Oprah_ A Biography Part 10

She told Ladies' Home Journal, "The rumors are cla.s.sic jealousy. One of the "The rumors are cla.s.sic jealousy. One of the reasons they persist is that Stedman's so good-looking, and I'm not the kind of woman you'd expect him to have. I'm over-weight, I'm not fair skinned and I'm not white. So you would think a guy who looks like that would be with Diahann Carroll or Jayne Kennedy or some willowy blonde."

Still Stedman became a national punch line and the b.u.t.t of cruel jokes. During a break in taping the NAACP Image Awards, the comic Sinbad was entertaining the audience when he spotted Oprah and Stedman returning to their seats. "Look at Stedman, following Oprah's purse around," he jabbed. "I'm surprised he's not carrying it for her!"

Stedman wasn't even safe among his friends. The former ABC-TV anchor Max Robinson teased, "She'll eat you out of house and home, brother. It's a good thing she owns them."

In later years some saw Stedman as more drone than predator. Debra Pickett, who wrote a "Lunch With" column for the Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Sun-Times, p.r.o.nounced him the "biggest p.r.o.nounced him the "biggest disappointment of the year." She wrote, "Graham, who is impossibly good-looking but incredibly dull, broke my heart by demonstrating that his life partner, Oprah, must be at least as shallow as the rest of us, since she clearly didn't fall for his conversational skills."

New York Daily News Daily News columnists George Rush and Joanna Molloy were equally columnists George Rush and Joanna Molloy were equally disappointed to find no humor behind the handsome facade. They reported that when Stedman accompanied Oprah to the Essence Awards at Radio City Music Hall, he was the only one not laughing at Bill Cosby's teasing from the stage.

"Stedman--is that a real name?" Cosby said, looking at the couple sitting in the front row. "I thought it's something he'd tell you at a party. 'I'm a steady man.' "

Oprah and the rest of the audience roared with laughter, but Stedman leveled a blank stare at Cosby. Afterward the comedian took Oprah aside backstage.

"What's the matter with him? Usually when people make fun of you, you laugh and go ha, ha, ha," Cosby told Oprah. "But he just stared into s.p.a.ce."

The next night Joanna Molloy asked Stedman why he'd gotten so upset. "He was very grouchy. He said, 'It's my name, don't wear it out.' I instantly thought, 'Oh, no. You are not bright enough to be Ms. Oprah Winfrey's partner.' "

The actress E. Faye Butler knew Stedman from his modeling days. "We'd call him to model Johnson Products because he was handsome, but he was an awful model, so we'd make him stand still and have others move around him....He was nice enough but boring as h.e.l.l....So boring...I remember he liked little pet.i.te light-skinned girls with straight hair, so I was surprised when he went with Oprah."

"He's a very somber person," said Nancy Stoddart, "almost like he has a childhood wound. I remember him telling me once, 'I used to be a really, really good basketball player, but my dad never came to a single one of my games.' It's the story of a child still hurting over a neglectful parent who never paid him any attention."

Whether or not Stedman was drawn to Oprah's money, he was definitely attracted to her br.i.m.m.i.n.g self-confidence and the easy way she moved to take her place in the world. "She absolutely transcends race," he said. In contrast, his view of the world had been strapped by racism, as he had grown up in the all-black township of Whitesboro, New Jersey (population six hundred), and attended an all-black grade school. "If you are an African American in this country, you are a victim of perception," he said. "You don't have as much value as someone else, and when you walk into corporate America, your image is lessened. I never imagined that I could be equal to white folks." Oprah never imagined she could be anything less.

"For 30 plus years I believed I was limited because of the color of my skin,"

Stedman said. "I [eventually] learned it's not about race but what it's really about is the powerful against the powerless. What matters is power, control, and economics." On this he and Oprah were in full agreement. "They both share the same pull-yourself-up-by-thebootstraps philosophy," said Fran Johns, a close Chicago friend of Stedman's.

After graduating from college in 1974, Stedman hoped to be drafted for the NBA, like his roommate Harvey Catchings. When he was rejected, he joined the Fort Worth Police Department. He married Glenda Ann Brown that same year, and their daughter, Wendy, was born seven months later. Stedman then joined the army for three and a half years and was stationed in Germany, where he says he played armed service basketball.

He returned to the states and began working in the prison system in Englewood, Colorado. He and his wife separated in 1981, and in 1983 he moved with his girlfriend, Robin Robinson, to Chicago, when she was hired by WBBM-TV. Stedman transferred to the Metropolitan Correction Center and founded Athletes Against Drugs in 1985. He began dating Oprah then and quit the Bureau of Prisons in 1987, when he met Robert J.

Brown, founder of B&C a.s.sociates in High Point, North Carolina.

"Stedman always had something to prove," said Brown, who invited Stedman to accompany him on a trip to the Ivory Coast, where he was working with the government to attract business investors. Brown later hired Stedman as vice president of business development, which Stedman admitted was a glorified t.i.tle for "trainee." Brown, an African American, alienated many blacks with his stand against economic sanctions to force South Africa to abandon apartheid, but he became President Reagan's choice to be U.S. amba.s.sador to South Africa. However, he quickly withdrew his name after investigators began scrutinizing his business relationships with the former government of Nigeria and his union-busting activities. None of this concerned Stedman.

"[Brown's] in public relations and he's a multimillionaire," he said. "He was a special a.s.sistant to President Nixon. He's basically my mentor. Because of him I got to travel around the world and escort Mandela's children down to South Africa when he was released from prison and have breakfast with Nelson Mandela. I got to visit the White House and meet the president [George Herbert Walker Bush]. All this opened my eyes...[to] what I had been looking for."

Brown's courtship of the Mandelas stirred controversy in 1988, when he announced he had secured world rights to the family's name. Mandela supporters saw this as exploitation, but Brown claimed he had contracted to protect the use of the name.

From prison, Nelson Mandela renounced Brown's claim, but Winnie Mandela seemed eager to work with him. With Stedman in tow, Brown mentioned the former's relationship with the richest television star in America, and soon Oprah began funding hot lunches for seniors in Alexandra, a poor black township outside of Johannesburg, where people lived in tin shacks without water, electricity, or sewage disposal. "We wanted to focus attention on the plight of Alexandra," Brown told reporters. "This is one of the poorest and most ignored parts of the country." Newspapers carried photographs of Brown's two employees, Stedman Graham and Armstrong Williams, distributing hot meals. They later brought a television set to Alexandra and showed tapes of Oprah's talk show so the two hundred impoverished senior citizens could see their benefactor; photos of this event also appeared in the press heralding Oprah's generosity and Brown's goodwill.

Winnie Mandela sent Oprah a note, which she framed and hung in her Chicago condominium: "Oprah, You must keep alive! Your mission is sacramental!! A nation loves you." Soon Winnie and Oprah were on the phone and Oprah was making arrangements to rent a Gulfstream jet to take the Mandela daughters skiing. Once known as "the Mother of the Revolution," Winnie Mandela was later reviled by antiapartheid leaders when her bodyguards were convicted of abducting four teenage boys and killing one of them by slitting his throat. She, too, was convicted of kidnapping, and given a suspended sentence of six years in prison.

The mission of mercy in Alexandra showed Stedman and Williams how Brown operated on the international stage, partnering with Oprah's money and garnering goodwill for her as well as for himself. They learned how publicizing good deeds works to good advantage. The two men later became business partners and formed the Graham Williams Group, a public relations company that Stedman used to promote his selfempowerment books. He made GWG sound as if it fogged mirrors. "The corporation helps people to become all that they can be," he told one reporter. "[It] maximizes resources and helps small firms become large corporations and large corporations become multi-corporations."

When asked to explain what he meant by this, his business partner shrugged.

"Stedman and I have been close for a long time," Armstrong Williams said in 2008. "But I've had my problems with Oprah over the years so now I just deal with him." Williams removed from his house the two photos Oprah had inscribed to him ("Armstrong--My buddy, Oprah" and "Armstrong, You did great on the show! Thank you for doing it.

Oprah") and packed them with the papers he donated to the University of South Carolina.

Oprah began pulling away from her friendship with Williams soon after the journalist David Brock wrote in his book Blinded by the Right Blinded by the Right that Williams had made a that Williams had made a h.o.m.os.e.xual advance toward him. Williams was later sued by a male a.s.sociate for s.e.xual hara.s.sment but settled the case out of court. Oprah completely distanced herself when it became public that Williams, by then a conservative commentator, had been secretly paid $240,000 by the George W. Bush administration to promote the controversial No Child Left Behind Act. The media criticized Williams for unethical behavior and possibly illegal use of taxpayer money. His newspaper syndicate dropped his column, he lost his syndicated television show, and after a yearlong investigation he was asked to return $34,000 to the U.S. Department of Education in overpayment.

What Oprah did not know was that by then Armstrong Williams was also on the payroll of the tabloids, regularly feeding information to the National Enquirer, The Star, National Enquirer, The Star, and the Globe Globe for exclusives on Oprah. "We had a direct pipeline into her office and for exclusives on Oprah. "We had a direct pipeline into her office and knew every move she was making, because she and Stedman exchanged their schedules every two weeks and Armstrong gave us copies," said a former tabloid editor. "So we knew where they were going and what they were doing, which is why our photographers got the intimate photos we published, especially during their vacations together."

Inadvertently, Oprah had initiated the double-dealing by hiring Armstrong to be her conduit to the tabloids--to feed them stories about her good works. "I can a.s.sure you that Oprah definitely knew Armstrong was working with us for her, but she didn't know he was also working for us, and dishing her," said a senior tabloid editor involved with the relationship. "Oprah became so obsessed by our coverage that she had Jeff Jacobs call us to start a dialogue. We did not reach out to her. She reached out to us, to try to get some sort of control on what we were doing. We talked to Jacobs and agreed to give him a comment call within forty-eight hours of publication on any Oprah story. He told us there were hot-b.u.t.ton issues, especially about her weight, but he wasn't crazed on the subject like she was....Jacobs never dished Oprah, but Armstrong did and he was a great source for us for a long, long time....He even put me on the phone with Stedman at one point and we solidified a relationship with him as well."

Stedman moved to North Carolina in 1988 to work with B&C a.s.sociates' Bob Brown, once a police officer like him, and he easily a.s.sumed Brown's conservative politics. "I can tell you Stedman is a Republican through and through," said Armstrong Williams. "Oprah is influenced by Hollywood politics. She can't help it. It's just the way she is. Stedman isn't. He's a very conservative dude."

Oprah admitted her political differences with Stedman when she was asked whether she would have an abortion if she discovered in pregnancy that her child might be born without arms and legs. "Yes, oh yes," she said. "I know that will stir a lot of folks up but I am real clear on this. I want my child to come into the world with every possible opportunity that nature can give him. Of course once the child is born you deal with what nature has given you but if I knew ahead of time that my child would be handicapped, I would definitely want an abortion. Stedman, however, does not agree with me at all. It would be a BIG DISCUSSION. It's terrifying when you think about it, to love somebody that you disagree with on such a pivotal issue."

As a couple, Oprah and Stedman were melded by their devotion to the gospel of self-help. Both upwardly mobile, they read everything on self-improvement, from Creative Visualization and and Psycho-cybernetics Psycho-cybernetics to to The Nature of Personal Reality The Nature of Personal Reality and and The The Road Less Traveled. They shared similar religious beliefs--Oprah claimed they knelt They shared similar religious beliefs--Oprah claimed they knelt every night to say their prayers before bed--and for eight years they attended the Rev.

Jeremiah Wright's Trinity United Church in Chicago. Both had suffered from the insidious demarcations of color within their own culture: Oprah feeling she was too dark, and Stedman envied for being too light. Stedman's father, a housepainter, and his mother, a housekeeper, were first cousins, according to Carlton Jones, Stedman's third cousin, who said Stedman's parents had married each other to preserve the light skin that ran in the family.

"There's a lot of intermarriage in our family," Jones said. He later sold a sensational story about Stedman to a tabloid but was accused of lying for the money. "I'm related to Stedman through my mother's side of the family. She was a Spaulding. The Spauldings, Grahams, Mores, and Boyds from these parts were all light-skinned people.

And they've been marrying each other for over a hundred years.

"We've produced folks who look as white as any white man--even with Caucasian features. But we've also produced r.e.t.a.r.ded kids--and they marry, too. That's why there's so many r.e.t.a.r.ded people in our family tree. First and second cousins got married to each other because they've got this skin thing."

Stedman said that being called "whitey" forced him to prove himself in his small black community. In addition, he had to cope with the social stigma heaped on the family by the learning disabilities of his two younger brothers, James and Darras. "Back then they were called r.e.t.a.r.ded, though now they are described as developmentally disabled,"

he said. "Today there are many support groups and programs to help families deal with mental disabilities, but we didn't have access to those years ago." He refuted Carlton Jones's claim that his parents were first cousins, which could have contributed to the mental disabilities of his brothers. Stedman said his proof could be found in a family history t.i.tled A Story of the Descendants of Benjamin Spaulding. A Story of the Descendants of Benjamin Spaulding.

His cousin Carlton said that while Stedman was growing up his parents would not let him bring black friends home. "His father would tell him, 'I don't want you bringing those black b.a.s.t.a.r.ds into my house!' and he meant it. Stedman never brought his wife or his daughter home for the same reason." It took him several years to bring Oprah to Whitesboro, but she took him to Nashville to meet her father soon after they started dating.

At that point Stedman was still trying to cope with people shoving him aside to get Oprah's autograph and interrupting their restaurant meals to hug her. He couldn't understand why she tolerated the intrusions or how she derived any pleasure from the attention of rude strangers. In Nashville he sat slumped in Vernon's barbershop while people from the neighborhood flocked to see her, touch her, photograph her, and even sing to her. He wondered out loud if she had the ability to differentiate between people who were meaningful and those who just wanted to be around a celebrity. "Who's here after all these people are gone?" he asked. "Who really cares about her? I don't think she really understands, or maybe she understands and hasn't let that understanding affect her.

But Oprah has been through so much, a tough childhood, a broken family, that it's kind of hard to say this is something she shouldn't enjoy."

Oprah and Stedman eventually became life partners, but even after living together for more than two decades they have not married. "You know I say all the time, 'Stedman, if we had married we wouldn't be together,' " she told Jann Carl of ET. ET. "And he "And he says, 'For sure. For sure we wouldn't.' [Ours] is not a traditional relationship, and marriage is a traditional inst.i.tution, and certain expectations come with marriage. The truth is he has a life...he has his work...and I have mine, and it just wouldn't work."

Her father agreed. "Forget about a wedding," he said in 2008. "It will never happen....She won't ever marry Stedman because...she's all for herself and not about to give up anything for anyone....She's content with who she is. With Oprah it's root hog or die poor." Vernon Winfrey, then seventy-five and still working in his barbershop, explained that hogs must root for food or die of starvation, implying that Oprah needed to root for riches more than she needed to nourish a relationship. She seemed to confirm her father's a.s.sessment when she p.r.o.nounced herself in favor of prenuptial agreements.

"[They] imply you're not stupid," she said. "If somebody ever even tried to tell me they wanted to come and take half of everything I had--Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh--the thought!" She also told TV Guide, TV Guide, "Marriage to me means offering--sacrificing--yourself to the "Marriage to me means offering--sacrificing--yourself to the relationship. To become one with the relationship. I'm not capable of doing that right now."

"Not now, not ever," said Vernon, shaking his head. "My wife, Zelma, died in 1996, and a few years later, when I started seeing the woman [Barbara Williams] who became my second wife, Oprah called me. 'Are you in love?' she asked.

" 'Can you fall in love more than once?' I asked her.

" 'Yeah,' she said.

" 'No, you can't,' I told her. 'But my daddy used to say, "You can marry in like and then grow fonder. It's either that or you'll wander and go yonder." So I'm in like.'

"Oprah said, 'Daddy, I guess I'm like you. I'm in like, too. Not in love.'

" 'So we can have a double wedding then?' Oprah said no."

When she first started dating Stedman she burbled to her audiences about her new boyfriend, "Steddie"--how handsome he was, how romantic, how they might eventually marry, even have children. "I guess I'll spoil any baby Stedman and I have," she mused.

"I already spoil his daughter, Wendy. I say to her and her friends, 'Okay, I'll give you a big shopping spree. You can have one hour at the store to buy whatever you want.' "

She talked to reporters about her "ticking clock." "Some days I really want a girl because you can dress her up and she'd be so cute--she'd be like me. Then I think I'd want to have a boy because I'd like to name him Canaan. Canaan Graham is such a strong name."

Years later she came closer to her own truth in a televised interview for A&E A&E Biography in which she said, "I truly feel that what I went through at fourteen was a sign in which she said, "I truly feel that what I went through at fourteen was a sign that children were not supposed to be part of the equation for me. I have conceived, I have given birth--and it didn't work out for me. I'm comfortable with the decision to move on."

Oprah said she surprised her best friend when she admitted she never really wanted children. "I said, 'No, never.' Even in seventh grade Gayle knew she wanted twins. She says, 'If I hadn't gotten married, I would have had a child. I would have felt like my life is not complete without a child.' I don't feel that at all."

Having announced their engagement on television in 1992 and posed for People, People, Oprah later regretted talking so much about her relationship with Stedman. "Someone once told me, 'Every time you mention his name, the perception is you're doing it because you're longing for something you cannot have.' And it never occurred to me that that's how it was being perceived....But if I hadn't [talked about him] then everybody would be asking, 'Who's the Mystery Man?' 'Is she a lesbian?' "

Years later people did begin to wonder. Some dismissed Oprah's relationship with Stedman as a convenience for both, whispering about their s.e.xuality and suggesting that each was helping the other hide same-s.e.x preferences, especially Oprah, who was seen in public with Gayle King far more often than she was seen with Stedman. All three of them denied that they were h.o.m.os.e.xual, and so did their close friends, but the rumors persisted, particularly in Hollywood, where Oprah befriended a few glamorous female stars known as lipstick lesbians.

Soon she and Gayle and Stedman became fodder for comedians. Kathy Griffin, who won an Emmy in 2008 for her reality show, regaled a largely gay audience at DAR Const.i.tution Hall in Washington, D.C., by asking why Oprah had taken Gayle to the Emmys that year. "Can't she go down in the bas.e.m.e.nt and unleash Stedman? Just for one night?" The audience roared. "Oh, c'mon," Griffin said. "You know I'm supportive of Oprah and her boyfriend, Gayle."

On David Steinberg's television show Robin Williams imitated Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice talking to Oprah on the phone. Williams crossed his legs, daintily pointed his toes, and put his hand to his ear. "Oh, dear. You say Stedman is wearing your clothes again? Not good. Not good at all." The audience laughed at the send-up of Oprah's partner as a cross-dresser.

By then the couple was almost inured to public derision. They felt they had faced the worst when News Extra, News Extra, a Canadian tabloid, published a story t.i.tled "New Oprah a Canadian tabloid, published a story t.i.tled "New Oprah Shocker! Fiance Stedman Had Gay s.e.x with Cousin." "That was the most difficult time for me," Oprah told Laura Randolph of Ebony, Ebony, sobbing as she recounted the story of sobbing as she recounted the story of Stedman's gay cousin saying he had slept with Stedman at a local motel in Whitesboro, New Jersey. She said the rumor about Stedman's s.e.xuality "hurt him, hurt him bad," and she blamed herself. "If I were lean and pretty, n.o.body would ever say that. What people were really saying is why would a straight, good-looking guy be with her?"

Oprah had brought the tabloid home to show Stedman. "He was so brave," she said, "and I have never loved him more. He taught me so much during that period. When I handed it to him, he looked at it and said, 'This is not my life. I don't have anything to do with this. G.o.d obviously has something he wants me to learn.' Now I'm standing in the middle of the floor and I'm crying, I'm hysterical, and you know what he started doing?

He started looking in the closet and talking about resoling his shoes. And I'm, like, resoling your shoes! I have never seen greater manhood in my life."

Within days Oprah and Stedman filed a $300 million lawsuit against the tabloid for defamation, invasion of privacy, and intended infliction of emotional distress. Their attorney told reporters that Carlton Jones had sold his story nine months earlier to a U.S.

tabloid but the tabloid had not published it because Oprah's attorneys convinced them the story was not true. Now, the attorney said, Jones said he had lied to the tabloid for money. News Extra News Extra chose not to answer the complaint. "I believe the publishers decided chose not to answer the complaint. "I believe the publishers decided that they weren't going to defend that action," said the editor. Thirty-five days later, U.S.

District Judge Marvin E. Aspen entered a default judgment against the Montreal-based tabloid, which had vacated its offices and gone out of business. Oprah and Stedman felt vindicated by the next day's headlines: "Oprah Winfrey Wins Suit by Default."

Stedman still had to steel himself against the derision of being tagged "Mr.

Oprah," "The Little Mister," or, as the National Review National Review put it, "the terminally affianced put it, "the terminally affianced Stedman Graham, Miss Adelaide to Oprah's Nathan Detroit." In the early days he occasionally lashed out when he was referred to as "Oprah's boyfriend," but seven years into the relationship, Oprah told him to get over it. "It's the thing that bothers him most,"

she said, "but I told him if he dies, if he leaves, if he ends up owning Chicago, people are still going to say, 'That's Oprah Winfrey's boyfriend.' "

Stedman continued chafing at the description. "There's no respect in it," he said.

"Although there is credibility in being able to hang with one of the most powerful women in the world, no one respects you for that." Respect was paramount to this proud man, who was working in a prison when he first met Oprah. During the day he wore the starched blue uniform of a corrections employee whose job was to pat down prisoners; at night he slipped into ta.s.seled loafers, drove a Mercedes, and lived what he later called "a false life."

Through the pretty broadcaster Robin Robinson, Stedman had been given entree into the gold coast of Chicago's black society, which included media stars like Oprah, athletes like Michael Jordan, and publishing mogul Linda Johnson Rice, whose family owned Ebony Ebony and and Jet. Jet. Within this elite circle were Ivy League doctors, lawyers, bankers, Within this elite circle were Ivy League doctors, lawyers, bankers, and professors, who had achieved the kind of success Stedman never dreamed possible for himself. While he looked like he could belong to the crowd of accomplished professionals--all smooth, smart, and stylish--he knew his degree from the tiny Baptist college Hardin-Simmons in Abilene, Texas, gave him few bragging rights alongside graduates of Harvard.

Flying at that high alt.i.tude was transformative for Stedman, and soon he saw that body-searching felons was not going to give him the life he wanted. Prison guards did not get to socialize with Michael Jordan. As a high-school and college basketball star, Stedman wanted nothing more than to play for the NBA, and not being selected had been the biggest disappointment of his life. So when Michael Jordan started doing commercials and needed a stand-in, Stedman leaped, eager to be a part--any part--of Jordan's world. He idolized the Chicago Bulls forward, not simply for his dazzling athleticism but for turning his success on the court into a lucrative business.

Wanting to a.s.sociate himself with professional athletes, Stedman devised his plan for the nonprofit organization called Athletes Against Drugs. He enlisted Michael Jordan's endors.e.m.e.nt to get other athletes to join and sign vague statements that they were "drug-free and...positive role models for today's youth." The wording of his first mission statement was equally vague: "Educate children to live a better lifestyle." He then refined it to "Educate youth to make healthy life decisions." He envisioned arranging public appearances for big-name athletes at sporting events and tournaments, to be underwritten by corporate sponsors, which would enable him to look like he was doing well by doing good while a.s.sociating with big-time athletes. "Don't call Stedman a jock sniffer," warned Armstrong Williams. "He hates that image."

To start AAD, Stedman sold his Mercedes and cashed in his retirement fund from the corrections system, and used the little he had acc.u.mulated from his first job as a police officer in Fort Worth, Texas, followed by three years in the army. Even without an income or a business plan, he finally felt he had a sense of purpose and a little status. He continued runway modeling to pay expenses after resigning from the Bureau of Prisons, where he claimed to have been "on track to one day become a warden in the federal corrections system."

The tax returns for AAD indicate the organization collects an average of $275,000 a year, most of which is raised from an annual celebrity golf tournament. Contributors to AAD pay for the annual dinner gala that allows Stedman to sit at the head table with professional athletes. Being chairman of Athletes Against Drugs certainly gives him a grand t.i.tle, but no longer a salary. Sometime before 2002, he had to lend his organization more than $200,000 to keep it afloat. How AAD distributes funds "to educate youth to make healthy life decisions" is not specified.

Oprah, who did not publicly admit her drug use until 1995, told Stedman about it early in their relationship. "I was concerned about how it would affect him, but he knew from the start it was one of the secrets I was having trouble dealing with and he encouraged me not to let it be a big fear," she said. "He's never taken a single drug and doesn't drink alcohol."

Stedman was intent on improving his lot, but if he needed goading, Oprah certainly provided it when she was asked if she cared what a man did for a living. She did not hesitate.

"I do care about whether or not he's a ditch digger. I know that sounds elitist. But I have such great aspirations for myself in life--to really fulfill my human potential--that I just don't understand people who don't aspire to do or be anything."

Oprah's ambitions were gargantuan, and her craving for recognition almost insatiable. Without an Off b.u.t.ton, her engine churned constantly as she jammed her days and nights with nonstop activity. "My schedule is very hectic, but it's exactly the kind of life I've always wanted," she said. "I've always said I wanted to be so busy that I wouldn't have time to breathe."

Every morning after doing her talk show, at least in the early years, she spent time with her audiences--shaking hands, posing for pictures, signing autographs. She met with her producers to discuss the next day's show, and she scrutinized the overnight ratings.

She pushed forward with plans to build her $10 million studio ("I've got to move on from millionaire to mogul"); she pursued movie roles ("I'm going to be a great, great actress"); she purchased book rights to produce her own films, the first being the biography of Madame C. J. Walker, who developed cosmetics for black women that were sold door-todoor, making her the first self-made female millionaire in America. Oprah explored developing her own clothing line for "the more substantial woman," because she couldn't find designer clothes to fit her. When she did find something she loved, her dresser had to buy two outfits in the largest size available and have them sewn together, which was costly and time-consuming. She met with Chicago's Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises to discuss opening a restaurant. She agreed to be a partner but would not allow her name to be used, because if it failed, she did not want to be blamed. She wanted to establish an inst.i.tute for women as "an extension of what we try to do for an hour on the show...I don't know what to call it other than a center for self-improvement." She worked with Maya Angelou to write a one-woman show for her to take to Broadway, and she discussed writing her autobiography. Oprah knew 1987 was her time, as blacks stepped to the forefront in politics (Jesse Jackson), movies (Eddie Murphy), music (Whitney Houston), network news (Bryant Gumbel), and prime-time television (Bill Cosby).

h.e.l.l-bent on becoming a presence in prime time herself, Oprah wanted to star in her own sitcom, like Bill Cosby. "I will produce it and sell it to the network," she said, "and it will be a raging success." Having proved her genius on television, she considered herself a natural for a comedy about what goes on behind the scenes of a television talk show based in Chicago. She sold the idea for Chicago Grapevine Chicago Grapevine and spent weeks in and spent weeks in 1987 flying back and forth to Los Angeles to work on the pilot, but in the end Brandon Stoddard, president of ABC Entertainment, was unimpressed. He p.r.o.nounced the concept "misguided," said the Oprah character was not depicted successfully as "outspoken and realistic," and canceled the thirteen-week series. Oprah did not see the cancelation as a failure, or even a setback. It was simply another step in her mystical evolution.

After filling her days, she booked her nights and weekends with photo shoots, interviews, speeches, and public appearances. "Even doing the number one talk show isn't enough--it's like breathing to me--I need something else to do," she said. She wanted Stedman to accompany her everywhere, as if to show him off and perhaps prove she could attract a delicious-looking man.

A year into their relationship they got walloped with the first of many tabloid "exclusives," this one claiming that Stedman had called off their wedding. Oprah, who had never learned to ignore the grocery store press, flew into a smackdown and denounced the story on her show and to every reporter within range.

"It's outrageous," she told Bill Carter of The Baltimore Sun. The Baltimore Sun. "We were going to "We were going to sue," until the paper promised a retraction. "This story said I was jilted, and crying my heart out, thinking of taking a leave of absence from the show. I was shattered and bitter.

And that wedding dress I was waiting to lose weight to get into. It was the worst thing I've ever [read]. I can't remember feeling that bad. Because people believed it and because of the kind of image not only that I created, but that I also believe in: Women being responsible for themselves. And so being portrayed as falling apart because I'd been jilted by some man that was just too much. It was even worse than the wedding dress stuff."

Oprah told the reporter that she had called Jackie Ona.s.sis for consolation. "She had called me earlier about possibly doing a book," Oprah said, "and she told me I can't control [what] other people [write]."

The conversation with Jacqueline Kennedy Ona.s.sis was duly noted in Carter's story. "There still seems to be a side of Oprah that wants you to know all the amazing people her fame has brought her in touch with," he wrote. "She is one of the most impressive name-droppers in the U.S.A.: The call to Jackie O. The show with Eddie (as in Murphy). The dinner in New York at a table next to Cal (as in Klein). The movie rights deal with Quincy (as in Jones)."

Yet Oprah hastened to a.s.sure the writer that despite all her new-found riches and fame and celebrity friends, she was just as plain and ordinary as the people who watched her show and loved her with such intensity. "I really do still think I'm just like everybody else," she said. "I'm just me."

Ten.

WHEN OPRAH made the cover of People People magazine on January 12, 1987, she magazine on January 12, 1987, she reached the summit of cynosure status. It was her first of twelve People People covers in twenty covers in twenty years, putting her in a league with Princess Diana (fifty-two covers), Julia Roberts (twenty-one covers), Michael Jackson (eighteen covers), and Elizabeth Taylor (fourteen covers). Being crowned by the celebrity chronicle made her an instant pop culture icon, and she was ecstatic. Those around her were not so pleased.

She rankled her family by talking in the article about the s.e.xual 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 s.e.xual 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...n.o.body 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 Tennessean, the city's 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 (Cla.s.s of '86) wrote a letter to the editor of The Meter, The Meter, the student newspaper, the student newspaper, saying, "Some of us worked too d.a.m.n 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, People, they wonder what she 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.