The past two days, I have watched the farewell episodes of the Oprah show. It's this big deal extravaganza that was taped at the United Center and that features tons of big name celebrities showing up to celebrate Oprah's 25 years of being "Oprah!" Some of you may know that I am not an Oprah fan, so you might be surprised that I've DVR'd the farewell episodes. The thing is, if it's a major TV event, I'm going to want to watch it because I like to be in the know, but I certainly didn't plan on liking the special. In fact, I thought I would watch it while doing lots of cynical eye-rolling. After all, my main complaint against Oprah has always been that she's too much "Oprah!" and not enough Orpah. It bugs the heck out of me, for instance, that she's BFF's with Hollywood celebrities and people like Maya Angelou.
So anyway, I figured that watching a show dedicated to worshiping "Oprah!" would really bother me. Except it didn't. While I did cringe and fast-forward when Maya Angelou, accompanied by Alicia Keys, read to Oprah a special poem she'd written just for Oprah, overall my reaction was the opposite of what I'd thought it would be. I seriously started crying during yesterday's episode when they brought out all these kids whose lives Oprah has changed for the better, and today when Kristen Chenoweth came out to sing the "I have been changed by you" song from Wicked while black students from Morehouse College walked in holding candles, I cried again. Am I now Oprah's #1 fan? No. But do I admire Oprah for helping so many people and for being an inspiration not just to the black community or to young women, but to so many people from so many different backgrounds? Of course.
My emotional response to the Oprah special got me thinking about my beef with Oprah. To be fair, I never really disliked Oprah that much until she started the book club, and then I got annoyed. Even though it probably shouldn't have, it bothered the heck out of me that people were rushing out to read books just because Oprah had put her stickers on them. Yeah, it's great that people were reading more, but I firmly believed that people shouldn't read A Tale of Two Cities just because Oprah had said so. I felt that people should read it because it was A Tale of Two Cities. But today I started to realize that maybe that's dumb. Maybe Oprah, despite the self-aggrandizing things she does, has brought culture back to some extent. Maybe the fact that people started reading books they wouldn't ordinarily have read is a good thing. And the kicker is that I myself often recommend books to people who then read those books based solely on my recommendations and not because of the books' worth.
And just like that, I totally talked myself out of hating Oprah's Book Club.
While I won't miss hearing Oprah introduce her celebrity friends in the most annoying of ways ("TOM CRUUUUUUUUUISE!!!!" or "WIIIIIIIILLLLLLL SMIIIIIITH!!!"), I do respect what she has done, and I do hereby promise that I will no longer malign Oprah's Book Club, and I will no longer roll my eyes or mentally veto books at my own book club just because Oprah's name is on the cover, even if her name is written in bigger font than the name of the author and even if the author is someone like John Steinbeck or Gabriel Garcia Marquez or Charles Dickens and even if the novel has won a Nobel Prize or has been a literary masterpiece for hundreds of years and doesn't need Oprah's seal of approval to be a classic.
I may still not be on-board 100%, but I yield to the power of Oprah.
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