Oprah_ A Biography - Kitty Kelley [204]
Moved to tears, the audience applauded Oprah, grateful that she had opened her heart to these youngsters who she vowed would save their country and enrich the world. Yet some in Africa later criticized her for spending so much for so few, and others in America, aghast at the luxuries she had bestowed on her “daughters,” berated her for not helping poor children in the United States. “Everybody is calling it lavish,” said Oprah. “I call it comfortable.”
The difference between “lavish” and “comfortable” could be attributed to the difference between ordinary people and a billionaire who paid $50 million for her mansion on forty-two acres in Montecito, California, which, according to the Los Angeles Times, was one of the highest prices ever paid for a private residence in the United States. She then poured $14 million into renovations, making her mansion, which she first named “Tara II” then changed to “The Promised Land,” worth $64 million.
With commendable calm, Oprah explained to her critics that she was giving to South Africa because the country was young, only twelve years out of apartheid. She also said that with an entire generation decimated by AIDS, the country’s children needed to be educated in order to save their nation. When South African reporters asked her why almost all her students were black, Oprah insisted the school was “open to everyone … to all girls who are disadvantaged.” The reporters persisted, asking if there was an attempt to keep out white students. Oprah snapped: “I don’t think I have to appease the white people [9.2 percent] of this country.” Then a white reporter asked about the criticism she was receiving from whites. Again, she responded evenly: “I find it interesting that white people are concerned about me educating black girls.” The chorus of carps continued, and after a few months Oprah spoke sharply in an interview with BET to all her critics: “To hell with your criticism,” she said. “I don’t care what you have to say about what I did. I did it.”
Within nine months of opening the school, she was blindsided by a sex abuse scandal that resulted in a lawsuit against her for libel, assault, and slander by the former headmistress, Nomvuyo Mzamane. After the judge refused Oprah’s motion to dismiss, saying Mzamane had presented enough evidence to go to trial, Oprah settled the case days before the trial was to begin in Philadelphia. Still, the sex abuse scandal resulted in several firings and a trial in South Africa of a dorm matron charged with fourteen counts of sexual assault and abasement of the students. A year later seven students were expelled for lesbian liaisons.
“This has been one of the most devastating, if not the most devastating experience of my life,” Oprah said in a press conference with South African reporters. “When I first heard about it I spent about a half hour crying, moving from room to room in my house. I was so stunned, I couldn’t even wrap my brain around it.”
Some were taken aback by her comments, feeling that she was personalizing a tragedy in terms of how it might affect her image. “It was tasteless of her to talk about this experience as though it was about her,” wrote Caille Millner in the San Francisco Chronicle. “It made her sound self-absorbed and a little clueless.”
MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann agreed. After running the video clip of Oprah at her press conference, he said, “Thank goodness, Ms. Winfrey is okay, since, after all, this was about her.”
In a column titled “Oprah the Avenger,” Eugene Robinson wrote in The Washington Post, “I did wince yesterday when she called allegations of sexual and physical abuse at the girls’ school she founded in South Africa ‘one of the most devastating, if not the most devastating experience of my life’—seeming to make it all about her, not the alleged victims.