Oprah_ A Biography - Kitty Kelley [150]
A former Harpo employee remembers that before the verdict, those in the control room predicted O. J. would be convicted, but Oprah disagreed. “You don’t know my people,” she said of the predominantly black jury, understanding that Mark Fuhrman’s racist comments would deny him any credibility among African American jurors. Publicly she said there was a perception among black people that almost all white people feel the way Fuhrman did. In a column for the Nashville Banner, Oprah’s friend and former coworker at WTVF-TV, Ruth Ann Leach, focused on Oprah’s belief that “most white people harbor deep hatred of black people.” Pointing out that “Oprah’s entire career has been nurtured, supported and made possible mainly by white people,” Leach wrote, “This woman knows full well that she is worshipped by millions of white Americans. If she still feels that most whites hate most blacks, what must the less privileged people of color feel? Whites claim to be baffled by the polls that show African Americans believe O. J. Simpson did not do the crimes. How could anyone dismiss every drop of blood, every strand of fiber? Easily. Black people—not limited to the ladies and gentlemen of the jury—simply did not believe anything the racist cops and their racist support teams produced as evidence.”
For two days after the verdict, Oprah dedicated her shows to “O. J. Simpson: The Aftermath.” The tabloids reported that she had been promised his first broadcast interview, which she rushed to deny. “I will never interview O. J. Simpson,” she declared. Days later she welcomed the TV star Loni Anderson, ex-wife of Burt Reynolds, who Anderson said had thrown her into furniture and smashed her head against the wall of their Hollywood home. Oprah looked shocked.
“I’ve had it with men who beat up women,” she said. Turning to her audience, she announced she was banning all wife-beaters from her show. She again recited the humiliation of her married lover walking out on her in Baltimore and slamming the door on her hand. “I remember falling to the floor and crying. I remember being down on that floor and saying, ‘Who am I really?’ From that time on I made the decision that I was going to take charge of myself.”
From the beginning of her career Oprah had established herself as America’s girlfriend. She was the beloved sister-woman who knew the sorority secrets, some of which she divined from how-to books such as Sarah Ban Breathnach’s Simple Abundance, an advice book for women. To her viewers, Oprah was the neighbor lady down the street who poured coffee for the wives after their husbands lunch-pailed to work. She was the misery madam who soothed and comforted and occasionally scolded. She was the town crier warning against pedophiles, wife-beaters, and all manner of abusers, and as such, she became a champion for women, especially downtrodden women who had been done wrong by men.
“If I could just get Black women connected to this whole abuse issue,” she told Laura Randolph of Ebony. “I hear it all the time from Black women who say, ‘Well, he slapped me around a few times, but he doesn’t really beat me.’ We are so accustomed to being treated badly that we don’t even know that love is supposed to really feel good.” She used her own life as an example of how her female viewers could shake free from the loser men in their lives and reclaim their self-esteem. “If I can do it,” preached America’s first black female billionaire, “you can do it.”
While Oprah refused to interview O. J. Simpson, she did interview those around