Oprah_ A Biography - Kitty Kelley [91]
She rankled her family by talking in the article about the sexual abuse she’d suffered as a youngster, something they continued to deny. She upset child abuse victims by saying she’d found the attention pleasurable and that a lot of confusion and guilt over sexual molestation comes because “it does feel good.” She insulted her overweight sisters by saying, “Women, always black women, 300 to 400 pounds, waddle up to me, rolling down the street and say, ‘You know, people are always confusin’ me for you.’ I know when they’re coming. I say, ‘Here comes another one who thinks she looks like me.’ ” She alienated her alma mater by her “hated, hated, hated” line, referring to Tennessee State and her references about her unease when approached by anyone from her college days.
In response to her cutting comments, her family dummied up; child abuse victims fell silent; overweight black women held their tongues; and Tennessee State University rolled over, paws up, and invited her to be their commencement speaker. It was the first glimpse of the empress’s new clothes. As Oprah said years later, “In this society … nobody listens to you unless you have some bling, some money, some clout, some access.” Having acquired all of that and more, she now exerted a dizzying kind of power that compelled many people to be silent, even to genuflect, in the face of insult.
The invitation from TSU was a heavy load of bricks for some to carry. Nashville attorney Renard A. Hirsch, Sr., wrote a letter to the editor of The Tennessean, the city’s largest newspaper, saying he had attended school with Oprah and did not recall the anger that she claimed was rampant there. Other TSU students were also riled. Greg Carr, president of the student government, said Oprah “talked about TSU like a dog.” Roderick McDavis (Class of ’86) wrote a letter to the editor of The Meter, the student newspaper, saying, “Some of us worked too damn hard at TSU to have a ‘drop out’ degrade and discredit our school.” Lacking three credit hours, Oprah had never graduated from TSU.
The Meter’s editor, Jerry Ingram, acknowledged the negative reactions Oprah had stirred. “Some people were shocked.… If she said that in People, they wonder what she will say at commencement.”
A few students who felt Oprah was trying to ingratiate herself to white audiences with comments about “angry” blacks predicted hisses and boos when she arrived on campus. The outrage at TSU arose not simply because a black woman had demeaned a historically black college and put students on the defensive, but because it was the most famous black woman in the country reviling them in a national magazine that circulated to twenty million people. Oprah’s words were particularly wounding because TSU, beset by inadequate facilities and poor programs at the time, was undergoing a court-mandated plan to eradicate the pernicious effects of segregation that would not be completed for another nine years.
Interestingly, the university did not offer Oprah an honorary degree, which is customary for a commencement speaker. Instead, they proffered a plaque “in recognition of excellence in television and films.” In return, Oprah asked for the college degree she had been denied in 1975. TSU agreed to give her a diploma and to graduate her with the class of 1987, if she wrote a paper to fulfill her requirements. (Apparently she did, although the university would not confirm the fact and neither would Oprah.)
Graduation day, May 2, 1987, was a dream come true for Vernon Winfrey, who finally had someone in the family with a college degree. “Even though I’ve gone on and done a few things in life,” Oprah teased in her speech, “every time I called home, my father would say, ‘When are you going to get that degree? You’re not going to amount to anything without that degree.…’ So this is a special day for my dad.” She waved her diploma at Vernon, who beamed from the front row.
Oprah arrived in Nashville like a movie star. She told reporters she had flown in on a chartered jet with