Oprah_ A Biography - Kitty Kelley [88]
Within days Oprah and Stedman filed a $300 million lawsuit against the tabloid for defamation, invasion of privacy, and intended infliction of emotional distress. Their attorney told reporters that Carlton Jones had sold his story nine months earlier to a U.S. tabloid but the tabloid had not published it because Oprah’s attorneys convinced them the story was not true. Now, the attorney said, Jones said he had lied to the tabloid for money. News Extra chose not to answer the complaint. “I believe the publishers decided that they weren’t going to defend that action,” said the editor. Thirty-five days later, U.S. District Judge Marvin E. Aspen entered a default judgment against the Montreal-based tabloid, which had vacated its offices and gone out of business. Oprah and Stedman felt vindicated by the next day’s headlines: “Oprah Winfrey Wins Suit by Default.”
Stedman still had to steel himself against the derision of being tagged “Mr. Oprah,” “The Little Mister,” or, as the National Review put it, “the terminally affianced Stedman Graham, Miss Adelaide to Oprah’s Nathan Detroit.” In the early days he occasionally lashed out when he was referred to as “Oprah’s boyfriend,” but seven years into the relationship, Oprah told him to get over it. “It’s the thing that bothers him most,” she said, “but I told him if he dies, if he leaves, if he ends up owning Chicago, people are still going to say, ‘That’s Oprah Winfrey’s boyfriend.’ ”
Stedman continued chafing at the description. “There’s no respect in it,” he said. “Although there is credibility in being able to hang with one of the most powerful women in the world, no one respects you for that.” Respect was paramount to this proud man, who was working in a prison when he first met Oprah. During the day he wore the starched blue uniform of a corrections employee whose job was to pat down prisoners; at night he slipped into tasseled loafers, drove a Mercedes, and lived what he later called “a false life.”
Through the pretty broadcaster Robin Robinson, Stedman had been given entrée into the gold coast of Chicago’s black society, which included media stars like Oprah, athletes like Michael Jordan, and publishing mogul Linda Johnson Rice, whose family owned Ebony and Jet. Within this elite circle were Ivy League doctors, lawyers, bankers, and professors, who had achieved the kind of success Stedman never dreamed possible for himself. While he looked like he could belong to the crowd of accomplished professionals—all smooth, smart, and stylish—he knew his degree from the tiny Baptist college Hardin-Simmons in Abilene, Texas, gave him few bragging rights alongside graduates of Harvard.
Flying at that high altitude was transformative for Stedman, and soon he saw that body-searching felons was not going to give him the life he wanted. Prison guards did not get to socialize with Michael Jordan. As a high-school and college basketball star, Stedman wanted nothing more than to play for the NBA, and not being selected had been the biggest disappointment of his life. So when Michael Jordan started doing commercials and needed a stand-in, Stedman leaped, eager to be a part—any part—of Jordan’s world. He idolized the Chicago Bulls forward, not simply for his dazzling athleticism but for turning his success on the court into a lucrative business.
Wanting to associate himself with professional athletes, Stedman devised his plan for the nonprofit organization called Athletes Against Drugs. He enlisted Michael Jordan’s endorsement to get other athletes to join and sign vague statements that they were “drug-free and … positive