Oprah_ A Biography - Kitty Kelley [145]
The next day, Debra arranged for a fleet of black stretch limousines to chauffeur everyone to lunch at The Ivy, to Montana Avenue in Santa Monica for a shopping spree, and then to the home of Maria Shriver and Arnold Schwarzenegger for a tea party. That night, leaving spouses and partners behind, the women headed for Oprah’s bungalow for a slumber party.
During that evening they brainstormed about what they could do to extend Oprah’s spiritual reach. Each believed that Oprah was a blessed disciple, a special messenger sent from God to do good. Maya Angelou later put the feeling into words: “In a queer way … she holds a spiritual position not unlike Norman Vincent Peale once did. Each culture and each time has its … moral mountains that we looked up to.… These are people, who, to lesser or greater degrees, are really the lights, the pinnacles of what is right and kind and true and good and moral. Well … she’s sort of that.”
Sipping Cristal champagne (Oprah’s favorite), and led by her spiritual guru Marianne Williamson, self-described as “the bitch for God,” the women decided that Oprah should contact the Pope, and together the two of them could lead the world in a weekend of prayer. No one voiced the slightest concern that an American talk show host might appear slightly brazen to be calling the Vatican to arrange a global pray-in with His Holiness. The papal weekend never took place, but such was Oprah’s power at the time that national leaders—U.S. senators, presidential candidates, First Ladies—clamored to be on her show. Being in a position to pick and choose her guests, she no longer granted access to just any important personage. When it was suggested that she should interview Mother Teresa, the nun who ministered to the poor of Calcutta, Oprah vetoed the idea. “I don’t think she’s much of a talker,” she said. “That would be a long hour on television.”
The all-female slumber party ended with a group prayer led by Marianne Williamson, and Oprah left determined to present more spiritual and less sensational shows in the future. “I’ve been guilty of doing trash TV and not even thinking it was trash,” she told Entertainment Weekly. She later made a mea culpa to TV Guide and resolved to elevate her shows. Her timing was perfect. Within a year, William Bennett, who wrote the bestselling The Book of Virtues, joined forces with Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) to denounce daytime television talk shows and the companies that produced them. Bennett, who was contemplating a presidential run in 1996, exempted Oprah and Phil Donahue because he had been on their shows to promote his books, but he castigated the hosts, owners, guests, advertisers, and viewers of Jerry Springer, Sally Jessy Raphael, Ricki Lake, Jenny Jones, Montel Williams, and Geraldo Rivera, saying they all must share the blame for the televised “rot” that “degrades human personality.” A few years later Bennett, satirized as “The Virtues Czar,” was publicly exposed as a compulsive gambler, and he apologized for blowing $8 million in Las Vegas, but his rant on rot had been effective. Procter & Gamble, the nation’s biggest daytime television advertiser, announced its decision to pull $15 million to $20 million in advertising from four daytime talk shows, and Sears, Roebuck and Co. did the same, citing “offensive content” as the reason.
Flying back to Chicago after her birthday celebration, Oprah felt she had launched her forty-first year in great style.