the oprah winfrey show

oprah was never afraid to say the first thing on her mind, something that i grew up admiring but have since come to recognize is kind of rude. viewing clips of her show now feels like helplessly watching a drunk friend destroy the conversation at a nice party. it's rare somebody overstepping can be so charming and electric, though, and like millions across the country, i was glued. 

growing up, the oprah winfrey show aired at 9am monday-friday and was shot about 20 miles from my home. it really felt like she was next door--somebody i could run into at the grocery store but never would. my aunt even lived in a condo across from her building--harpo studios--and i'd sometimes look out the window, convinced that if i gazed long enough i might see oprah exit the front doors just like anybody else. before i could even begin to think of a question for her guest, she had ten. she wanted answers and we--collectively--felt she was owed. she treated murderers the same as PTA moms, some kind of egalitarian understanding that each person in this world deserved a hot seat. it was a public service.

i was a sickly child or a child who was very good at pretending to be sick. in elementary school i regularly missed a third of the school year, my parents interrogated by concerned teachers and threatened with social worker visits. most importantly, though, this meant that i got to see about 60 episodes of oprah each year (plus all summer long! though these were reruns...) for close to a decade. sometimes i'd be home sick on a monday and i would see that a great episode of oprah would be airing on thursday and i'd pretend to be sick for another 3 days just to watch.

according to wikipedia, there were 4,561 episodes of the oprah winfrey show, which would take you 190 days nonstop to watch if you also commit to viewing the 20 minutes of commercials for oreck vacuums and empire carpeting that glued each episode together. periodically i will be struck with a memory of an oprah guest so comprehensively vivid, it feels more like a heaven-sent prophecy. this afternoon i was at a stoplight, waiting to take a left turn, and it hit me--the face of a woman explaining to oprah how her super-padded wonderbra saved her life. she had been mowing the lawn and a piece of shrapnel flew up out of the machine. i used to think about her every time i pulled on a misshapen training bra before heading to middle school.

with 4,561 episodes--few of them permanently chronicled online, be it for copyright or lack of interest or simply the politically incorrect paths of questioning oprah often forged--it is frequently impossible to find evidence of these memories being real or fake. the wonderbra woman's parable is lost to the annals of time, just like the guest who warned people to touch something metal before pumping gas (static electricity caused their tank to blow) or a survivor from a drunk driving accident whose young niece was decapitated by a seatbelt. the show was uninterested in maintaining a single tone, unthinkable violence one day, inspirational stories the next. sometimes fun giveaways and fugitives and kids with encyclopedic knowledge of american history could all fit in the same episode. at the end of each hour, i was dropped abruptly into the next television program and i would haul ass across channels to the price is right.

oprah was the first woman--first person--i heard candidly talk about her body. she was the first person i heard talk about sexual abuse or really violence in general. it was a softer form of news, to hear from one woman what the world was up to. rare to see someone with full freedom to show how it made her feel, too. she was the first person i saw who had complicated desires, who pursued healing or justice or simple closure with an authority awarded purely by possession of the microphone. she really made it seem like you could get whatever answer you wanted just by asking.

i loved the oprah's wildest dreams segment where she'd dance to "in your wildest dreams" by tina turner & barry white for a few seconds before tormenting people with great news. i remember a woman in literal shock once--face contorted into horse-ish misery--because she was meeting the love of her life josh groban. i remember school teachers--my greatest enemies--always inexplicably being given all the treasure in the world. it seemed like people sometimes hated getting what they wanted--that it was too much, not the right time, needed to come with some ground rules. it was the lesson we are supposed to learn from every wish granted by a cartoon genie, you get exactly what you ask for. if a desire is able to be articulated in the world's terms, it's because the desire has come from the world, not you.

the show wasn't just oprah, she had a regular constellation of people who had warmed to her insane interrogations. my favorite guest was oprah's best friend gayle who knew how to egg her on and reign her in. they had been friends for thirty years--it made soul mates seem real. then there was nate berkus the interior designer who was always making families weep by finding them some ugly new curtains after they'd gone through something traumatizing. suze orman was one of my least favorite guests but her advice on credit card debt gave me insight into my parents' secretive financial dealings. it was a real mixed bag when oprah would announce her guest was dr. phil, the breakout star that nobody wanted, but it was never as bad one of the worst possible things that could ever happen to me--accidentally being sick on oprah's book club day. it was the most boring hour of television conceivable, second only to an episode of the view.

while i mostly watched oprah alone or sometimes in silence with my mother in the room, there were a few moments where an episode would gain enough traction i could finally see what other people thought about what was going down. i remember crazed public response when oprah confronted james frey about lying to her and when tom cruise jumped on the couch and when oprah gave everyone a new car. but these weren't the shows that stuck with me--the ones i really wanted to hear peoples thoughts on--episodes that started with oprah staring into the camera and reporting live on the most pressing affairs of the soul, "it was one mother's nightmare come true" or "he made an unimaginable mistake" or "she spent five minutes in heaven and is here to tell us what she learned."

i was always waiting for there to be an oprah episode about the bad stuff that happened to me as a child. i thought if i saw it unfold live, in front of her studio audience, i might be finally able to gauge how fucked up it was--some forced yay or nay, clarity on whether or not i was to blame. i guess when nobody else was going to talk about it--none of the adults in my life--i knew oprah would not have been able to resist. she wasn't waiting for anybody else to tell her what good or bad looked like, she was out to decide for herself--an acute sense of justice that didn't feign authority, extractive but generous. 

of all the human interest talk shows that gawked their way through the 90s, oprah's somehow managed to have at least an ounce of respect for everyone involved. though i don't necessarily know why--maybe she didn't chase ratings as much, followed her gut, wanted to see the humanity in her guests even as she demanded an explanation for it. i thought i had a reasonable amount to say about oprah, but i could really go on. there's no end. in my life she has had the same amount of airtime as--probably--god. an early and constant presence, lost sight of her in my teens, haunted by her in my adult life. i guess she fulfilled some fantasies i had--that an adult might talk to me like we could arrive at the same conclusions or that you could find the truth as long as you had the mic. but mostly it was an hour of good tv, something that promised today would be different than the next, as simple as clicking a few buttons on the remote.