Oprah_ A Biography - Kitty Kelley [116]
She didn’t say what the vulgar rumor was, so most of her audience was confused and did not understand why she was so upset. This triggered even more curiosity, proving, as Shakespeare wrote, that “Rumor is a pipe / that the blunt monster with uncounted heads / can play upon.”
Oprah had recently hired a new publicist who had moved to Chicago that week to work for her, but in the furor over the rumor, she fired him while he was looking for an apartment to assume his new job. He later confided that he left Chicago grateful to put distance between himself and Oprah, who “seemed so completely surrounded by evil.”
Bill Zwecker recalled that time as turbulent. “Oprah admitted to me that she had made a huge mistake by going on her national television show to denounce the rumor,” he said. “By doing that she opened Pandora’s box and allowed the tabloids to invade her privacy. She said it was a monumental error on her part, but she could not pull back, and Ann got fired over the incident.… The day the blind item ran, I saw Oprah at a women’s charity event, and café society was falling all over her. A week later, when Ann was fired, the same café society was blaming Oprah for getting poor little Annie Gerber fired. I wrote a column about the hypocrisy of it all. Kiss kiss one week; diss diss the next.” Later Zwecker received a note from Oprah:
Bill—I shall never forget that when other people were kicking me in the teeth with that rumor you did the kindest thing. You lifted me up. Seeing you the other night with your dad reminded me of what a gracious thing you did. Again I thank you.
Oprah’s angry denial of the rumor did not receive much coverage until May 22, 1989, when the Chicago Tribune’s revered columnist Mike Royko defended her right to be outraged and quoted the irresponsible gossip columnist as saying, “It is a vicious rumor but I wanted to run the item even though there was no way I could verify the rumor.” When Ann Gerber was fired the next day, she held a press conference “to clear my name.” She said, “I think I was fired because the Sun-Times feared Oprah.” Considering Oprah’s immense influence in the city, most people accepted the statement as obvious, although Kenneth Towers, editor of the Chicago Sun-Times, denied receiving any pressure from Oprah or her attorney, Jeff Jacobs.
Recalling the trauma later, Oprah said, “I have been hurt and disappointed by things that people have said and tried to do to me, but through it all, even in my moments of great pain—this rumor being the biggest of it—I had the blessed assurance that I am God’s child.… And nobody else’s. That is really the source of my strength, my power. It is the source of all my success.
“The thing that got me through this rumor was the Bible verse Isaiah 54:17, which I have always believed. That is, ‘No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn.’ And this I know, no matter how difficult things may get, this I know.”
Oprah’s father, Vernon Winfrey, whispering to the author, Kitty Kelley, during their interview in Vernon’s barbershop in Nashville, Tennessee, on April 22, 2008. (photo credit i1.1)
Katharine Carr Esters, Oprah’s cousin, whom she calls “Aunt Katharine,” stands with the author outside Seasonings Eatery in Kosciusko, Mississippi, on July 30, 2007. (photo credit i1.2)
Hattie Mae Presley Lee (4/15/1900–2/27/63), Oprah’s maternal grandmother, who raised her in Kosciusko until she was six years old when she moved to Milwaukee to live with her mother, Vernita Lee. (photo credit i1.3)
Oprah at the age of twelve, standing next to her sister, Patricia (6/3/59– 2/19/03), seven years old, and her brother, Jeffrey (12/14/60–12/22/89), six years old, outside her Aunt Katharine’s house on West Center Street in Milwaukee. (photo credit i1.4)
Oprah as a junior at East Nashville High School, April 1970, after winning first place in the State Forensic Tournament. “It’s like winning an Academy Award,” she told the student newspaper.