Oprah_ A Biography - Kitty Kelley [109]
Oprah’s show from Forsyth County received national press coverage, blockbuster ratings, and a tip of the rabbit ears from TV critics. “For sheer audacity and sweeps smarts,” wrote Howard Rosenberg in the Los Angeles Times, “nothing has topped black Oprah Winfrey’s venture into an area whose white-might ugliness has recently attracted global media attention.” The Chicago Sun-Times applauded her for keeping her dignity and composure as she stood among some of the nation’s most notorious racists. “So it seems Winfrey accomplished precisely what she had set out to do,” wrote Robert Feder. “She served up an hour of sensational television about an explosive issue while generating tons of publicity.”
After doing the show in Forsyth County on a Monday, Oprah returned to Chicago and devoted the rest of her week to drag queens, women murderers, religious fundamentalists, and sexy clothes. Each week, TV critics received an Oprah advisory about her upcoming shows. “Here are my top 10 favorites from recent weeks,” wrote Jeff Jarvis of People, never a big Oprah fan:
Hairdresser Horror Stories
Housewife Prostitutes
Men Who Can’t Be Intimate
Men Who Fight Over Women
Man-Stealing Relatives
Polygamy
Unforgivable Acts Between Couples
Sexy Dressing
Get Rich and Quit Work
Women Who Are Allergic to Their Husbands
During the November 1987 sweeps, Oprah headed for Williamson, West Virginia, a town on the Kentucky border that was in the clutches of AIDS hysteria. A young man with the disease had come home to die. He went swimming in the public pool, and the mayor ordered it closed for a week of “scrubbing” after hearing rumors that the young AIDS victim had purposely cut himself to infect others. The town went on a witch hunt. The young man, who died nine years later, appeared on Oprah’s show and faced his accusers, who spat out fear, ignorance, and homophobia.
“God gave him AIDS for a reason,” said one. “It’s His way of saying, ‘What you’re doing is no good.’ ”
Another said, “You want us to hug him, to let him babysit our kids. We can’t handle that. I’m not afraid of this man. I am repulsed by the man’s lifestyle. I am repulsed by his disease. I am repulsed by him.”
Oprah let everyone speak before she made her own observation. “I hear this is a God-fearing community. Is that right?” she asked. The crowd clapped and cheered to signal affirmation.
“So where is your Christian love and understanding?”
Again, she received rave reviews and rocketing ratings. Several months later, the National Enquirer reported that her brother, Jeffrey Lee, was dying of AIDS and had given an interview saying he felt abandoned by Oprah. “She’s virtually disowned me,” he said. “She’s made it clear that AIDS or not, I’m on my own.… Her attitude is, ‘It’s your own fault. It serves you right.’ Oprah believes that every gay is going to get AIDS eventually.… I don’t think homosexuality as such offends Oprah. What really upset her was my lifestyle—partying, running around, not holding down a job. Oprah told me, ‘You need to get God in your life. You really need Jesus.’ ” Perhaps this was a step forward for Oprah, considering that she first told her brother that as a homosexual he would never go to Heaven.
Three days before Christmas 1989, Jeffrey Lee died in Milwaukee, with only his mother and his lover at his side. Two weeks later Oprah issued a statement: “For the last two years my brother had been living with AIDS. My family, like thousands of others throughout the world, grieves not just for the death of one young man but for the many unfulfilled dreams and accomplishments that society has been denied because of AIDS.”
In the hope of generating more bombshell ratings for the February ’88 sweeps, Oprah booked her first big celebrity interview with the woman once described as the most beautiful in the world. Elizabeth Taylor, then fifty-six, had lost forty pounds, divorced her sixth husband, and written a