The Odd Direction of Oprah's Head

I suppose we thought that we were done with the whole "Oprah for President" thing, and that it would fade slowly away over time, after Oprah herself said she was not going to run.

Ahhh, we should be so lucky.  Apparently, according to a piece by Carly Ledbetter in the Huffington Post, she might actually consider running.

Now, let me say this.  I don't think there's a chance she will run.  She already has plenty of money and power but, more importantly, she has a stable and fairly level reputation.  The things she is criticized for are minor, like "You get a car and you get a car and ... oh yeah, you get a fat tax bill as well!"  And supporting Obama a couple times.  You know, not too terrible stuff, even the Obama mistakes.  But running for president is the ultimate glass house, and she does not need that.

Plus she would be 67 in 2021, and even though President Trump would be 74, he's a lot more vigorous -- and willing to take her on at whatever level of war she wants to take it.  Oprah Winfrey does not need that.

But according to the piece, there is one thing that could change her mind and get her to run.  So let me quote the piece, or at least the relevant part:

"Oprah Winfrey has already shot down talk of running for president in 2020, but now she’s revealing the one thing that could make her reconsider.  After [her] speech at the Golden Globes in January, rumors swirled that she would run for office.  “I had people ― wealthy, billionaires ― calling me up and saying, ‘I can get you a billion dollars. I can run your campaign,”’ she said in a new interview with People magazine. “That many people saying something made me think, ‘Am I at least supposed to look at the question?’”

"Oprah said she went into prayer -- 'God, if you think I’m supposed to run, you gotta tell me, and it has to be so clear that not even I can miss it.’ And she hasn't gotten that, she told the magazine.
As Oprah has already said, running for president is something she’s just not interested in doing."

So.  My first question is whether anyone has gone over to Joy Behar, the far-left member of the panel of The View.  She had famously stated that Vice-President Pence, who was quoted by the ever-reliable Omarosa Manigault as referencing God speaking to him, must be insane, because he "heard voices."  That was the textbook symptom of insanity, according to the esteemed Dr. Behar.

So if Oprah is expecting, or at least waiting for, God to tell her to run or not, we are all awaiting Joy Behar's commentary on how Oprah is not equally nuts, for expecting to be spoken to by the Deity.  I hope someone on the panel takes the time to ask Behar that.  We all want to know her answer.

But let's get to the billion dollars first, if we could.  If Oprah is to be believed, more than one billionaire contacted her, to assert that each could raise a billion dollars and run her campaign.  So why, we want to know, didn't Oprah tell them to go take their billion dollars in campaign funds and place it carefully where the sun does not shine?

No, she said this -- "that many people saying something made [her] think whether she should at least look at the question."

Wow.

If I were Oprah, and those people came to me, here is what would have been in the People article:

“I had people ― wealthy, billionaires ― calling me up and saying, ‘I can get you a billion dollars. I can run your campaign’.  That many people saying something made me think there is a serious problem in American politics.  I'm not a politician, and I have no experience at government or really even dealing with government.

"Yet people with a billion dollars lying around were willing to spend it to get me elected.  Do you know what you can buy with a billion dollars?  Do you know how many hungry people could be fed in this country alone?  But no, these people were ready to spend it, not to help anyone, not even to buy something, but to get me elected president.  They would have received nothing tangible whatsoever in return.

"Does that mean that some people with that much money felt that they could control me, and were willing to spend a billion dollars -- each -- so that they could have a president beholden to them?  What would make them think I was so morally bankrupt that I would do that?  What would make them think that there is anyone out there who could be controlled in that way?  So I told them 'not only no but heck, no', and told them to find some nation, far less corruptible than this one, to pull that kind of crap.

"That day I realized that, whatever I thought of his political stances, Donald Trump had been an honorable man, a billionaire running using his own money, beholden to no one but the people.  He had not tried to put a puppet in the White House, but chose to take on the cost of the campaign, the incredibly personal attacks, and then the duties and awesome responsibilities of the Presidency himself.  If those two-bit billionaires weren't willing to show the guts that Donald Trump had, they could find not just another celebrity, but another country."

I hope that someone tells Oprah that, because apparently that was not her reaction, though it sure should have been.  And, by the way, tells People as well.  And Huffington, while they're at it.

Copyright 2018 by Robert Sutton
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