Oprah Winfrey rose to power by capturing the hearts and minds of millions of devoted followers. According to industry estimates, her weekly television audience and magazine subscribers combine to form a bloc of over 50 million committed supporters.
In real terms, there are more people living in Oprahland than in Spain.
Her power over her devotees has brought her enormous wealth and worldwide fame, and for most of her career Oprah wielded this omnipotence in a benevolent manner. Last week, though, the KFC coupon fiasco laid bare an Oprah wholly unlike the one we thought we knew so well.
Oprah told the world last Friday that she bought everyone in America a grilled chicken meal at KFC. This seemed at first like a fun little stunt - Oprah always gives stuff away on her show, and everyone could use a free meal these days.
In a completely unsurprising chain of events, Oprah's free chicken meal was a huge success. So much so that KFC franchises across the country had to turn away the coupons after only a day of the weeklong promotion. People got angry because Oprah said she already paid for all this chicken.
KFC managed to win this media game - of course they planned for this to happen. Every news outlet in the country mentioned not only KFC but also the new grilled chicken. The stories all make it seem like this grilled chicken is better than heroin. Their CEO came out with a smarmy YouTube "apology" that played like another commercial for his greasy new chicken meals.
Oprah, though, is in a tough place now. She just got the PETA "Person of the Year" award for her recent exposure of sustainable food and agriculture, and now she whores herself out for a company that PETA calls "Kentucky Fried Cruelty." Naturally, PETA is pussyfooting around this fracas; their official line is that Oprah was "deliberately misled" about KFC.
Oprah never paid for any chicken - she got paid millions to pull this stunt.
The first sign of trouble came with the massive support on all of Oprah's media platforms for "The Secret." Oprah devoted months of exposure to the promotion of a pyramid scheme built of puerile thoughts and fake spirituality.
Here is how "The Secret" works. Step one, you need to desire material things. Step two, wish for them. Step three is being rich and getting on Oprah to promote your stupid book/movie about magic wishing power. Somewhere, the Underpants Gnomes are furious they didn't think of this first.
"The Secret" actually says that bad things only happen to people who think bad thoughts. Oprah has donated time and money to Rwandan genocide recovery, but it turns out that what she should have been doing all along is just getting the damned Hutus and Tutsis to read "The Secret."
Something is rotten in the state of Oprahland these last few years. Queen Oprah has enjoyed a long and prosperous reign atop the American media structure for more than 20 years. If absolute power corrupts absolutely, what exactly are we to make of the damning scope of Oprah power?
Tommy Maple is an international communications graduate student. His column appears weekly.
