Oprah_ A Biography - Kitty Kelley [242]
“That became a big rhubarb in the Chicago press—beat up Oprah,” said Mayor Daley. “So you keep kicking people, people will leave, simple as that.”
She returned the mayor’s favor and support by flying to Copenhagen to join him and the president and First Lady to lobby the International Olympic Committee to bring the 2016 games to Chicago, which had spent $60 million on its presentation. When the IOC knocked Chicago out of the competition almost immediately and gave the nod to Rio de Janeiro instead, Oprah, Mayor Daley, and the Obamas were made to look like losers in the Chicago press.
Months later Stedman Graham told Fox News in Chicago that the city took Oprah for granted. “I really don’t think they appreciate her,” he said. “I don’t think they understand the value of who she is, as a human being, what she’s done, because a prophet has no honor in his hometown and, uh, you know, first of all, she’s brought a lot of national attention to Chicago.… From an insider’s point of view, I don’t think she gets the just due based on who she is and what she’s done for the Chicago area … it’s natural for people to take her for granted, until you leave and you don’t have a show anymore.”
Critics and columnists from Chicago’s newspapers pilloried Graham, with one writing: “Wow. That is one big heaping, steaming pile of … questionable opinion.”
The media maelstrom over Oprah’s retirement continued for days. “Why is she quitting?” “What will she do next?” “Who will replace her?” Then dire predictions about her health flooded the Internet, along with photos suggesting her weight would lead to debilitating diabetes and an inevitable heart attack. The National Enquirer ran a cover of her looking haggard and bloated with a headline that blared: “Oprah’s Booze & Drug Binges! Fed Up Stedman Walks Out—for Good! She’ll Pay $150 Million to Buy His Silence.” This prompted the always cheeky David Letterman to announce: “Top Ten Signs Oprah Doesn’t Care Anymore.” The number one sign: “Her last three guests were Johnnie Walker, Jim Beam, and José Cuervo.”
It began to look as if her withdrawal from network television and her perceived loss of influence was turning her into a target, after years of reverential treatment. However, as she was being depicted as a dipsomaniac and dismissed by polls that (supposedly) showed her dwindling popularity, Oprah showed she should never be underestimated, pulling off a coup that burnished her luster on the world stage. She took her cameras to the White House for an intimate conversation with the Obamas as they prepared to spend their first Christmas as president and First Lady. Her hourlong prime-time special gave ABC the evening’s most watched entertainment program (11.8 million) and showed that at the age of fifty-five, Oprah Winfrey is not about to relinquish her crown as the queen of talk show television. In the spring of 2010, Oprah made the Time 100 list of people who have changed the world for better or for worse. As the only person to appear on the list eight times in eight years, she was duly saluted by Phil Donahue, who wrote: “There is no match for you in media history. You are not only hot, you are cool: the Dream Girl for millions of ambitious young women whom you’ve inspired all over the world.”
Determined to reinvent herself with her own network (“All Oprah all the time,” said one critic), she was going to present on cable what she presented so effectively in her magazine: her philosophy of life with its perplexing mix of crass materialism and uplifting spirituality.
Some critics tut-tutted that her fans will not follow her to cable. Others speculated that OWN will never get off the ground, citing its start-up problems with scheduling, the fact that three CEOs have already been hired and fired, and the head of programming deposed,