Oprah_ A Biography - Kitty Kelley [232]
Others took up the call, including the author Robert Fulghum (All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten), who also endorsed Oprah for president on his website. This prompted David Letterman to read as one of his “Top Ten Things Overheard at the Republican Weekend”: “We’ve all had it—Oprah just announced her candidacy!” Aaron McGruder’s TV series The Boondocks ran an episode titled “Return of the King,” about Martin Luther King, Jr., that ended with a newspaper headline: “Oprah Elected President.” The biggest effort to make Oprah commander in chief came in 2003, when Patrick Crowe, a former schoolteacher and owner of Wonderful Waldo Car Wash in Kansas City, Missouri, set up a website selling “Oprah for President” mugs, T-shirts, and bumper stickers. He reaped tons of publicity after publishing the book Oprah for President: Run, Oprah, Run! Immediately, the sixty-nine-year-old fan got slapped with a three-page cease-and-desist letter from Oprah’s lawyers, citing nineteen copyright violations, plus the unauthorized use of her name, image, and likeness. They gave him five days to respond.
“They should not have sent that letter,” Oprah told Larry King. “I didn’t appreciate that my attorneys did that.”
Mr. Crowe was not intimidated. When Oprah called him to suggest he put his time and energy into supporting Barack Obama, who was not a presidential candidate at the time, Crowe suggested that Oprah give the new Illinois senator a seat in her cabinet. He then explained to reporters why she would make a great president: “The business genius. The heart of gold. Her ability to get folks to work together … her fierce determination—she’s just not a girl you’d wanna mess with.”
Although Oprah never ran for public office and said she never would, she possessed immense charisma and represented credibility to millions. In addition, she took stands on issues that alternated between pleasing both Democrats and Republicans. She was for a woman’s right to choose. She was against the death penalty, and she opposed guns, legalized drugs, and welfare. She supported the war in Iraq (and then she opposed it). On crime, she recommended hanging drunk drivers, but keeping them alive so they would be continuously tortured “in their privates.” A little squishy on religion, she quoted the Bible but did not attend church. She preached self-improvement (makeovers and cleansing fasts) and self-empowerment (believe it and achieve it) sprinkled with the New Agey piffle of The Secret. On family values she covered all the bases: she applauded motherhood but for herself she had chosen a career over children; she lived with a man outside of marriage but traveled constantly with her best female friend.
Contradictions aside, Oprah became a towering presence in America, a one-woman cathedral collecting alms for the poor, hearing confessions, and issuing edicts: “Don’t chew gum in my presence.” “Always bring a hostess gift.” “Soak in your tub fifteen minutes a day.” “Shop, shop, shop.” Dispensing judgments from on high, she chastised Lionel Richie for being an absentee father, thumped Olympic track-and-field star Marion Jones for lying about taking performance-enhancing drugs, and upbraided Toni Braxton for going bankrupt after spending $1,000 for Gucci silverware.
Occasionally Oprah bestowed forgiveness ex cathedra. In a satellite interview with twenty-two-year-old Jessica Coleman, serving a six-year sentence in the Ohio Reformatory for Women for killing her newborn baby when she was fifteen, Oprah was as tough as a hanging judge throughout most of the show. She directed Coleman to tell the story of hiding her pregnancy; having the baby, which appeared to be stillborn; stabbing the infant; and then stuffing its body into