.  "When people watch television,
they are looking to see themselves.  I think the reason
why I work as well as I do is that people sense the
realness." Not that she's a real housewife.  She eats out
most evenings and rarely makes the bed.  "I figure I'll be
back in it in 12 hours; what's the point?"  She has never
married but is madly in love with Stedman Graham,
director of an anti-drugs programme, who is so tall and so
good-looking that her staff, who obviously dote on her,
initially worried that there must be something wrong with
him.

Winfrey discovered her talent for talk when, after college,
she worked as anchor-woman on a Baltimore television
station and was demoted to co-host of a morning chat
show.  The ratings soared.  She moved to Chicago and the
ailing AM Chicago show, which pushed its way up to the
number one spot in the ratings and was renamed The
Oprah Winfrey Show.

"I don't get butterflies, I never have," she says, "except on
the Joan Rivers show.  I've been on it three times; the first
time I was an absolute wreck, with a capital W and three
Ks.  The reason people confide in me is that they don't feel
intimidated.  I try to exude comfort, whether I'm talking
to a member of the Ku Klux or a celebrity."
@
3.1
I am up at 5.45 am.  I never close my curtains and the sun
rises into my room so I never need an alarm clock.  I set
the alarm every day but I always try to beat it  My home
in Chicago from Monday to Thursday is an apartment of
one of the top floors of a downtown high-rise near Lake
Michigan.

I leave for Harpo at six, looking like I just woke up, hoping
nobody in the elevator talks to me.  I work out at the
studio gym for an hour and I hate it, really hate it, every
day of my life.  Until recently I had a personal trainer but
now I feel I can accomplish more by myself.  When it's
over there's a feeling of achievement.  It's a tight schedule
in the morning because I have to be in the make-up chair
by 7.30 to be ready to record my first show of the day at
nine.

When I meet the guests in the studio I've already been
briefed on them by the producer.  I have a good memory;
I don't use notes or cue-cards but rely on my producer to
guide me through my earpiece when I'm in the studio.
I've recorded 220 shows a year since 1986.  I never get
tired of it and I don't see a time when I won't be doing it.
There's a message in every show, but the continuing
theme is about taking responsibility for your own life.

At 11 a.m I record a second show.  In the hour in between
I change clothes, read some more research and talk with
the producer.  I feel people talk to me on the show
because they know I have problems just like them -
celebrity doesn't change that.  After the show I shake
hands with each member of the audience as they leave.

The show which altered me and made me confront the
anger and shame I'd carried with me since I was a child
was one of my early ones dealing with sexual abuse.  I was
raped when I was nine and abused for years by members
of my family and their friends.  By the time I was 13 I'd
run away from home and was sexually promiscuous as a
direct effect of being abused.  During the show I suddenly
realised I'd been carrying that emotional damage with me
for years.  I broke down and couldn't stop crying.  I said
'Please stop the tape,' but they didn't and I released all the
pain which had built up.  I realised what had happened
wasn't my fault and I could stop feeling guilty.  I still see
my parents.  I don't blame them any more.

Just after noon I take off my false eyelashes and high
heels and change into more relaxed clothes.  I eat lunch in
the studio canteen.  Hot dishes are sometimes sent in from
my restaurant, The Eccentric, or there's a salad bar.  Right
now I'm 60 pounds overweight.  Being thin was wonderful
and I vowed I'd never gain weight again.  But I've always
been a compulsive eater.  I love to eat junk food, any time
of the day or night.  I've tried every crash, cranky, harm-
your-body diet in the world.  Now I eat healthy food, I
never weigh myself and I'll never go on another diet.
When I have time I do enjoy cooking and find it relaxing.

The afternoon is devoted to corporate work: I'm trying to
build a fully fledged production company.  My ambition is
to both produce and act in more movies.  I've bought the
screen rights to three books so I go to a lot of screen
meetings.

The Academy Award nomination for my role in The Color
Purple was one of the finest moments of my life.  The part
of Sofia was my first acting job.  I'd read the book and so
admired what the author, Alice Walker, had to say about
the experience of being black in the South.  I knew I
wanted to be part of the film but I didn't have the guts to
call Quincy Jones or Steven Spielberg.  I thought, 'They
don't know me so why should they take my call?'  Then
Quincy Jones saw my show and offered me Sofia.  I can
only say it was divine intervention.

I read the newspapers in the afternooon to stay in form
for the show and to get ideas, although some of the most
powerful subjects I've dealt with, like battered women or
alcholism in families, have been generated by the two and
a half thousand viewers' letters I get every week.

I feel a responsibility towards combating racism in this
country so I devote time and resources to helping several
charities which work in this field.  I've given $1 million to
a fund to educate black men in Atlanta.  At least women
can work as domestics, but there are very few jobs for
unskilled black men.  I also support a rape treatment
centre.

Since 1976 I've talked every day on the phone to my best
girlfriend, Gayle, in Connecticut.  We talk for hours about
nothing of any significance to anyone on this planet.  I'm
not a very social person.  If I have to entertain I take
guests to my restaurant.

Marriage is not a major concern of mine righ now.  I've
been with my boyfriend, Stedman Graham, for five years.
He has a PR company here in Chicago.  I do love him but if
you're starting a movie company and doing six or eight
shows a week you need a lot of focus and energy, and
marriage is just not compatible with that right now.

On Friday nights Stedman and I drive to my farm in
Indiana for the weekend.  I was born in the country so
that's where my roots are.  On the 200 acres I have sheep,
cattle, horses and four dogs.  I collect Shaker furniture for
the house.  Bill Cosby introduced me to it and I love the
simplicity of it and what the Shakers stood for.

Only very special people in my life are asked to the farm,
like my wisest friend, the writer, Maya Angelou.  I have
problem-solving sessions with Maya, when she spoon-
feeds me knowledge and helps me make sense of my life.

During the week, if Stedman's out of town, I often sleep at
the studio on a futon on the floor.  Late at night is often
the best time to do some creative thinking and read up the
research for the next day's shows.

I'm basically a Christian and I believe absolutely in life
after death.  I've kept a diary since I was 15.  Sometimes a
day will have been so wonderful that at night before I go
to sleep I just write 'Great day'.
@
3.3
CHAT show host Oprah Winfrey is trying to shed 50lb on
her latest diet while everyone around her is tucking into
Christmas goodies.

She recently paid £1,500 a night at a Caribbean hotel -
famous for its exotic foods - for the privilege of pounding
out the miles on a walking machine. Oprah, now past the
half-way stage of her target, said: "I'm exercising and I'm
eating smart. I've stopped pigging out."

Her fluctuating weight is more volatile than TV ratings.
Three years ago she trimmed her size 16 figure down to
size 10 by losing five stones on a 400-calorie-a
She slowly piled the pounds back on again and forlornly
admitted: "food is my drug."

The Grand Oprah finally reached 205lb recently and called
in ruthless diet cop Rosie Daley to act as a personal chef.

When Oprah hired a private jet to fly her and lover
Stedman Graham to the Four Seasons Hotel on the
Caribbean's Nevis Island it was probably reward for hard
work in losing 35lb.

Calorie-minder Rosie stayed behind but 37-year-old Oprah
diligently resisted the fattening treats on offer
everywhere.

WORKOUT

She arrived each day at the hotel gym at 10am for a
blistering 90-minute workout during which she even kept
fellow guests entertained by holding court on the glitzy
William Kennedy Smith rape trial being shown on a gym
TV.

Dressed in multi-coloured Spandex leggings and a
billowing orange shirt, she pedalled an exercise bike for 15
minutes while yelling, "Tell the truth" to alleged rape
victim Patti Bowman.

Then she climbed a muscle-burning Stairmaster walking
machine for 35 minutes while loudly offering her opinions
on the sensational evidence.

She finished off with a 25-minute brisk walk on the
treadmill and 15 sit-ups.

Other holidaymakers were full of praise for Oprah's
stamina.

"She worked out and kept us entertained on the rape trial
without even pausing to catch her breath," one said.

Although fiance Stedman, 39, says he finds her "quite
sexy", Oprah has postponed their wedding until she has
defeated her current weight problem.

She told friends after the holiday: "I'm going to stick to the
diet and exercise until I'm back to 150lb.

"I'll never go on a crazy binge again.  I just want to be a
normal weight."