Oprah_ A Biography Part 13

The photographer had been brought to Oprah by Sugar Rautbord, part of Chicago's social set, who was doing a Q&A with her for Andy Warhol's Interview Interview magazine. "Andy kept asking me, 'Why is she so big? Why isn't she beautiful?' So I decided she had to be photographed like a star, and that's what Victor did....Oprah posed for the picture but later told me she didn't like it. 'I am not a diva,' she said. 'I am everywoman. I should not look grander than other people.' She always took umbrage with that photograph....

"I've done Oprah's show eleven times," said Sugar Rautbord. "I knew her before she became Oprah and moved up in the world....She has a great quality of moving on and moving up....Even back when she was local in Chicago I saw her great ambition and I was in awe....She figured out early that the only way to have a successful career and make money--big money--was to delete husbands and children and carpools from life's agenda. None of those problems touch Oprah in the golden sphere in which she lives. Yet she still addresses our issues of husbands and children and carpools as if they were her issues, as if she really is Everywoman....It's quite amazing."

Oprah preferred presenting herself to her audience as one of them, and adopted Whitney Houston's. .h.i.t "I'm Every Woman" as the theme song for her show. She understood the importance of maintaining an appealing public image, which is why she insisted on controlling her own public relations, including all photographs of herself.

" Controlling Controlling is the operative word with Oprah," said Myrna Blyth, the former editor of is the operative word with Oprah," said Myrna Blyth, the former editor of Ladies' Home Journal. "I think we were the first traditional women's magazine to put her "I think we were the first traditional women's magazine to put her on the cover, and we had her on many times. One time she insisted on choosing her own photographer, which is not unusual. A lot of celebrities do that, but after the shoot, Oprah did not like the picture. So she asked for another shoot by another photographer, whom she also chose. That is unusual, but we agreed, even though it was very expensive with the second photographer, but we wanted to please her....She bought up all the first photographer's negatives so he couldn't publish them elsewhere. She does that with all her pictures, which is why you see so very few photos of Oprah that she doesn't want you to see, except in the tabloids."

Oprah told Ladies' Home Journal that she insisted on having total control over that she insisted on having total control over every aspect of her professional life. "It's tough to have a relationship with someone like me," she said. "And the older I get, the tougher I am....Because I control so many things in my life, I have to work at not being controlling when I'm spending time with Stedman." She said that whenever they drive somewhere, she always dictates the route, sure that she knows the best way. One time she was so insistent that Stedman take a certain shortcut that he finally gave in, even though he knew the street was blocked.

"When I realized that I had been a real jerk and that he had allowed me to be a jerk, I said, 'Why didn't you just tell me that you knew the street was blocked?' He said, 'It's easier for me to just drive down the street and turn around than to try to explain that to you, because you would be convinced that it wasn't blocked.' That's when I realized, G.o.d, I'm really bad."

Oprah's need for control also extended to her father, who frequently chafed under her yoke. "Oprah is all about control," said freelance writer Roger Hitts. "I used to talk to her stepmom, Zelma, a lot, but Oprah shut that down. She told all her relatives, 'You are not important. They only want to talk to you to get to me.' I went to Zelma's funeral [November 7, 1996] and Oprah gave the eulogy and took over everything....She did the same when Vernon remarried four years later [June 16, 2000]. At the wedding, which Oprah paid for, Vernon was talkative and approachable--until she arrived. Then she took charge, telling him what he could and couldn't do. She wouldn't let him talk to anyone.

She completely controlled the situation. The wedding was run on her clock. She was late, but nothing could start until she got there. Then her minders took control of everything, including the relatives....

"I caught up with Vernon afterward. He was still talkative but dour, which had to do with Oprah. He is a pretty prideful guy, but he has had to do a lot of giving with her.

She tells him what he can and cannot do all the time. She dictates his life. That's the relationship, and it grates on him."

Oprah had no control over what happened when she agreed to host the winners of the Ladies' Home Journal Ladies' Home Journal celebrity look-alike contest. "It never occurred to us to specify celebrity look-alike contest. "It never occurred to us to specify the s.e.x of the applicants," said Myrna Blyth, "and we didn't expect to get an Oprah lookalike, but we got one who looked exactly like her. Only after we announced the winner [Jecquin St.i.tt], who beat out four thousand other contestants, did we find out that the Oprah look-alike was a man....But we had to give him the award because of political correctness."

At the time of the contest, St.i.tt, who later underwent s.e.x rea.s.signment surgery to become a woman, was known as a transvest.i.te in Flint, Michigan, where he worked as an account clerk for the Water Department. "I was a flaming queen [then]," St.i.tt said, "but the torch was turned way down at work."

The prize for the look-alike winners (Oprah, Madonna, Barbara Bush, Whoopi Goldberg, Carol Burnett, Janet Jackson, Cher, Liza Minnelli, and Joan Collins) was a trip to New York City, a makeover by John Frieda, makeup by Alfonso Noe, a photo shoot for the magazine by celebrity photographer Francesco Scavullo, and an appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show.

"I have to say Oprah handled it very well, because she didn't make a big deal of it," said Blyth. "When he came out to meet her on the show, she said, 'If I had a wig, I'd take it off to you.' If she had reacted differently, it could have blown up into a big story, but she handled it so that it just went away quietly after the show. She and her people are very savvy, very smart. They protect her and do a great job."

The transvest.i.te Oprah felt that, in protecting the real Oprah, her staff had trampled on him. He said he was denied the promised makeover and his photo in Ladies' Ladies'

Home Journal. While the other look-alikes were attended to in the Harpo prep room, he While the other look-alikes were attended to in the Harpo prep room, he was ignored, although he had been promised that Oprah's hairdresser, Andre Walker, would make sure he looked like Oprah. He had also been promised that he would be on for half the show, and while the other look-alikes each got three minutes on air, he was not brought on until the very end, when Oprah was doing the sign-off. When the program aired during sweeps, the credits ran over his appearance. He sued Ladies' Home Journal Ladies' Home Journal for breach of contract, and the magazine paid him a settlement. He later said his treatment by Harpo was "ugly," but he got revenge a few days later when Joan Rivers decided to do a mock bridal shower for Oprah on her new talk show and invited the transvest.i.te to appear in a Vera w.a.n.g wedding gown flanked by look-alikes for Madonna and Cher.

After that show, Oprah closed the door on Joan Rivers and never spoke to the comedienne again, even after appearing with her three times on The Tonight Show The Tonight Show early early in her career.

Oprah and her producers turned themselves inside out for shows during sweeps, because the ratings then determined how much the show could charge for license fees and advertising rates. Higher ratings meant more money, so sweeps shows tended to be highly controversial, to increase viewership, and Oprah awarded $10,100 bonuses to her producers if their sweeps programs achieved at least a 10.1 rating, as measured by Nielsen. For the February 1987 sweeps, she presented a show that shot her ratings through the roof. She took her cameras into the town of c.u.mming, in all-white Forsyth County, Georgia, which had received negative publicity when members of the Ku Klux Klan threw bricks at civil rights workers celebrating Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday. A week after the brick-throwing incident, the Rev. Hosea Williams organized a march of twenty thousand people into Forsyth County in one of the biggest civil rights demonstrations since the 1960s. They, too, were attacked with rocks and stones and shouts of "n.i.g.g.e.r, go home."

With the attention of the world upon her, Oprah ventured into the all-white community and excluded any partic.i.p.ation on the show by civil rights representatives.

"We're here simply to ask why this community has not allowed black people to live here since 1912," she said, "and we felt that the people of c.u.mming are in the best position to answer that question."

Rev. Hosea Williams protested the exclusion of civil rights representatives. He said he had been misled by Oprah's producers into believing that blacks would have an opportunity to express their views. Consequently, he said he and his demonstrators would march with signs that read, "Like Forsyth, The Oprah Winfrey Show The Oprah Winfrey Show Turns All White." Turns All White."

The protesters were arrested at the restaurant where Oprah was broadcasting, charged with unlawful a.s.sembly, and thrown into jail. Oprah's cameras showed the police handcuffing them. Afterward she said she was "very, very sorry" about the arrest. "I have nothing but respect for Rev. Hosea Williams."

Her producers had selected one hundred of the county's thirty-eight thousand citizens to be on-camera, representing a range of opinion: some felt blacks deserved equality; others did not.

"Tell me," said Oprah, "where did the people come from who were shouting, 'n.i.g.g.e.r go home'?"

Frank Shirley, head of the Committee to Keep Forsyth White, said, "This was the largest white people's protest against communism and race mixing in the last thirty years....Many of [those marchers] are outright communists and h.o.m.os.e.xuals...."

"You're not just anti-black," Oprah said, "you're also anti-gay, too."

"I'm opposed to communism, race mixing, and low morals, and h.o.m.os.e.xuals are of low morals, in my opinion."

Oprah asked another town resident, "What's the difference between a 'black person' and a 'n.i.g.g.e.r' for you?" She was told, "Blacks stayed at home during the civil rights march. n.i.g.g.e.rs are the ones that marched....A n.i.g.g.e.r is one like Hosea Williams.

He wants to come up here and cause trouble."

Oprah listened to a liberal businesswoman talk about "us" and "them."

"I like the way you speak of 'them,' " Oprah said. "It's like black people are from Mars or something." Becoming exasperated, she asked, "Does everyone in this town never even come in contact with black people? Do you not even watch The Cosby The Cosby Show?"

Oprah's show from Forsyth County received national press coverage, blockbuster ratings, and a tip of the rabbit ears from TV critics. "For sheer audacity and sweeps smarts," wrote Howard Rosenberg in the Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, "nothing has topped black "nothing has topped black Oprah Winfrey's venture into an area whose white-might ugliness has recently attracted global media attention." The Chicago Sun-Times Chicago Sun-Times applauded her for keeping her dignity applauded her for keeping her dignity and composure as she stood among some of the nation's most notorious racists. "So it seems Winfrey accomplished precisely what she had set out to do," wrote Robert Feder.

"She served up an hour of sensational television about an explosive issue while generating tons of publicity."

After doing the show in Forsyth County on a Monday, Oprah returned to Chicago and devoted the rest of her week to drag queens, women murderers, religious fundamentalists, and s.e.xy clothes. Each week, TV critics received an Oprah advisory about her upcoming shows. "Here are my top 10 favorites from recent weeks," wrote Jeff Jarvis of People, People, never a big Oprah fan: never a big Oprah fan: Hairdresser Horror Stories Housewife Prost.i.tutes Men Who Can't Be Intimate Men Who Fight Over Women Man-Stealing Relatives Polygamy Unforgivable Acts Between Couples s.e.xy Dressing Get Rich and Quit Work Women Who Are Allergic to Their Husbands During the November 1987 sweeps, Oprah headed for Williamson, West Virginia, a town on the Kentucky border that was in the clutches of AIDS hysteria. A young man with the disease had come home to die. He went swimming in the public pool, and the mayor ordered it closed for a week of "scrubbing" after hearing rumors that the young AIDS victim had purposely cut himself to infect others. The town went on a witch hunt.

The young man, who died nine years later, appeared on Oprah's show and faced his accusers, who spat out fear, ignorance, and h.o.m.ophobia.

"G.o.d gave him AIDS for a reason," said one. "It's His way of saying, 'What you're doing is no good.' "

Another said, "You want us to hug him, to let him babysit our kids. We can't handle that. I'm not afraid of this man. I am repulsed by the man's lifestyle. I am repulsed by his disease. I am repulsed by him."

Oprah let everyone speak before she made her own observation. "I hear this is a G.o.d-fearing community. Is that right?" she asked. The crowd clapped and cheered to signal affirmation.

"So where is your Christian love and understanding?"

Again, she received rave reviews and rocketing ratings. Several months later, the National Enquirer reported that her brother, Jeffrey Lee, was dying of AIDS and had reported that her brother, Jeffrey Lee, was dying of AIDS and had given an interview saying he felt abandoned by Oprah. "She's virtually disowned me," he said. "She's made it clear that AIDS or not, I'm on my own....Her att.i.tude is, 'It's your own fault. It serves you right.' Oprah believes that every gay is going to get AIDS eventually....I don't think h.o.m.os.e.xuality as such offends Oprah. What really upset her was my lifestyle--partying, running around, not holding down a job. Oprah told me, 'You need to get G.o.d in your life. You really need Jesus.' " Perhaps this was a step forward for Oprah, considering that she first told her brother that as a h.o.m.os.e.xual he would never go to Heaven.

Three days before Christmas 1989, Jeffrey Lee died in Milwaukee, with only his mother and his lover at his side. Two weeks later Oprah issued a statement: "For the last two years my brother had been living with AIDS. My family, like thousands of others throughout the world, grieves not just for the death of one young man but for the many unfulfilled dreams and accomplishments that society has been denied because of AIDS."

In the hope of generating more bombsh.e.l.l ratings for the February '88 sweeps, Oprah booked her first big celebrity interview with the woman once described as the most beautiful in the world. Elizabeth Taylor, then fifty-six, had lost forty pounds, divorced her sixth husband, and written a book t.i.tled Elizabeth Takes Off. Elizabeth Takes Off. She launched She launched its publication with Oprah, who flew her staff to Los Angeles to tape the show at the Hotel Bel-Air, without a studio audience.

"[It] was a very high-pressure situation," recalled the former Harpo photographer Paul Natkin. "I was told before we left Chicago that I would be allowed to shoot ten photographs and I would have approximately two minutes to do that....As soon as I clicked the shutter the tenth time [Taylor's publicist] reached over, put her hand in front of the camera, and said, 'Sorry. That's it. We're done.' "

The photos show the slim and lovely star sparkling with glamour. In contrast, the talk show host looks like an electric dandelion, with a teased hairdo of scrambled ringlets sticking out of her head as if she'd stuck her finger in a socket. The interview was equally disastrous. Oprah could not cajole anything out of the Hollywood diva, and La Liz dismissed the electric dandelion as "cheeky" when she asked her about her romances with Malcolm Forbes and George Hamilton. "None of your business," Taylor snapped. She was so terse and unresponsive to questions that Oprah tried a little humor. "You're so revealing--you just tell everything! I declare you've got to stop talking so much, Ms.

Taylor!"

Not in the least amused, the movie star looked at Oprah with icy hauteur.

"It was the worst interview of my life," Oprah said years later. "It's still painful to watch."

At the time, Oprah looked like an overfed, overdressed country girl overawed by a Hollywood legend, who could not have acted haughtier had she been handed a script.

When the actress appeared on Donahue Donahue two weeks later, she opened up like a flower to two weeks later, she opened up like a flower to the sun, and critics agreed that Oprah was just not ready to do celebrity interviews, something her executive producer had previously acknowledged. "We like to stay away from celebrity-oriented shows," said Debra DiMaio. "Oprah does better with controversial shows, with guests that have some kind of pa.s.sion and emotion and a story to tell....We call them true-life stories....We always kid her, but Oprah has had such an incredible life that no matter what topic we do, it's usually something that happened to her in some way or another."

Still chasing fireworks for February sweeps, Oprah returned to Chicago and waded into a confrontation with white supremacist skinheads that made her tussle with Elizabeth Taylor look like a taffy pull. Security at the station had been increased for the show, requiring everyone to pa.s.s through a metal detector to make sure no weapons were smuggled into the studio. Racist comments and profane threats were spewed with abandon. At one point Oprah placed her hand on the arm of one of the skinheads, who yelled, "Don't touch me." Another called her "a monkey."

"You think...because I'm black [I'm] a monkey?"

"It's a proven fact," said the skinhead.

After the break, Oprah told her audience that "Mr. Monkey Comment" had been asked to leave. She admitted later that halfway through the show she regretted doing it.

"In terms of racist hatred it's the worst thing I've ever done. I have never in my life felt so consumed by evil. Any one of those kids would have taken great pride in slashing my throat. And I know it....They have no concept of what life is about, so they don't care about going to jail for killing a black person or a Jewish person."

The critic for the Chicago Sun-Times Chicago Sun-Times wrote, "So does all this soul-searching mean wrote, "So does all this soul-searching mean Oprah will finally quit subjecting herself to such indignities for the sake of ratings? Don't bet on it."

Booking bigots, self-proclaimed p.o.r.n addicts, and witches as guests gave Oprah, then thirty-four, soaring ratings over fifty-two-year-old Phil Donahue, whose talk show the writer David Halberstam once described as "the most important graduate school in America," informing millions about changes in society and modern mores. For over twenty years Donahue had treated his female audience like intelligent women, and had reigned as the number one talk show host in the country. Having paved the way for a compet.i.tor who was now tromping him, he, too, began dipping into tabloid sleaze. "I don't want to die a hero," he said, explaining why he cross-dressed as a woman to do a show on transvest.i.tes. He later acknowledged that as a white male, he lacked Oprah's ability to get cozy with a female audience about finding a good man, a foolproof diet, or a bra that fit. While Oprah was besting Donahue at every turn, The Wall Street Journal The Wall Street Journal reported on critics who called her show "Nuts 'n' s.l.u.ts" and "Freak of the Week." Her executive producer defended the tabloid programs, saying when viewers complained about a show on s.e.x, it was only after they'd watched every minute of it. When she was asked about a show on child murderers, Debra DiMaio asked for clarification: "Are you talking about kids who kill kids, or kids who kill their parents?" Oprah had done shows on both.

She said she would never do another show with white supremacists, but she resented being criticized for doing tabloid television. "It bleeps me off when you guys write as if I do shows about how to dress your parakeet," Oprah told one critic. "I was uncomfortable doing 'Women Who Have Obnoxious Husbands,' but I turned down [televangelists] Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker. Won't talk to them. And I won't do 'Is Elvis Alive?' "

During the May sweeps of 1988, she stunned everyone when she chose to air a show on teenage boys who'd died of autoerotic asphyxia, a s.e.xual practice that sometimes involves tying a noose around the neck during masturbation. By then she was not just competing against Phil Donahue, but also contending with the talk shows of Sally Jessy Raphael, Geraldo Rivera, Morton Downey, Jr., and Regis Philbin and Kathie Lee Gifford, with Joan Rivers, Jenny Jones, Jerry Springer, Maury Povich, Ricki Lake, and Montel Williams waiting in the wings. The pressure to top previous sweeps ratings and trounce the compet.i.tion led Oprah to present a controversial show featuring the parents of two young boys who had accidentally strangled themselves as a result of the extreme s.e.xual practice.

Dr. Harvey Resnik, a clinical psychiatrist, also appeared on the show. As former chief of the National Inst.i.tute of Mental Health's Center for Studies of Suicide Prevention, he had published a paper on erotized repet.i.tive s.e.x hangings in which men bind their necks, or cover their heads in a plastic bag pulled tight with a drawstring, and achieve an intense high through masturbation while reducing the supply of oxygen to the brain. "When oxygen is depleted, more carbon dioxide is retained, causing an altered state of consciousness. The result is a light-headed giddiness known as a head rush, something that skin divers and pilots who lose oxygen also report. This altered state can affect the s.e.xual pleasure center of the brain. The risk is that with diminished blood flow, the person pa.s.ses out, slumps forward, and completely obstructs the airway, which results in death from asphyxiation. The behavior is well known to medical examiners."

As a consultant to survivors of victims of autoerotic asphyxia, Dr. Resnik understood the shame attached to that particular kind of death. "Just as with other problems we have in mental health, we know that self-help groups and the ability to share grief and to share information is quite helpful," he said.

The day before the show aired, Oprah's executive producer, Debra DiMaio, called Dr. Park Dietz, a forensic psychiatrist, criminologist, and professor of biobehavioral sciences at the UCLA School of Medicine. He warned her about broadcasting such a graphic subject. "I had a heated discussion with the producer. I argued that television is not a suitable medium for discussing this subject, because the risk of people imitating it is too high," he said. "I told her that if the show were aired, it would foreseeably result in one or more deaths." Dr. Dietz added that if anyone sued Oprah for reckless and negligent conduct, he would testify to a jury that he had warned the producer against airing the show. Oprah later said she had "meditated" on the matter and concluded that they should proceed. Months later DiMaio regretted the decision. "It was a dangerous thing to do," she said. "You never want to give that one kid the idea to go ahead and try it."

At the time, Dr. Resnik said the producer agreed to issue a parental warning before the show to restrict TV access to children. "Still, I don't think she or Oprah was prepared for such a powerful subject," he said, "but I applaud them for having the courage to bring the issue to the public."

That afternoon, May 11, 1988, after watching the show, thirty-eight-year-old John Holm retreated to the garage of his father's house in Thousand Oaks, California. When his father returned home hours later from an Elks meeting he could not find his son. "The television was still on Channel 7--the channel he'd watched Oprah Oprah on," said Robert on," said Robert Holm. "The garage lights were on, but the door was locked from the inside. I banged on the door, but there was no answer. I had to break in. That's when I found his body. It was horrible. I thought John had killed himself. But when the rescue squad came, one of the workers said he knew how my son had died because he'd seen the Oprah Oprah show that show that afternoon. I blame the Oprah Oprah show for my boy's death. I lost my son and my best friend show for my boy's death. I lost my son and my best friend in the world."

Mr. Holm hired a lawyer to investigate suing Oprah. "Her show led to John's death--and I will never forgive her for that," he said. In the end he decided not to put his wife through the pain of a lawsuit. "He was our only son and a beautiful person. We can't bring him back."

Publicly, Oprah defended her show. "What I got afterward were responses from grieving parents: 'Thank you for explaining to us what happened to our boy.' They felt a lot better knowing, they said. Before, they had been torturing themselves that they were to blame." Privately, she worried about the possibility of having to defend a wrongfuldeath suit.

"I got a call after the show from her producer, saying parents might sue and asking if I would serve as a witness for Oprah," recalled Dr. Resnik. "I said I would because I believe that having information about such risky behavior is better than not having any information at all."

Oprah was accused of triggering another death when she hosted a show called "Bad Influence Friends," featuring a marriage therapist, an engaged couple having difficulties with their relationship, and a twenty-eight-year-old electronics technician branded by the engaged man's fiancee as the cause of the couple's problems. The engaged woman said that "Mike," her fiance's best friend, was an ex-drug user and a big drinker who flirted with other women even though he was married. The camera zoomed in on Mike with the words Bad Influence Bad Influence under his face. Oprah told the audience, "Mike is under his face. Oprah told the audience, "Mike is married, but it doesn't stop him from being Tom's bad influence and keeping him out late--drinking and dancing and a little flirting, which Mike believes is all harmless fun." Mike said he enjoyed going out with his friends without his wife. Oprah looked at her predominantly female audience, who hissed and booed. One angry woman called him a "major nightmare," and the audience applauded. A shouting match erupted when Oprah asked Mike why he'd gotten married.

"Because I like the security. I like to come home. I like to have someone there."

Thoroughly incensed, one woman shouted, "You can't have both worlds, Mike."

"Yes, I can," he shot back.

"No, you can't."

Less than two weeks later, Mike's father found him hanging from a ceiling fan in his Northlake, Illinois, home. "I know in my heart that Oprah's show killed my son," said Michael LaCalamita, Sr. "I believe he killed himself because he couldn't take the humiliation [of how he came across] and the pressure [of the comments from friends and strangers after the show]....Oprah didn't give him a chance to defend himself. She kept egging him on and on. When the crowd stopped getting at him, she would start another round of attack. It wasn't fair. Oprah's a TV star and he's just a young kid. He didn't know what he was getting into."

The marriage therapist on the show, Dr. Donna Rankin, an a.s.sociate professor at Loyola University in Chicago, told a writer she was surprised that Oprah had even aired the show. "From the things Mike was saying it was clear that he had severe emotional problems," she said. "Obviously, he needed help."

The only public statement Oprah made about the suicide came through her publicist, Colleen Raleigh: "Only Mike LaCalamita or perhaps a psychiatrist would know why he took his own life. Our deepest sympathies are extended to his family and friends."

Despite growing criticism over her tabloid programming, Oprah said her shows "just give people a voyeuristic look at other people's lives. It's not to shock." Still, she continued to demand what she called "bang, bang, shoot-'em-up shows," especially during sweeps, but when she did a highly controversial show on devil worship, she almost shot herself in the foot.

Broadcast on May 1, 1989, the show was t.i.tled "Mexican Satanic Cult Murders,"

and during one segment Oprah presented a woman under the pseudonym of "Rachel"

who was undergoing long-term psychiatric treatment for multiple personality disorder.

"As a child my next guest was also used in worshipping the devil, partic.i.p.ated in human sacrifice rituals and cannibalism," Oprah told her audience. "She is currently in extensive therapy, suffers from multiple personality disorder, meaning she's blocked out many of the terrifying and painful memories of her childhood. Meet 'Rachel,' who is also in disguise to protect her ident.i.ty."

"Rachel" said she had witnessed the ritual sacrifice of children and had been a victim of ritualistic abuse. "I was born into a family that believes in this."

"And this is a--does everyone else think it's a nice Jewish family?" asked Oprah, introducing "Rachel's" religion. "From the outside you appear to be a nice Jewish girl....And you are all worshipping the devil inside the home?"

"Right," said the disturbed "Rachel." "There's other Jewish families across the country. It's not just my own family."

"Really? And so who knows about it? Lots of people now."

"I talked to a police detective in the Chicago area...."

"So when you were brought up in this kind of evilness did you just think it was normal?"

"Rachel" said she had blocked out a lot of the memories, but she remembered enough to say "there would be rituals in which babies would be sacrificed." She later added, "Not all Jewish people sacrifice babies....It's not a typical thing."

"I think we all know that," said Oprah.

"I just want to point that out."

"This is the first time I heard of any Jewish people sacrificing babies, but anyway-so you witnessed the sacrifice?" said Oprah.

"Right. When I was very young I was forced to partic.i.p.ate in that, and...I had to sacrifice an infant."

The phones at Harpo started jangling with hundreds of irate callers objecting to Oprah's blithe acceptance of "Rachel's" claims about Jews practicing devil worship.

Television stations across the country--New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Cleveland, Washington, D.C.--were inundated with furious calls. Within hours, Jewish groups rose up in condemnation, and Oprah's show became a national news story. "We have grave concern about both the lack of judgment and the insensitive manipulation of this woman, who is clearly mentally ill, in a manner which can only inflame the basest prejudices of ignorant people," Rabbi David Saperstein of the Religious Action Center of Reformed Judaism told The New York Times. The New York Times.

Arthur J. Kropp, president of People for the American Way, a leading civil liberties organization, met with his board of directors in Washington, D.C. "There's been a lot of concern about so-called trash television," he said after reviewing the transcript of Oprah's show. "She was the one who introduced the religion. I don't think she introduced it to convey any correlation between the woman's Jewishness and what she saw, but nevertheless Oprah did do it and that was careless."

This wasn't the first bad publicity Oprah had ever received, but it was brutal because she was being criticized for offending sensibilities of race and religion, which she had always appeared to champion. It was an especially sorry position for a woman who had put herself forward as a "poor little ole nappy-headed colored chile" from the lynching state of Mississippi as a not-so-subtle reminder of the viciousness of bigotry.

She now felt misunderstood by her accusers, but she also recognized that her career was in jeopardy.

"We are aware that the show has struck a nerve," said Jeff Jacobs, then COO of Harpo Productions. He pointed out to the press that Oprah had said on the air that "Rachel" was one particular person talking about her particular situation. "And she was identified at the top of the show as being mentally disturbed," he added, not commenting on why such a person would be allowed on the show in the first place. Recognizing the danger of a national boycott of The Oprah Winfrey Show The Oprah Winfrey Show and the potential loss of and the potential loss of sponsors, which could spell financial ruin for everyone, Jacobs quickly offered to meet with Jewish leaders in Chicago to try to salvage the situation, but neither he nor Oprah offered a public apology. When reporters called, Jacobs said Oprah was "traveling" and "unavailable for comment."

The night after hosting her devil-worship show, she appeared on The David The David Letterman Show in Chicago and was unnerved by the comedian's quirky manner. The in Chicago and was unnerved by the comedian's quirky manner. The interview was awkward throughout, especially when someone in the crowd yelled, "Rip her, Dave." Letterman grinned his gleeful gap-toothed grin and said nothing. Years later he said, "I think she resented the fact that I didn't rise to the occasion and, you know, beat up on the guy. Which I probably should have, but I was completely out of control and didn't know what I was doing." A couple of nights later, Letterman, doing his show from the Chicago Theater, told his audience that he felt ill because he had eaten four clams at Oprah's restaurant, The Eccentric. That ripped it. Oprah closed the door on David Letterman and did not speak to him again for sixteen years.

Feeling battered by the bruising she was taking in the nation's press over her devil-worship show, Oprah remained close to her condominium at Water Tower Place when she wasn't working. Serendipitously, she happened to meet Harriet Brady (nee Bookey), another resident, in the lobby. Mrs. Brady, then seventy-two, was well known in Chicago's Jewish community as a philanthropist. She approached Oprah to introduce herself, and then said kindly, "I think I can help you."

Within hours she was on the phone to her good friend Abraham Lincoln Marovitz, a federal judge whose contacts extended into every segment of society. He agreed to help, and for the next week Judge Marovitz and Mrs. Brady worked on Oprah's behalf to a.s.semble a group of representatives from the region's Jewish community to meet at Harriet Brady's condominium to try to quell the raging controversy.

Oprah arrived at the meeting on May 9, 1989, with Debra DiMaio and two Jewish members of her senior staff, Jeffrey Jacobs and Ellen Rakieten. They sat down with Michael Kotzin, director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Metropolitan Chicago; Jonathan Levine, midwest director of the American Jewish Committee; Barry Morrison, director of the Greater Chicago/Wisconsin Regional Office of the AntiDefamation League of B'nai B'rith; Rabbi Herman Schaalman, president of the Chicago Board of Rabbis; Maynard Wishner, president of the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago; Judge Marovitz; and Mrs. Brady.