Oprah_ A Biography - Kitty Kelley [233]
“Did you know that at the age of fourteen, I hid a pregnancy?” Oprah asked her. “I was raped at nine and sexually abused from the time I was ten to fourteen. At fourteen years old I became pregnant.… The stress of [having to confess my pregnancy to my father] caused me to go into labor, and the baby died [thirty-six days later].… There are a lot of teenagers out there right now who are hiding their secret, just as I hid mine, because … like you, I didn’t feel there was anybody I could tell. Your speaking out today is going to give a lot of girls the courage to do that.… You are not your past. You are what is possible for you. Own this truth and move forward in your life. Forgive yourself, and others will be able to forgive you.”
Oprah’s show had become the place where miscreants begged for mercy or, as in the case of NBC’s anchorman Brian Williams and news president Steve Capus, defended controversial actions. After airing photos and parts of videos sent by the maniacal killer who shot thirty-two people on the Virginia Tech campus in 2007, NBC was severely criticized for broadcasting the shooter’s final hate-filled words before he killed himself. Many felt the network had been exploitive in giving the mass murderer national attention without considering the feelings of the bereaved. So a week after the broadcast, Williams and Capus appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show.
“We were … very careful as to how many pictures we were showing,” Brian Williams told Oprah, “and I think … now, it has all but disappeared.”
Oprah set him straight. “It disappeared, Brian, because the people said, because the public said, ‘We don’t want to see it.’ ”
Williams looked so chastened that one old-fashioned Catholic watching the show wondered half-humorously if Oprah was going to give him absolution: “For your penance say five Our Fathers and five Hail Marys. Now make a good Act of Contrition and go in peace.”
Like the village vicar, she tended her flock, helping them atone for past sins. She mediated the public apology of heavyweight champion Mike Tyson when he said he wanted to make amends to Evander Holyfield for biting off a piece of his ear during their 1997 title bout. Twelve years later the two men came together on her show and shook hands, hoping their reconciliation might set an example to warring gangs of young men. Although many viewers criticized Oprah for having Tyson, a convicted rapist, on her show, others saluted her. The two Tyson shows, not incidentally, garnered huge ratings at a time when her ratings were slipping.
Oprah continued to be unbending in her condemnation of child abusers, knowing all too well the trauma to victims. Interviewing a man in prison for sexual molestation, she referred to him as “slime.” Still, her contradictions could be confounding. While she gave her friend Arnold Schwarzenegger a pass on sexual harassment, she condemned rappers because their lyrics debased women. She was unforgiving of racism but pardoned the president of Hermès after his Paris store barred her entry because of alleged “problems with North Africans.” Yet she was barely civil to Hazel Bryan Massery, who as a young white student had yelled at Elizabeth Eckford, one of the Little Rock Nine, who integrated Central High School in 1957 after President Eisenhower sent federal troops into Arkansas. In the intervening years, Massery had apologized to Eckford for her hateful rants, and the two became close. Oprah invited both women on her show but was highly skeptical of their friendship and would not accept that Hazel’s remorse had led to reconciliation. “They are friends,” Oprah told her audience in disbelief. “They … are … friends,” she repeated with obvious distaste. She then showed a massive blowup of the photograph