{"id":6763,"date":"2013-11-18T11:01:58","date_gmt":"2013-11-18T19:01:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=6763"},"modified":"2013-11-18T11:01:58","modified_gmt":"2013-11-18T19:01:58","slug":"the-moral-decline-of-oprah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-moral-decline-of-oprah\/","title":{"rendered":"The Moral Decline of Oprah"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0NRO’s The Corner<\/a>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Multi-billionaire Oprah Winfrey, after her surreal $38,000 handbag \u201cracism\u201d encounter in Switzerland, has just weighed in again on race and the presidency, as yet the nth way of\u00a0hyping her new film<\/a>: \u201cThere\u2019s a level of disrespect for the office that occurs. And that occurs in some cases and maybe even many cases because he\u2019s African American. There\u2019s no question about that and it\u2019s the kind of thing nobody ever says but everybody\u2019s thinking it.\u201d\"Photo<\/p>\n

Nobody ever says? Has she read a newspaper columnist or turned on MSNBC lately?<\/p>\n

Aside from her historical ignorance, Oprah Winfrey has increasingly turned to the race card to explain the president\u2019s plummeting polls. In her race-obsessed world, Syria, Benghazi, the NSA, IRS, AP, and ACA messes do not explain why a reelected president crashes from a recent 60 percent approval rating to less than 40 percent in less than a year.<\/p>\n

Instead, in Oprah\u2019s no-win, racialist world, to the degree that Obama is popular, Americans are considered for the time being as not racist; to the degree that he is not, the country suddenly is collectively under suspicion (e.g., \u201ceverybody\u2019s thinking it\u201d).<\/p>\n

That Obama might be utterly inexperienced in the manner of Jimmy Carter, less than veracious in the manner of the impeached Bill Clinton, or suffering the same second-term blues of Ronald Reagan during Iran-Contra or popularity crash of George W. Bush after Katrina simply cannot for Oprah be true of an African-American president, who for some reason must not suffer the same fate and treatment as almost all who have held the highest office. Instead, in this raciallyobsessed world of Oprah, that Obama is faring no different from his predecessors is now the country\u2019s fault. And as remedy, he must be given deference if the country wishes to avoid the latest therapeutic rant from Oprah.<\/p>\n

In fact, Oprah has no record of worrying about the level of disrespect shown the office. If she did, she might have said something a few years ago when her president was routinely being compared to a Nazi, and often by her own fellow celebrities, writers, politicians, civil-rights activists, and filmmakers. That she said nothing then, but now says a lot, explains not America\u2019s problem with race, but her own race obsessions, which have blinded her to her own prejudices and hypocrisies.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t recall Oprah objecting when Bush was routinely shouted down. Did she deplore Al Gore calling the Bush team \u201cdigital brownshirts\u201d? Or maybe John Glenn invoking the Nazis (\u201cIt\u2019s the old Hitler business\u201d) to talk about her president? Nor do I remember her weighing in on Linda Ronstadt\u2019s claim that the Bush administration was \u201ca new bunch of Hitlers.\u201d Harry Belafonte and Julian Bond both routinely labeled their conservative opponents as little more than Nazis or KKK racists. Nor did Oprah note that \u201cthere\u2019s a level of disrespect for the office that occurs\u201d when Barbra Streisand compared Bush to Hermann Goering. Was she worried when Alfred A. Knopf published a novel about musing how to kill Bush? Or by a prize-winning docudrama film imagining the killing of Bush? What was her reaction a New York play, \u201cI\u2019m Gonna Kill the President,\u201d was produced? Did Oprah once give a similar BBC interview about the office of the president and disrespect shown it in 2004 when a guest columnist in the\u00a0Guardian<\/em>, Charles Brooker, wrote: \u201cOn November 2, the entire civilised world will be praying, praying Bush loses. And Sod\u2019s law dictates he\u2019ll probably win, thereby disproving the existence of God once and for all. The world will endure four more years of idiocy, arrogance and unwarranted bloodshed, with no benevolent deity to watch over and save us. John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr. \u2014 where are you now that we need you?\u201d<\/p>\n

What might explain her outrage now about criticism shown Obama, but silence just recently when abject hatred and dreams of violence were voiced against her president? That answer may explain a lot about what Oprah has become.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0NRO’s The Corner\u00a0 Multi-billionaire Oprah Winfrey, after her surreal $38,000 handbag \u201cracism\u201d encounter in Switzerland, has just weighed in again on race and the presidency, as yet the nth way of\u00a0hyping her new film: \u201cThere\u2019s a level of disrespect for the office that occurs. And that occurs in some cases and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[145,383],"tags":[12,600,93],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1L5","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6787,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-culture-in-ruins\/","url_meta":{"origin":6763,"position":0},"title":"A Culture in Ruins","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 25, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0PJ Media\u00a0 Lady Gaga\u00a0reportedly spent $25 million\u00a0on pop art to jazz up her new and apparently underwhelming album. 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Wind and solar power \u2014 and a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Political Culture"","block_context":{"text":"Political Culture","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/american-culture\/political-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13226,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/eeyores-cabinet-the-racial-golden-calf\/","url_meta":{"origin":6763,"position":2},"title":"Eeyore’s Cabinet: The Racial Golden Calf","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 26, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ Private Papers A multiracial democracy of the 21st\u00a0century has abruptly begun worshiping superficial appearances, as it announces that everything from the order of vaccinations and farm aid to cash vouchers for the poor and dorm selections will be determined by race, in utter violation of the\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6821,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/learning-through-pain\/","url_meta":{"origin":6763,"position":3},"title":"Learning through Pain","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 10, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0PJ Media\u00a0 What will history make so far of our five-year voyage with Barack Obama? 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