Oprah_ A Biography - Kitty Kelley [185]
Oprah had come a long way from the days when she, too, loved to shock her audiences. But she no longer wanted to be seen as a vulgarian, hosting shows for nudists and shouting “penis, penis, penis.” She believed that Beloved had transported her to a higher level. “It changed my life,” she said. She told her producers that she felt she now had a moral obligation to change the lives of others. “I want to bring meaning to people’s lives.” She framed a huge photograph of herself as Sethe with “the tree” lashed across her back and hung it outside her Harpo office alongside a big leather whip as a reminder to her staff of her new vision for herself and her show. When Oprah’s protégée Rachael Ray saw the photograph and the whip, she was reported to have said to friends, “Why is she wearing slave drag? She obviously has problems being black.” Ray’s publicist later denied that the TV chef had made the comment.
Oprah announced she would renew her contract with King World through the 1999/2000 and 2000/2001 seasons and begin a new kind of television. She received $130 million in cash advances and 450,000 King World stock options, in addition to the 1,395,000 options she already had from deals made in 1991, 1994, and 1995. By the time CBS took over King World in 1999, Oprah, whose fortune was then worth $725 million, had options on 4.4 million shares, worth $100 million.
Newly enriched and enlightened, she launched what she called “Change Your Life” television. She opened her 1998/1999 season with a new theme song based on an old spiritual, which she sang herself: “I believe I will run on and see what the end will be.… Come on and run with me. O-O-O-Oprah!” She introduced New Age guides such as the author John Gray (Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus) to instruct her audience “to determine for yourself your true soul’s desire and to be on purpose with your life.” He taught her viewers to meditate by saying, “O glorious future, my heart is open to you. Come into my life.” Using colorful props in his presentations, he handed a big stick to one woman, who closed her eyes and sobbed when he said, “I’d like you to go back to your inner child. I want you to imagine Mommy and Daddy coming to you, and I want you to express your feelings to them.”
Believing in spiritual empowerment, Oprah presented the Yoruba priestess and inspirational author Iyanla Vanzant (Acts of Faith) to counsel women on finding love and purpose in their lives. Vanzant advised viewers “to surrender to the god of your understanding.” One audience member asked, “I want to know how do you find total and complete peace?”
“Get naked with yourself,” said Iyanla Vanzant.
Oprah also introduced the financial author Suze Orman (The 9 Steps to Financial Freedom), who preached that “money is a living entity and responds to energy, including yours.” Orman told Oprah’s audience, “Your self-worth equals your net worth.” She said they needed to get rid of their bad emotions and start believing they were destined for wealth in order to become wealthy.
Another regular “life coach” was Gary Zukav, who wrote The Seat of the Soul, which Oprah said was her second-favorite book, next to the Bible. She introduced him as a onetime Green Beret and former sex addict who lived on a mountain without television. His purpose was to help Oprah and her audience “delve into their souls” and resolve their fears. “Your feelings are the force field of your soul,” he said, emphasizing that fear is the cause of everything from violence to meanness.
“So,” Oprah said, “fear is the opposite of love?”
“Fear is the opposite of love,” he said.
“And anything that isn’t love is fear?”
“Correct,” he said. “When you really look at your fears and you heal them, you can look at yourself and you’ll be beautiful.”
He and Oprah devoted one entire show to karma. “Energy is energy,” he said, “and you cannot escape it.”
Oprah also embraced Sarah Ban Breathnach, the author of Simple Abundance, a spiritual self-help book, from