Archive for the ‘New Thought’ tag
A Year of Living Oprah
Chicago writer, performer, teacher, and filmmaker, Robyn Okrant, has just completed a new book chronicling a year of (get this) living according to the advice of media-mogul billionaire and cultural icon, Oprah Winfrey. No, no, really… one full, calendar year! Nutz.
From her website, Ms. Okrant coyly explains the impetus behind Living Oprah:
“I believe Oprah to be the single most influential person in the media today – especially when it comes to impacting women… I wondered what would happen if one of us committed ourselves whole-heartedly to her lifestyle suggestions. Would the financial and time costs of living as Oprah prescribes be worth the results?”
Honestly, there’s no way I could do something as masochistic as this. Beyond the everyday tedium of having to watch Oprah, read Oprah, and then do Oprah’s bidding, in the end I’m fairly certain I would not have learned anything new. I don’t need to be water-boarded, for example, to know that torture sucks, and I certainly don’t need to follow the half-brained, neoliberal, new age, new thought nonsense of Oprah frickin’ Winfrey to know that her ideologies are fundamentally corrupt. Ultimately, in my estimation of things, this life-style stunt amounts to a kind of death by a thousand cuts, and it’s definitely not worth all the hardship. I’d much prefer a quick and painless ending.
That said, I must admit that I’m happy Ms. Okrant was more courageous than me. She is clearly willing to subject herself to whole lot of costly, sanctimonious, froo-froo, snake-oil bullshit, and she should be lauded for her resolve through what must have been a very difficult year. But more than that, Orkant has decided to write about her experience and expose (we can only hope) the absurdity of Oprah’s worldview, to which I am exceptionally grateful. It’s high-time the suburban set were confronted with the dangerous bigotry of their televised savior’s magical thinking. Maybe Living Oprah, the book, is just the literary insight we need to finally stop ourselves from living Oprah, the phenomenon.
LINKS:
Living Oprah Blog
Chicago Tribune Article
NPR’s All Things Considered
MSNBC Report
