On Sat, May 28, 2011 at 12:34 PM, PGage <[email protected]> wrote: > On Sat, May 28, 2011 at 6:25 AM, Melissa P <[email protected]>wrote: > >> This is actually where she did the most damage -- and the author didn't >> even >> mention Jenny McCarthy, the two of them -- Oprah and Jenny -- being >> responsible for the deaths of a significant number of children: >> >> "In her earnest spiritual seeking, Ms. Winfrey gave platforms to some >> rather >> questionable types. She hosted the self-help author Louise Hay, who once >> said Holocaust victims may have been paying for sins in a previous life. >> She >> championed the "medical intuitive" Caroline Myss, who claims emotional >> distress causes cancer. She helped launch Rhonda Byrne, creator of the DVD >> and book "The Secret," who teaches that just thinking about wealth can >> make >> you rich. She invited the "psychic medium" John Edward to help mourners in >> her audience talk to their dead relatives. >> >> "The Oprah Winfrey Show" made viewers feel that they constantly had to >> "sculpt their best lives," Dr. Lofton writes. Yet in her religious >> exuberance Ms. Winfrey gave people some badly broken tools. Ms. Winfrey >> nodded along to the psychics and healers and intuitives. She rarely asked >> tough questions, and because she believed, millions of others did, too." >> > > Totally agree. And her guilt goes further than the assortment of charlatans > and well-intentioned quacks she actually brought on her show. She taught her > millions and millions of devoted fans to uncritically accept feel-good but > unsupported claims, and to substitute wishful thinking for critical thinking > and evidence. You could excuse her by saying she is just an entertainer, not > a teacher or a health care provider - except Oprah knowingly and > substantially profited from her fans using her as a source of life guidance, > and she actively encouraged this, which gives her a pretty substantial > responsibility.
I can agree with all of you, and criticize her for all of that, but then I think to myself, I don't think she knows better. It's easy to forget that you can be very successful in life without getting any grounding, learning critical thinking skills, or even knowing how to be skeptical. I've just finished reading the New York Mag profile of Roger Ailes, and I'm partway through the Rolling Stone. The man has turned Fox News into the most successful news/opinion network in America, but he is frickin' crazy.He's afraid that gay people might try to kill him. The Koch brothers are obviously savvy businessmen and political players, but they hold an almost cartoonish view of the Obama administration as Socialists thugs. I can not say for sure that Oprah believes the things her guests do, but I suspect she does. And if she does, how do you go about and tell her that the actual science says that vaccines do not cause Autism? Jenny McCarthy is pretty adamant that they do and if you don't understand science, she's pretty convincing. Debates rarely change minds (especially talk show ones), as they wind up sounding like "blah-blah-blah controversy-controversy"... -- Wesley McGee http://www.ambivi.com http://drawing-a-blank.tumblr.com -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
