Oprah's Finale

I rushed home from work in time to catch the final 15 minutes of Oprah's last show. I'm glad it was low-key, and a fine way to end a quarter century on the air. Her last words to her audience? "To God be the Glory". Indeed. Thanks for 25 years of great TV.

Kudos to Mom

Lisa, who is a huge Oprah fan, believed this to be the day of the finale, and yet still gave up watching it to cook with Junie and Smiley once they showed interest in 'helping' Kudos Mom.

The Long Lost Post about Oprah June 13th

I'm going to let you in on a little secret. There is one person in this world that my wife loves more than me, more than her children, and yes, even more than chocolate.

That person is Oprah Winfrey.

Don't laugh. I'm not joking.

I don't know why I even bothered with her last name. It's rarely uttered anymore, lest you mistakenly believe Oprah unworthy of the 'Madonna-Cher-Gallagher' class of fame. Give her a few more years and she'll transcend that too, as the transformation to a single vowel moniker has already begun.

Her magazine is called 'O'. Oxygen, her cable network, has big name actors moaning 'O' in its commercials, and my wife claims to miss the 'Big O' whenever we‘re ‘together‘.

As if it wasn't enough that the woman was on TV 'only' once a day.

The Cult of Oprah is upon us.

Rest easy, dear reader, for I assure you I am no Oprah basher. I have watched many hours of the lady's work, enjoyed most of it, and I still watch an average of two shows a week. I think she is intelligent and highly talented, with one of the smoothest interview and hosting styles I've ever seen. She was born to do what she does, and no one does it better.

That having been said, I dig the guys at Dairy Queen too, and feel no need to elevate them to Gods.

The problem lies with her success. I've long worked on a theory about how Americans love the underdog until they actually win (don't worry, I'll treat you to the long version sometime). The trouble is that didn't happen with Oprah.

Aside from some tragic events in her youth, there’s been no insider trading scandal, no slanderous ex with a nasty videotape, no anything to tarnish her gold.

What's the worst dirt there is on the woman, that she has a weight problem? Big shock there fellas.

Without that bump in the road to slow things down, Oprah and America have turned a perfectly good talk show into a syrupy love fest. You would think, as a red-blooded American male, that I'd enjoy watching an hour of woman after woman professing love for a large-chested woman.

You'd be right.

But these women keep their clothes on, and that changes everything.

Is there any reason for Oprah to be the cover girl for every issue of her magazine? Martha and Rosie didn't do that. Couldn't she cede some cover time, or at least appear with someone else? Do we really need an hour of "After the Show", the boring drivel that didn't make it into the actual show? And is there anything more gratuitous than "Oprah's Favorite Things", her annual Christmas giveaway show? [of course, by my wife's own admission, 'Favorite Things' is her favorite show of the year and must (by law) be accompanied by twenty cries of "Why can't you get me tickets for that?"]

Now, as I said, I like Oprah. I wish her no harm, to her person or her pocketbook. And I certainly don't long for the days of Phil Donahue. Call Jerry Springer evil all you want, at least the only people wearing skirts on the show are the guests - male guests, but all the same . . .

So I guess we've reached a stalemate. A rather one sided one, as Oprah herself doesn't know or care, but a stalemate none the less. And there are worse things in the world than having my wife devote an hour a day to the woman.

Now about The View . .

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