Granted, it’s her show and she can interview anybody she wants.
But Oprah claims that the mission of her show is to help people (especially women) live their best lives. And she purportedly does this by providing a forum for the discussion of important issues that affect them.
Therefore, it behooves her to appreciate that refusing to invite Republican VP nominee Sarah Palin on her show to discuss how her political agenda could affect the lives of American women makes a mockery of that mission.
After all, Palin is easily the most popular, and potentially the most powerful, woman in politics in US history. And everyone, regardless of political affiliation, has an understandable interest in knowing more about her in order to make an informed decision about her candidacy.
In fact, it would have been more consistent with that mission for Oprah to have invited Palin on her show to explain, amongst other things, why her anti-abortion views are even more extreme than those of Cindy McCain and Laura Bush, why she does not think sex education should be taught in schools – especially since it might have prevented her 17-year-old daughter from getting pregnant, and why she thinks God (George W. Bush?) ordained the invasion of Iraq.
Instead, Oprah issued the following patently fatuous, if not hypocritical, statement:
At the beginning of this Presidential campaign when I decided that I was going to take my first public stance in support of a candidate, I made the decision not to use my show as a platform for any of the candidates. I agree that Sarah Palin would be a fantastic interview, and I would love to have her on after the campaign is over.
The problem of course is that she has already featured Barack Obama, whose candidacy she’s now actively supporting, twice on her show. And it is disingenuous for anybody to suggest that those appearances (in January 2005 and October 2006) don’t count because they came before he officially declared his candidacy.
After all, even I was sufficiently aware that Obama was in fact running for president back then that I endorsed him in an October 2006 article entitled It’s TIME: Run Obama Run!
(And does she really think Palin will want to be on “after the campaign is over”, win or lose…? Puhleeese!)
Frankly, nothing explains Oprah’s diss except the short-sighted and narrow-minded view that having Palin on would be tantamount to promoting the candidacy of Obama’s opponent, John McCain.
Unfortunately, this view not only smacks of political (and, some might think, racial) bias, but also reflects a political tin ear that is bound to alienate many of her fans, unnecessarily. And, by the way, those disaffected fans will likely include more than just Republican housewives….
NOTE: For the record, I’m an even stronger supporter of Obama today than I was in October 2006. And I remain confident that he will be elected the next president of the United States in November.
Related Articles:
It’s TIME: Run Obama Run!
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Don says
Spare us your cries of fowl play, when speaking about the treatment of Sara Palin in Media. Your organizations’ planned strike of the Opera Winfrey show is ridicules. The supposition that Palin’s interview on the Oprah’s show is warranted merely on the basis that it would be a great American story for woman is specious, and disingenuous.
When people say, “they don’t know who she is, nor what she thinks” stems not from the context of them knowing her every day affairs, but rather, when placed in their proper context, they are statements of what are her qualifications for holding the office of Vice President of these United States; thus, a more appropriate form for interviewing Palin should be conducted by a new journalist, and not on by a talk show host.
Do her qualifications rest on the notion that she says so, I think not! I never received a job, barring the absence of an interview, merely on self-assessment.