Speaker 1: Also media, Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, Part two
Speaker 1: of the Oprah Winfrey series, being filmed once again from Sudny,
Speaker 1: Las Vegas, Nevada, where I am exhausted and deeply hungover,
Speaker 1: unlike my guests today, who are both health nuts and
Speaker 1: extremely responsible people, the wonderful Bridget Todd and the also
Speaker 1: wonderful Andrew t Sorry for giving me the also there, Andrew,
Speaker 1: but one of you had to get it. I can't
Speaker 1: remember another nice word, just one.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, today I was I thought you were gonna
Speaker 2: apologize for the health nut business. I'm barely hanging on, dog,
Speaker 2: I'm kidding. How are you doing? Everybody? I mean, I'm
Speaker 2: alive and try to try to help folks out on
Speaker 2: Still in your home, Still in my home, trying to, yeah,
Speaker 2: trying to, trying to. We're at the where the fires
Speaker 2: are still raging as record in Los Angeles. But I
Speaker 2: am lucky enough to be able to try to fucking
Speaker 2: help some folks concentrating on the schied Row right now.
Speaker 2: But I will just.
Speaker 3: Say, for all, for all, you right wing lunatics are
Speaker 3: scared of the Antifa super soldiers and the upcoming war
Speaker 3: against socialism.
Speaker 2: It's going to be really hard for us to make
Speaker 2: sure all our super soldiers are showing up on time
Speaker 2: to the battle.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, that's that's never been our strong side, being
Speaker 1: a manner, but the scheduling.
Speaker 2: Scheduling has been a real thing these last couple of days.
Speaker 1: Bridget, Are you feeling better about your decision to stay
Speaker 1: on the East Coast now? I?
Speaker 4: Well, sort of.
Speaker 5: I mean I'm in d C where they just put
Speaker 5: up all of the like safety scaffolding for the inauguration.
Speaker 1: I guess there's no safe place.
Speaker 4: I went for a walk and I was like, damn,
Speaker 4: this happened.
Speaker 5: We're the city is like getting ready, so like there's
Speaker 5: plywood over windows being put up, so you know, there's
Speaker 5: no wildfires, which I'm grateful for, but I wouldn't say
Speaker 5: I'm feeling pumped.
Speaker 4: Not the chilliest here on the East coast.
Speaker 1: God, well, are we all ready? Are we ready to
Speaker 1: get back into the story of Oprah Winfrey?
Speaker 4: Tell us things?
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, let's uh, let's let's let's do it back
Speaker 1: back to the story. Yeah, I think this is probably
Speaker 1: the most time we've ever spent on the early childhood
Speaker 1: and adolescence of one of our people. It's it's just
Speaker 1: Oprah and Joseph Stalin who have gotten two episodes devoted
Speaker 1: to their childhood.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and a prize to the listeners for figuring out
Speaker 2: the third in that series. Stalin Oprah, question Mark. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's still being decided. But when we left off Oprah,
Speaker 1: she'd just been taken to Milwaukee by her mother, who
Speaker 1: lived downtown off of North ninth Street. So Oprah and
Speaker 1: Venita lived in a single room in a boarding house
Speaker 1: owned by Vernita's boyfriend, Vernita's boyfriend's godmother, which is not
Speaker 1: an ideal living situation at best. Oprah later said, I
Speaker 1: don't know why my mother ever decided she wanted me.
Speaker 1: She wasn't equipped to take care of me. I was
Speaker 1: just an extra burden on her. And yeah, I think
Speaker 1: it's just this is probably what she was aware of
Speaker 1: as a kid, because her mom was there the first
Speaker 1: four and a half years, but she probably just doesn't
Speaker 1: really remember that. So it's got to be this uncomfortable
Speaker 1: situation where from her mom's perspective, I was just gone
Speaker 1: eighteen months trying to like set up a life for you.
Speaker 1: From Oprah's perspective, it's like you were gone from as
Speaker 1: long as I can remember, and then you moved me
Speaker 1: into this terrible situation in a city. Right, it's so
Speaker 1: it's a bummer.
Speaker 2: So weird should be able to perceive. I don't think
Speaker 2: I would have realized that was a bad situation when
Speaker 2: I was five. Maybe I was just an oblivious kid.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know. I have some pretty like my
Speaker 1: dad was gone right around the same time, when I
Speaker 1: was like five to seven. My dad was gone because
Speaker 1: he had to move to like New York and you know,
Speaker 1: earn money for us, because Oklahoma is not a great
Speaker 1: place to earn a living. Rural Oklahoma not always a
Speaker 1: great place to earn a living. And I remember being
Speaker 1: pissed about it for a while and not really getting
Speaker 1: as a kid that like, oh yeah, it's really hard
Speaker 1: actually to be an adult and take care of kids
Speaker 1: and sometimes you have to do shit that sucks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it.
Speaker 5: Reminds me of what Andrew was talking about in our
Speaker 5: last episode of how much do you really truly remember
Speaker 5: as a kid versus you're remembering how it felt?
Speaker 4: Right, like, what do you?
Speaker 1: I mean?
Speaker 5: I think like and also like the idea that we
Speaker 5: are talking a lot about these very very early years
Speaker 5: in her life in this way of like, well, is
Speaker 5: she a liar or not based on what she remembered
Speaker 5: slash felt when she was four.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I went through this process when writing it and read
Speaker 1: it when doing particularly the research, where I was like, ah, okay,
Speaker 1: all of her family say that she's lying about this.
Speaker 1: This is just Oprah being a bad person, trying to
Speaker 1: myth make and make herself sound like she suffered more
Speaker 1: than she did. And then I went through this process
Speaker 1: of like, well, wait, what if her family's lying and
Speaker 1: they're just angry about the money. And then I think
Speaker 1: I've come back around to like, nobody has to be
Speaker 1: lying here. It's just a completely different experience for her
Speaker 1: and them, and neither of them really understand each other.
Speaker 1: And maybe communication isn't the family strong suit, which is
Speaker 1: ironic given Oprah's living But like, I think that's where
Speaker 1: I've probably landed. I don't know, there's some weird similarities.
Speaker 1: So I've been thinking a lot about like my own
Speaker 1: situation kind of some of the stuff I was angry
Speaker 1: for years with my parents over in terms of like
Speaker 1: why did you put us in this situation that was
Speaker 1: so clearly shitty? And you know, now as an adult,
Speaker 1: I better understand that, like, well, shit just happens, you know,
Speaker 1: And when you've got a kid, you have to figure
Speaker 1: out how to like make your life work. It's it's
Speaker 1: actually quite difficult to exist.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is why we call you. This isn't why
Speaker 2: we call you the White Oprah, but this is yeah,
Speaker 2: you know help.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's again because of all the geo metros I
Speaker 1: give out, Right, you get.
Speaker 2: Kind of a car, you get kind of a car.
Speaker 4: Sort of a car, kind of a car.
Speaker 1: So upon moving in with her mom, this is one
Speaker 1: of the things where I do understand why Oprah is
Speaker 1: not thrilled. So she she comes into this situation, it's
Speaker 1: not they've got like one room, you know, it's very cramped.
Speaker 1: She's not used to the city. And she also learns
Speaker 1: upon arriving that she has a half sister named Patricia
Speaker 1: and a half brother on the way who's going to
Speaker 1: be named Jeffrey. And that is probably that is a
Speaker 1: lot to spring on a little kid, Right, your mom
Speaker 1: goes away and the first time you remember seeing her again,
Speaker 1: she's like, you're gonna about to have two new siblings.
Speaker 1: By the way, she and Patricia are never close, and yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's a difficult situation. In Oprah's telling of things,
Speaker 1: she and her half sister are were immediately harsh competitors.
Speaker 1: Oprah's interpretation is that she is the smart sister, whereas
Speaker 1: Patricia is the hot sister, although again, they're both like
Speaker 1: seven at this point. So I don't know if this
Speaker 1: is Oprah later kind of thinking back on more shit
Speaker 1: that cropped up when they were like teenagers and young adults,
Speaker 1: or if she was thinking that way from the beginning.
Speaker 1: My guess is that this is a little like colored
Speaker 1: from later experience, right, oh one, God, one would hope. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: most of her insecurity here seems to have come down
Speaker 1: to the fact, and this is something that she talks
Speaker 1: about quite openly. She's she as a little kid was
Speaker 1: kind of obsessed with the fact that Patricia was lighter
Speaker 1: skinned than Oprah. Quote, I felt really ugly. The lighter
Speaker 1: your complexion, the prettier you were. And she complained that
Speaker 1: even though she was the smartest in the family, no
Speaker 1: one praised me for being smart.
Speaker 4: Oh well, that is so that is like tail as
Speaker 4: old as time.
Speaker 5: I mean, yeah, even when you're really young, you definitely
Speaker 5: get the sense when there's somebody in your family who
Speaker 5: has a lighter complexion, you definitely are aware of that.
Speaker 5: And in a lot of families and a lot of dynamics,
Speaker 5: there's like a very clear difference in how someone is
Speaker 5: treated and the things that you might think of as
Speaker 5: your gifts that should be very obvious, like I'm smart,
Speaker 5: I'm well spoken, i have the gift of gab, whatever.
Speaker 4: You might not feel like.
Speaker 5: Those things are being praised comparatively to someone who's being
Speaker 5: praised for their complexion, a thing they can't even really
Speaker 5: control about themselves.
Speaker 4: I definitely that really rings true to me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And one of the things I do because I
Speaker 1: think that's a tough thing to talk about. And one
Speaker 1: of the things I do appreciate about Oprah's conception and
Speaker 1: how she talks about her childhood as she is, does
Speaker 1: not at all like hide that aspect of things, like
Speaker 1: she has strong opinions on it. This clearly had a
Speaker 1: massive impact on her psyche growing up.
Speaker 5: And again I could see how her family would be
Speaker 5: invested in that, like, oh, we were never colorist against
Speaker 5: our own in this family.
Speaker 4: How dare she say that that's a.
Speaker 1: Lot of r Yeah, Yeah, and they probably I'm sure
Speaker 1: it wasn't conscious, right, like or at least not usually,
Speaker 1: you know, that's the way these kind of things tend
Speaker 1: to work, I would guess, but you know, like again
Speaker 1: it's it's I don't think Oprah's I'm certain Oprah's not
Speaker 1: making this up. It's just far too consistent in her story,
Speaker 1: and like you said, it makes total sense. Like this
Speaker 1: is definitely a massive has a massive impact on the
Speaker 1: way she perceives herself and the way she perceives her family.
Speaker 1: She told one story to Life from when she was
Speaker 1: about nine years old, where she was reading in a
Speaker 1: back hallway and her mother ran up through the door open,
Speaker 1: grabbed the book in her hand and shouted, you're nothing
Speaker 1: but a bookworm. Get your butt outside. You think you're
Speaker 1: better than the other kids. Oprah later remarked, of all this,
Speaker 1: I was treated as though something was wrong with me
Speaker 1: because I wanted to read all the time. And again
Speaker 1: you get some denials from the family on this point.
Speaker 1: Whoever's kind of more accurate there. Oprah isn't stopped from
Speaker 1: reading in like a major way, Like she remains an
Speaker 1: excellent student and a voracious reader into adulthood, like I mean,
Speaker 1: we could talk about the book club stuff, but yeah,
Speaker 1: this is one of like the big discrepancies between her
Speaker 1: and her mom. But she's like, yeah, I got punished
Speaker 1: for being smart and for reading.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, God, Because it also is like that's exactly
Speaker 2: what you remember as a like Turnentine, is these conflicts
Speaker 2: that like don't probably resonate as much with the adult.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like maybe for the adult it's this. Well, one
Speaker 1: time I was frustrated at her because she was spending
Speaker 1: all her time indoors, and I told her she was
Speaker 1: a book work to get outside, and you know, the
Speaker 1: rest of the time she was fine reading. I got
Speaker 1: her books. But you know, as a kid, you remember
Speaker 1: the one traumatizing mom your time your mom yelled at
Speaker 1: you for reading.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, or it's like, you know, I was always
Speaker 2: trying to help, you know, make this kid in my
Speaker 2: image or whatever image I thought, and that you know,
Speaker 2: you hang on to different.
Speaker 1: Things, yeah, child memories. So, given some of the other
Speaker 1: context clues of the way that people who were near
Speaker 1: the situation talk, I think that Oprah's recollection of events
Speaker 1: obviously like there's a lot that's true there, but there
Speaker 1: are some inconsistencies because one of the things that Oprah's
Speaker 1: doing in this time she continues from when she was
Speaker 1: living with her grandma, is she keeps traveling around to
Speaker 1: all of these churches in Milwaukee, all these like black
Speaker 1: churches and social clubs where she'll read poems and stories
Speaker 1: from the Bible and stories from literature. And so she's
Speaker 1: you know, if her mom was like so ardently against
Speaker 1: her reading, her mom wouldn't have been driving her around
Speaker 1: to do all this stuff, like taking her to all
Speaker 1: of them different events. So there clearly is like a
Speaker 1: good deal of support and like people in her like
Speaker 1: her momb recognizes, Okay, my daughter has this kind of
Speaker 1: gift for like public speaking and talking, and I need
Speaker 1: to do something to nurture that, right, And that's definitely
Speaker 1: a part of the story too. In People Profiles book Oprah,
Speaker 1: Merril Noden wrote, quote, Oprah gave recitations at black churches
Speaker 1: and social clubs. A particular favorite was Invictus, a stirring
Speaker 1: declaration of courage by the nineteenth century English poet William
Speaker 1: ernst Hinley, which closes with the couplet I am the
Speaker 1: master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul,
Speaker 1: and this is a great poems, the first poem I
Speaker 1: ever memorized. Oprah loves it. And the third famous person
Speaker 1: who loves this poem is friend of the pod Timothy McVey,
Speaker 1: who recited it has his last words before being executed
Speaker 1: by the state. So this is yet another thing that
Speaker 1: Oprah and cousin Timmy have in common. There's so many
Speaker 1: of them now, I mean, you don't even need to
Speaker 1: go back and listen.
Speaker 4: Could you say that Oprah is the black Timothy mcvayh.
Speaker 1: Just absolutely absolutely. I mean I think Regis was the
Speaker 1: first guy to say that, to point that out. But anyway,
Speaker 1: still a good poem. It's not the poem's fault that
Speaker 1: Timothy McVeigh liked it anyway. Describing the reception of her
Speaker 1: first performances, Nodan writes, although the audiences were impressed with
Speaker 1: her skill as a speaker, it seemed to annoy her
Speaker 1: mother and her peers teased her mercilessly, calling her the preacher,
Speaker 1: which I also believe that's exactly how shitty little kids are.
Speaker 2: Yeah, lies going around and being like, I want to
Speaker 2: recite this poem.
Speaker 1: When how old was she with She's she's like eight. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're the poem kid, you're getting a nickname.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Phil's honestly not in the grand scheme of things,
Speaker 2: as bad as it could have been.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't. I mean that kind of stuff's
Speaker 1: pretty traumatic as a kid, like I got Yeah, you
Speaker 1: remember stuff like that, like little kids give you a
Speaker 1: shitty nickname, and yeah, that's sticks with you.
Speaker 4: Robert.
Speaker 5: I feel like you're about to say something about a
Speaker 5: nickname that you've had as a youth, and.
Speaker 1: Then you yourself. We're not bringing any of that up,
Speaker 1: but it is like it's it's very it's very sympathetic, right,
Speaker 1: She's this, she's this bookworm kid who likes to like
Speaker 1: read poems to audiences of adults, and she that is
Speaker 1: I can't imagine much that's going to isolate you more
Speaker 1: than that, especially in like this period of time, right,
Speaker 1: Like it's even even harder back then and like harder
Speaker 1: to find kids. There's no internet. Oprah would have thanked
Speaker 1: God gotten on like four chan or something today and
Speaker 1: then she'd be fine. But yeah, you're just a lonely,
Speaker 1: poem loving little girl at this period of time. That's
Speaker 1: got to be difficult. The preacher. Yeah, so as an
Speaker 1: adult in interviews, Oprah would claim that their landlady, who
Speaker 1: is Againna she described her as a lighter skinned black woman,
Speaker 1: didn't like Oprah for being darker than everyone else in
Speaker 1: the house, and so Oprah was forced to sleep on
Speaker 1: a porch in the back of the house while her
Speaker 1: sister was allowed to sleep with their mom. As she claimed,
Speaker 1: white people never made me feel less. Black people made
Speaker 1: me feel less. I felt less in that house with
Speaker 1: missus Miller. I felt less because I was too dark
Speaker 1: and my hair was too kinky. I felt like an outcast.
Speaker 1: And this is I mean like that that's a tough thing.
Speaker 1: But this is also an area where there's like a
Speaker 1: pretty major discrepancy between Oprah's recollections and recollections of the
Speaker 1: other people in that house. And so I'll quote this
Speaker 1: passage of Oprah a biography by Kitty Kelly next Catherine Esters,
Speaker 1: and remember that's Oprah's aunt. And like the family historian
Speaker 1: responded sternly to Oprah's poignant memory, this bothers me more
Speaker 1: than her corn cob doll lies in her cockroach lies,
Speaker 1: because it plays into the damaging discrimination practice by our
Speaker 1: own people. I'm a dark skinned woman Oprah's grandfather, Earlis,
Speaker 1: was black enough to be painted by a brush, and
Speaker 1: Oprah is as dark as a preacher's prayer book. But
Speaker 1: when she says things like that, she reminds me of
Speaker 1: my cousin Frank, who did not wish to be what
Speaker 1: he was and discriminated among his kin, preferring the lighter
Speaker 1: skin to the darker skinned folks. Oprah slept on a
Speaker 1: porch in the back of the room of the house,
Speaker 1: but only because Vernita had to take care of her
Speaker 1: baby and there was just one bedroom.
Speaker 2: That's it.
Speaker 1: Period. If Oprah was discriminated against because of her skin color,
Speaker 1: i'd tell you, says Miss Ester's a civil rights activist
Speaker 1: who worked for the Urban League in Milwaukee. And I
Speaker 1: can't really like cast that aside either, So I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't really know what to do there other than
Speaker 1: kind of read both of those very much conflicting stories.
Speaker 1: Systeings to you.
Speaker 2: I will say the tone of that passage, see, I
Speaker 2: was initially going to indicate that she was going to
Speaker 2: say that the sleeping on the porch was not factual,
Speaker 2: so to land on, well, she definitely was on the porch.
Speaker 2: Is still a little like good.
Speaker 4: That's not in dispute.
Speaker 1: That's not in dispute. She was, in fact sleeping on
Speaker 1: the porch. Yes, just like, oh boy, it's just wasn't
Speaker 1: you know, racism or just we have no space because
Speaker 1: we're very poor.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I will say there's something about this conversation. I
Speaker 5: don't know if it totally fits, but you know, I
Speaker 5: think that a lot of black folks and folks of
Speaker 5: color when you get older and you think about the
Speaker 5: way that you showed up amongst your own people growing up,
Speaker 5: like I definitely went through a.
Speaker 4: Thing where, you know, I don't even know how to
Speaker 4: put it.
Speaker 5: Like, you definitely can internalize like they don't my own
Speaker 5: people are rejecting me because I like anime or because
Speaker 5: I'm nerdy and too smart. And then you get a
Speaker 5: little older and it's like, wait, am I a pain
Speaker 5: in the ass.
Speaker 4: And that's why they're rejecting me? And like it's very
Speaker 4: easy to like.
Speaker 5: Internalize some very self serving reasons for why you feel
Speaker 5: the way you feel. And then you get a little
Speaker 5: more mature and you're like, well, was that really what
Speaker 5: was going on?
Speaker 2: Yeah? And there's also like like a I feel like
Speaker 2: with this type of thing too, it's like whatever the
Speaker 2: real story is, it's like the kernel of truth, even
Speaker 2: if just to like the phenomenon makes it really hard
Speaker 2: to push back where you're like she was.
Speaker 1: Still sleeping on the porch.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'm just like but but maybe but you know,
Speaker 2: and I'm like, even the it's in the middle of
Speaker 2: it is just like probably just let this go.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, I fe only I had to present
Speaker 1: both of these things. But yeah, I don't actually know
Speaker 1: where the truth lies here now. For her sake, Catherine
Speaker 1: Esters thinks that the explanation for why Oprah felt the
Speaker 1: way she did is more benign, which is that once
Speaker 1: she moved to Milwaukee, she was for the first time
Speaker 1: and very suddenly not an only child and the center
Speaker 1: of attention in her household. She was suddenly the oldest
Speaker 1: of three kids, and her two baby siblings got more
Speaker 1: attention than her, and this made her very unhappy. And
Speaker 1: I'm sure that's not a non factor, right, Like that's
Speaker 1: such a thing, Like I don't have any trouble believing
Speaker 1: that that's that had a massive impact on her as
Speaker 1: a kid right now. As I've noted, Kitty's book is
Speaker 1: quite aggressive, and she is a woman who has built
Speaker 1: a career off of puncturing the reputations of beloved famous people.
Speaker 1: Her work is caddie as hell, but she does make
Speaker 1: a decent point here. Quote, the only photo I have
Speaker 1: of my grandmother, she's holding a white child, Oprah said
Speaker 1: at the age of fifty one. Yet a published picture
Speaker 1: of Oprah's desk shows a photo of her grandmother with
Speaker 1: her arm draped lovingly around Oprah as a little girl,
Speaker 1: with no white child in sight. And it's stuff like
Speaker 1: that where it's like, well, okay, that's that's not a
Speaker 1: there's a discrepancy, but maybe no, that's like, that's just
Speaker 1: obvious myth making. You've got a photo of your grandmother
Speaker 1: on your desk, all right, you just said that because
Speaker 1: you know, it made a case to an interviewer or
Speaker 1: something like, you've got pictures of your grandmother with her
Speaker 1: with you. That was just like not a not a
Speaker 1: not a true statement. So there's some there's some myth
Speaker 1: making going on here as well, like that we can
Speaker 1: kind of clearly lay out there. So again it's a
Speaker 1: complicated most of this. I'm still on the whole as
Speaker 1: a childhood. This is a very it's hard not to
Speaker 1: be on Oprah's side at this point. And I believe
Speaker 1: Oprah when she says of her grandmother, every time she
Speaker 1: would ever talk about those white children, there would be
Speaker 1: this sort of glow insider. No one ever glowed when
Speaker 1: they saw me. And you know, that also sounds true,
Speaker 1: like that sounds like the kind of thing that that
Speaker 1: would stick with you as a kid into adulthood.
Speaker 2: But it also is like the exact thing that kids
Speaker 2: say all the time, you know, like.
Speaker 1: I believe it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, but but as in like every kid feels
Speaker 2: that way, that like there's a light in someone's eyes
Speaker 2: until they're talking about me. It's like, yeah, I know,
Speaker 2: but everyone feels that way?
Speaker 4: Does everyone feel that way?
Speaker 1: Or did we just get fucked up too?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 5: Many people someone listening is like, what are you talking about,
Speaker 5: Andrew parents eye they.
Speaker 1: Walk out the door to live their emotionally healthy life,
Speaker 1: have their good relationships once.
Speaker 2: I'm just saying, there's certainly where we're right in the
Speaker 2: phase of like adolescence where it's just like everybody hates me,
Speaker 2: Like that's such a common idea among kids, sure, like
Speaker 2: of all, and that's that's also one of the like.
Speaker 1: The key facts about becoming incredibly rich and famous. Is
Speaker 1: that all of these like weird little idiosyncrasies and like
Speaker 1: anger at you know, petty injustices or even some serious
Speaker 1: injustices that most people just have to get over. You
Speaker 1: have the ability to make other people care about it,
Speaker 1: and the ability to also like sometimes make it other
Speaker 1: people's problems, as we're seeing with a much worse billionaire
Speaker 1: who's in the public eye right now. Because at least Oprah,
Speaker 1: what I'll say for her is like how much of
Speaker 1: this is accurate or not? And how much of this
Speaker 1: is myth making? She has spent a lot of her
Speaker 1: like time as a philanthropist putting money towards like child
Speaker 1: abuse causes, so you know, you can't really I guess
Speaker 1: that's that's like in terms of billionaire coping strategies, she's
Speaker 1: definitely in like the upper ten percent. Oh my god, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's that.
Speaker 2: That is the thing that ultimately this entire series is
Speaker 2: going to hinge on is like, however much you might
Speaker 2: want to you know, or you one would categorize Oprah
Speaker 2: as some kind of bastard, there is a grating on
Speaker 2: the curve element of it, which might just put her
Speaker 2: at not a bastard given.
Speaker 1: Her, Yes, I kind of think again, as we'll talk
Speaker 1: about like the actual harmful, toxic stuff she was involved
Speaker 1: with once her media career got going. It's still more
Speaker 1: than anything, a case of well, like, we probably shouldn't
Speaker 1: make any individual person that famous because like your own
Speaker 1: flaws and blind sites are going to cause you to
Speaker 1: do things that because of your platform and the level
Speaker 1: of your fame, will be harmful. But yeah, I really
Speaker 1: do think overall my opinion of her is like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is about the best case scenario for someone who
Speaker 1: gets this Richard famous, right right right. That is kind
Speaker 1: of what I have been coming back to because I
Speaker 1: definitely started my reading more hostile towards her because I
Speaker 1: had been thinking of Oprah purely in terms of like, well,
Speaker 1: now I got to think about doctor Oz because you
Speaker 1: put this fuck around TV, Oprah, Why did you do that?
Speaker 1: But yeah, I have a lot more sympathy with her now,
Speaker 1: which doesn't happen often when we're doing these Usually you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: this person sucked ass from the jump.
Speaker 5: I feel like it's got to be more interesting when
Speaker 5: the bastards are a little bit complex, No, like where
Speaker 5: it's like ooh, I kind of have sympathy or empathy
Speaker 5: for them in some ways.
Speaker 4: But they did that like gotta be a little meteor.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is meaty. And I also there's also like
Speaker 1: a sick joy in reading a book like Kitty Kelly's,
Speaker 1: where it's like, well, I would never write something that's
Speaker 1: this mean about a traumatized child, but you can't.
Speaker 2: Oh man.
Speaker 1: So Vernita obviously needed a lot of help watching the kids,
Speaker 1: which meant family came over to visit and babysit a lot.
Speaker 1: And this is where the story gets very dark because
Speaker 1: one of the family members who helped watch Oprah was
Speaker 1: a nineteen year old cousin. I think they initially go
Speaker 1: over to the house where the cousin is, but then
Speaker 1: he starts coming over there, and at some point in
Speaker 1: this process, Oprah is made to sleep with him. I
Speaker 1: think initially just because there's not enough beds, right, Like
Speaker 1: they're literally just sharing beds because there's only so many.
Speaker 1: And then he starts molesting her. After the first night
Speaker 1: that he rapes her, he takes her to the zoo
Speaker 1: afterwards and in her words, buys her silence with ice cream. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not great. No one else in the family obviously
Speaker 1: was aware at the time. Aunt Catherine, the family historian,
Speaker 1: was aware that something is off. And which interesting is
Speaker 1: that the family pretty much always denies Oprah's what Oprah
Speaker 1: says about the sexual abuse that she suffered. I think
Speaker 1: because they don't want to admit that they were missing
Speaker 1: some very problematic stuff. But one of the things that's
Speaker 1: interesting here is that Aunt Catherine clearly knows something is
Speaker 1: wrong because around this time she writes to Vernon Winfrey,
Speaker 1: who's the guy everyone thinks is Oprah's father, and begs
Speaker 1: him to take his daughter in right, So she don't.
Speaker 1: She's never I don't think she still has accepted that
Speaker 1: this happened to Oprah, but she's aware enough at the
Speaker 1: time that something is unhealthy about this living situation that
Speaker 1: she's like, hey, Vernon, you should maybe think about taking
Speaker 1: your daughter. And she's not doing well here. And that's
Speaker 1: interesting to me too. So Vernon lived in Nashville. He
Speaker 1: and his wife Zelma were both sterile, I guess, and
Speaker 1: they had no kids, right, and I think they had
Speaker 1: tried to have kids, so one or both of them
Speaker 1: was like not biologically able to have kids. Vernon clearly
Speaker 1: had at one point, although actually that's not a guarantee,
Speaker 1: because it's come out since that he might not have
Speaker 1: been the day biologically. In any case, he agrees to
Speaker 1: take He and Zelma agree to take Oprah in and
Speaker 1: this is a vastly different environment for her. For one thing,
Speaker 1: he is a small business owner. He runs at this
Speaker 1: point a barber shop. He was a military man, and
Speaker 1: the Winfreees ran their home like a military operation, which
Speaker 1: was pretty much entirely geared towards producing the best possible
Speaker 1: educational outcome for Oprah. So she goes right away from
Speaker 1: the situation where she's in a very chaotic environment with
Speaker 1: not much resources, to the situation where again two adults
Speaker 1: are entirely focused on making her do as well in
Speaker 1: school as possible. Oprah continued to be an outgoing child.
Speaker 1: She's a natural performer. Adults who around her will say
Speaker 1: that she would kind of automatically make herself the boss
Speaker 1: of any group of kids that she was in. Her
Speaker 1: favorite game to play with the neighbor kids was school
Speaker 1: like she would play teacher and she would make them
Speaker 1: all play students. And I'm going to read a quote
Speaker 1: from her dad Vernon here, because this is pretty funny
Speaker 1: From what I observed. Then, Lily and Betty Jean didn't
Speaker 1: enjoy playing school as much as Oprah did. I think
Speaker 1: that's because she was always the teacher, always scolding her
Speaker 1: little playmates as she scrawled invisible lessons on a make
Speaker 1: believe chalkboard. Lily and Betty Jean would sit attentively at
Speaker 1: imaginary desks, hoping against hope that Oprah didn't call their
Speaker 1: names during spelling bees. Can't say I much blame them,
Speaker 1: because if they misspelled a word, there was trouble. Oprah
Speaker 1: would get her little switch, which was not at all imaginary,
Speaker 1: and spank the palms of their hands. That's a little unhinged, right.
Speaker 4: I mean, where do you think she learned that behavior?
Speaker 1: Absolutely? Absolutely, But it's still pretty funny.
Speaker 2: It's such a fine line between how is that even
Speaker 2: playing school for the other two? Really it is.
Speaker 1: It does give you some insight in Vernon where it's like,
Speaker 1: can you just let her do that?
Speaker 5: I have to say, though, I used to play school,
Speaker 5: and it's only now hearing this am I like, Oh,
Speaker 5: was it like not fun for the others that I
Speaker 5: was a teacher to have?
Speaker 4: It was not fun for all parties? Oh yeah?
Speaker 1: The other kids might not have liked that at all.
Speaker 1: Maybe I just scared them in line. He did claim that. Eventually,
Speaker 1: after a while, he confronted Opraen was like, hey, you
Speaker 1: should let the other kids place teachers sometime. They don't
Speaker 1: seem to be enjoying this quote. She looked at me
Speaker 1: with the sweetest expression, all cute and bewildered about how
Speaker 1: I could ask such a silly thing. Why Daddy, she
Speaker 1: informed me. Lily and Betty Jean can't teach till they
Speaker 1: learn how to read. Yeah, speaking of learning how to read,
Speaker 1: the sponsors of our podcast never did. That's why they
Speaker 1: can focus entirely on delivering the best value and the
Speaker 1: best products to you. They don't know how to read.
Speaker 1: There's nothing else at all in their heads but a
Speaker 1: desire to please you with the absolute best consumer experience imaginable.
Speaker 1: And we're back. Ah, we're talking Oprah talking, pra talking
Speaker 1: pra We probably won't use that anywhere. That's not very good.
Speaker 1: I don't like it, Okay. So Oprah thrives. She spends
Speaker 1: a year with Vernon and his wife and very stable.
Speaker 1: You know, she has a lot of attention devoted to
Speaker 1: her education. She's doing very very well. She's also away
Speaker 1: from this nineteen year old cousin who was molesting her,
Speaker 1: So that's a huge plus is two plus two. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: the situation does not last, because Vernita still harbors dreams
Speaker 1: of raising all of her children together as quote, a
Speaker 1: real family for whatever reason, not that she needs one.
Speaker 1: Oprah always saw Vernon as her father, but doesn't seem
Speaker 1: to have felt the same way, at least initially about
Speaker 1: his wife. She was dead desperate for a normal home
Speaker 1: with two parents, and claims other kids teased her over this,
Speaker 1: which I'm certain is true. That summer, at age ten,
Speaker 1: she went to visit and her mom was like, Hey,
Speaker 1: I'm about to marry this guy I've been seeing for
Speaker 1: a while. You are finally going to get your dream.
Speaker 1: You know, why don't you move back to Milwaukee? And
Speaker 1: this marriage never happens. This guy eventually dies, and so
Speaker 1: like this is just this situation just collapses as badly
Speaker 1: as it possibly can. But Oprah still makes the choice
Speaker 1: to leave the stable home with her dad because of
Speaker 1: how taunted she is by this possibility of like being
Speaker 1: part of a full and stable family. And this is
Speaker 1: one of those things where like, again I'm not there.
Speaker 1: It's very hard to at least read Oprah's recollection of
Speaker 1: events and not think, wow, Vernita not doing a great
Speaker 1: job here. Because when Oprah decides to stay with her mom,
Speaker 1: Vernita breaks the news to Vernon in the most devastating
Speaker 1: way imaginable. She doesn't like call him and like tell him, hey,
Speaker 1: you know there's been a change. She waits for him
Speaker 1: to drive to Milwaukee to like show up to take
Speaker 1: Oprah back home and says, oh, actually, no, I'm keeping her.
Speaker 1: You should leave, which is rough move. And this is
Speaker 1: more or less how Vernon recalls things. He remembers weeping
Speaker 1: as he left the house because he could tell that
Speaker 1: he was leaving Oprah in an environment where she would
Speaker 1: not receive adequate care. He told Kitty Kelly, I never
Speaker 1: saw that sweet little girl again. And he actually is
Speaker 1: going to raise Oprah again. He's saying that she was
Speaker 1: a different kid when he returned. Yeah, when Oprah returned
Speaker 1: to her mother's home, nothing had changed for the better.
Speaker 1: The same cousin continued to come over to babysit, and
Speaker 1: he picked right up where he had left off. She's
Speaker 1: molested off and on from ages ten to fourteen. The
Speaker 1: times being what they were, and her educational career being
Speaker 1: somewhat erratic and interrupted. Young Oprah did not initially have
Speaker 1: a great grasp on the physical consequences of sex and
Speaker 1: how they worked. And I'm going to quote from Oprah
Speaker 1: Winfrey by Meryl Noden here. Winfrey understood so little about
Speaker 1: sex that she went through the fifth grade convinced she
Speaker 1: was pregnant every time I had a stomach ache, She
Speaker 1: has said, I thought I was pregnant and asked to
Speaker 1: go to the bathroom. So if I had it, nobody
Speaker 1: could see.
Speaker 2: That For me?
Speaker 1: Was the terror? Was I going to have it? How
Speaker 1: could I hide it? All the people would be mad
Speaker 1: at me? How could I keep it in my room
Speaker 1: without my mother knowing? And boy, we really really need
Speaker 1: better sex ed It's kind of depressing how many kids
Speaker 1: today probably are not benefiting from better knowledge than Oprah
Speaker 1: had access to at that point.
Speaker 2: Like real, bleak, yeah, it's only gonna go worse.
Speaker 1: Just yeah, so yeah, I mean that really brought it
Speaker 1: home to me, Like what a lot of these people
Speaker 1: want to change the system back to is like kids
Speaker 1: being in exactly the situation Oprah was, like hiding in
Speaker 1: the bathroom because you don't know, like you just want
Speaker 1: to be in a safe place in case you have
Speaker 1: a kid, because you don't understand any of this stuff.
Speaker 2: Well, it's worried about getting in trouble after being.
Speaker 1: Even though the sex was forced on you. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's fucked up. Oprah grows into a
Speaker 1: teenager who is very bright, very sexually confused, and who
Speaker 1: is not at all being watched by her guardian. She
Speaker 1: starts seeing lots of older boys and some men, some
Speaker 1: of whom are eighteen nineteen years old. In both of
Speaker 1: the books I've read and in the recollections of Oprah
Speaker 1: and the people who knew her, the people around her
Speaker 1: tended to see it as she is incredibly promiscuous in
Speaker 1: this period of time. Right, Obviously, what is happening here
Speaker 1: is that this is a reaction to the sexual violence
Speaker 1: that she experienced from a young age. But that is
Speaker 1: how she is treated by the adults in her life
Speaker 1: as a result of what's going on. Right, One line
Speaker 1: from her that stuck with me was that she saw
Speaker 1: her behavior as revenge to the adults around her. They
Speaker 1: didn't care about what was being done to her, so
Speaker 1: she was going to behave in a way that forced
Speaker 1: them to pay attention to her, even if that meant
Speaker 1: like really yeah, yeah, So.
Speaker 5: I mean not to continue to like make Oprah's story
Speaker 5: worry about the traumas and historical baggage of like some
Speaker 5: black communities. But like again, this idea that I think
Speaker 5: is really foisted upon black girls and young women about
Speaker 5: being quote fast, where when you are clearly having a
Speaker 5: response to like a sexual trauma or something that has happened,
Speaker 5: you know, it's it's used to sort of marginalize you
Speaker 5: and other you and like say something is wrong with you,
Speaker 5: as opposed to like, oh are the are the adults
Speaker 5: around you somehow failing you? The fact that like her
Speaker 5: nineteen year old, you know, adult cousin was it seems
Speaker 5: like not reprimanded and still welcome back into the home.
Speaker 4: Meanwhile, Oprah, young.
Speaker 5: Oprah, her response to this sexual trauma is for her
Speaker 5: to be criticized by her own family, is really telling
Speaker 5: like who gets demonized and who gets like welcomed back
Speaker 5: with no accountability?
Speaker 1: Right, right, right. I think that's a really really good point,
Speaker 1: and it's probably not sp that Kittie writes so much
Speaker 1: better about this very messy chapter of Oprah's life than Meryll,
Speaker 1: who is a male journalist. But you know, it's there's
Speaker 1: some there's some bad lines in Meryll's book about this,
Speaker 1: this book that was written in nineteen ninety nine, probably
Speaker 1: the worst of which is quote when Oprah was thirteen,
Speaker 1: her figure was thirty six, twenty three, thirty six, certain
Speaker 1: to attract male attention. And I don't know, man, I
Speaker 1: feel like there's a better way to write about a
Speaker 1: thirteen year old girl than that. Jesus every time, it's
Speaker 1: just like.
Speaker 7: That's yeh, man, Like I mean, like my own mother,
Speaker 7: who bought most of my clothes at thirteen, didn't know
Speaker 7: my figure sizes to the number. That's so disturbing.
Speaker 4: I didn't know my figure size the number.
Speaker 1: The reason Meryl does is that when Oprah talks about this,
Speaker 1: she will give the numbers for her figure. But also like,
Speaker 1: that's her, that's right. I don't know, Manyl, like quote
Speaker 1: her if you're gonna do that, Like though just writing
Speaker 1: it out that may mix. It makes me very distrustful
Speaker 1: of you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the conclusion drawn is that the conclusion alone
Speaker 2: should put you on a watch list. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, He basically is like, can you blame him, though, like, yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's certain, because like I don't
Speaker 1: think most men look at thirteen year old girls that way,
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, I would hope. So, following what her
Speaker 1: abuser had done to her, she started using ice cream
Speaker 1: to get her younger sister to leave the house she
Speaker 1: could have boys over, one of whom was her cousin's boyfriend,
Speaker 1: who she claimed treated her as a pet. She expressed
Speaker 1: a feeling of frustration that none of the adults seemed
Speaker 1: to catch on about what she was doing and what
Speaker 1: was being done to her, and to an extent, again,
Speaker 1: she's like putting herself out there, doing this in part
Speaker 1: to provoke a reaction from an adult in her life,
Speaker 1: and no one reacts, nobody draws a line, nobody intervened. Now,
Speaker 1: throughout all of this, Oprah's grades remain excellent. She is
Speaker 1: still a pretty good student while she's dealing with all
Speaker 1: of this. In the seventh grade, she's transferred to a
Speaker 1: better school via Upward Bound. This is a federal affirmative
Speaker 1: action program to help poor kids who wanted to be
Speaker 1: first generation college students by providing them with more support
Speaker 1: and better educational opportunities. In Oprah's case, this meant being
Speaker 1: bussed with a handful of other black kids to a
Speaker 1: very white school that had just been desegregated. And one
Speaker 1: interesting thing to me is Oprah talks a lot about
Speaker 1: affirmative action and getting into schools and getting jobs only
Speaker 1: because of affirmative action, and very consistently. When you talk
Speaker 1: to the people who like hired here, they're like, no,
Speaker 1: she was like, actually the best candidate. Obviously she's Oprah.
Speaker 1: She was a very good candidate to work for a
Speaker 1: TV station or whatever. Right, But you can kind of
Speaker 1: see some of that, Like, it's interesting to me that
Speaker 1: that's the attitude that she has towards it, even though
Speaker 1: like everyone around her is like, no, that really was
Speaker 1: not the situation.
Speaker 2: We'll say a little bit that I can't imagine getting
Speaker 2: the counterfactual even if it were the case of the
Speaker 2: time in a direct interview, Yeah, someone, hey did you
Speaker 2: hire Oprah despite her.
Speaker 1: Noting the best the other part of it too, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And they were gonna say, well, yes, I find that
Speaker 1: hard to believe either way. It's like, I mean, what
Speaker 1: you can say is all these programs did exactly what
Speaker 1: they were supposed to, because she wound up creating a
Speaker 1: media empire worth many billions of dollars as a result
Speaker 1: of getting these opportunities. So they were known on campus
Speaker 1: as the bus kids. Oprah and these other kids were
Speaker 1: being bussed to this more affluent white school. The whole situation,
Speaker 1: it's a very weird one where she once she starts
Speaker 1: going here, she starts being taken like invited into homes
Speaker 1: largely so that these kind of like up affluent, liberal
Speaker 1: white families can have a black kid over for dinner
Speaker 1: and like showcase how cool they are. Like that's one
Speaker 1: of her early and it's like a pretty I think,
Speaker 1: a good experience as she takes it just because like
Speaker 1: some adults are giving me positive attention, right, Like that's
Speaker 1: a thing for her. She continues to engage in extreme
Speaker 1: behavior in a desperate attempt to make her mom or
Speaker 1: somebody parent her, and this eventually includes a fake robbery
Speaker 1: and an assault. So here's the situation. Oprah had started
Speaker 1: wearing glasses bifocals, and the first pair that she got
Speaker 1: were ugly and made her look, in her words, like
Speaker 1: a librarian. It became clear that she was only going
Speaker 1: to get a new pair if the old ones broke,
Speaker 1: so she threw them away, and then she like messed
Speaker 1: up her room and like cut herself in the cheek
Speaker 1: and called the police claiming that there had been a
Speaker 1: smash and grab. Now, because she's a kid at this point,
Speaker 1: she like is pretended to be concussed. But when the
Speaker 1: police look around, they're like, so what else did they take?
Speaker 1: And she's like, just my glasses. So not the smoothest
Speaker 1: crime anyone's ever faced. You gotta take something, you gotta
Speaker 1: take like high fire something out of there, you know,
Speaker 1: classic classic glasses criminals. Now, events like this probably contributed
Speaker 1: to her family not believing her when she finally worked
Speaker 1: up the courage to tell them that she'd been molested,
Speaker 1: which happens around this period of time. So you know,
Speaker 1: from her family's perspective, she's this kid who you know,
Speaker 1: lied about getting robbed. They've seen her out with a
Speaker 1: bunch of guys. They think she's just promiscuous. And that's
Speaker 1: how her aunt Catherine feels decades later. I don't believe
Speaker 1: a bit of it. Oprah was a wild child, running
Speaker 1: the streets of Milwaukee in those days and not accepting
Speaker 1: discipline from her mother. And when you get to like
Speaker 1: that aspect of it, it's like, Oh, I get why
Speaker 1: Oprah does not have a good relationship with a lot
Speaker 1: of feast people like that is not at all surprising
Speaker 1: to me.
Speaker 5: Now, yeah, and this is the woman who still denies
Speaker 5: Oprah's sexual abuse.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 4: I wouldn't want this person in my life yet.
Speaker 1: No, not hard to see why she doesn't. Obviously we
Speaker 1: can't know precisely what happened, but it's going to be interesting.
Speaker 1: Some of part of I think why Aunt Catherine has
Speaker 1: this attitude and why some of the family members that
Speaker 1: are maybe jealous of Oprah have this attitude, is that
Speaker 1: later on in her career, Oprah is going to make
Speaker 1: the sexual violence she experienced a very central that's actually
Speaker 1: central to why she got so famous is the way
Speaker 1: in which she reveals this to her audience, that the
Speaker 1: context in which she does that has a massive impact
Speaker 1: on her career and on It's like one of the
Speaker 1: things that gets people to pay attention to her because
Speaker 1: women in prominent places in the media really didn't talk
Speaker 1: about stuff like this the way that she did. And
Speaker 1: so there's this attitude from some in her family that
Speaker 1: she's again just doing it all for attention. I'm not
Speaker 1: saying that because I think that's accurate. I'm saying like that,
Speaker 1: you have to understand if you want to know, Like,
Speaker 1: why is her family saying all of this? This is
Speaker 1: part of the story, right.
Speaker 2: Like she has an incentive so they can point to that, right.
Speaker 1: Oh god, yeah, yeah, it's it's when you really dig
Speaker 1: into the family drama, it's very unpleasant. In the summer
Speaker 1: of nineteen sixty eight, Oprah goes back to Nashville to
Speaker 1: visit her father in Zelma, his brother, her uncle, Trenton,
Speaker 1: drove her.
Speaker 5: No.
Speaker 1: Up to this point, Oprah considered Trenton her favorite uncle. Then,
Speaker 1: while they're driving, he asks her if she'd started dating yet,
Speaker 1: Thinking that she was having a safe conversation with her uncle,
Speaker 1: she said yes, but that it was hard because all
Speaker 1: the boys that her age wanted to do was French kiss.
Speaker 1: According to Oprah, her uncle immediately pulled over to the
Speaker 1: side of the road and molested her. She does not
Speaker 1: tell anyone immediately, but after visiting with her dad, she
Speaker 1: returns to Milwaukee furious, and she runs away from home.
Speaker 1: This time she's gone for a full week. Her mother
Speaker 1: is panicking. Oprah claims that during this time, she was
Speaker 1: hustling for money on the street, and she meets Aretha
Speaker 1: Franklin literally running up to Aretha Franklin's limo and crying,
Speaker 1: saying that she'd been abandoned and she needed one hundred
Speaker 1: dollars to get back to her family in Ohio. She
Speaker 1: says Aretha gave her the money, which she then took
Speaker 1: to a hotel and spent several days drunk on wine,
Speaker 1: eating room service food. I don't know if this happened Aretha.
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone ever asked Aretha when they were both,
Speaker 1: like when she was still alive. I haven't found any
Speaker 1: evidence of that, And I'm kind of surprised because we've
Speaker 1: had this info for a while and it's like, well,
Speaker 1: I would kind of want to know if Aretha remembers this, right,
Speaker 1: But yeah, so I don't know. You you'll have to
Speaker 1: take Oprah's word on that one. It would be kind
Speaker 1: of a weird thing to lie about. But I don't know.
Speaker 2: It's just like you would assume potentially that like this
Speaker 2: would not register on Aretha Franklin's radar.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, she had a lot going on. I
Speaker 1: guess Yeah, I don't know. I'm just kind of surprised
Speaker 1: no one ever asked her about it, as far as
Speaker 1: I can find out, because like Oprah, like there, there
Speaker 1: was plenty of time after which Oprah was very famous
Speaker 1: and Aretha was still alive. I'm just kind of nobody
Speaker 1: know what he thought to do that, huh.
Speaker 5: And Aretha was giving interviews and stuff like for even
Speaker 5: in right before she died, right she took Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: I kind of think this is a kind of thing
Speaker 2: that's just on someone's comms team is like, we're not
Speaker 2: talking about this.
Speaker 1: We're not talking about this. We don't want to talk
Speaker 1: about Aretha giving wine money to young Oprah Winfrey.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I could see that being now.
Speaker 1: After this incident, Vernita tried to drop her daughter when
Speaker 1: Oprah finally comes home. Vernita tried to put her daughter
Speaker 1: in a school for delinquent girls. She was told the
Speaker 1: processing time would take two weeks, which was too long,
Speaker 1: and in a move that really tells you a lot
Speaker 1: about Vernita, Vernita's like, well fuck that. Then she calls
Speaker 1: Vernon and she says, hey, actually you should take her back.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: This is kind of a cheeky move because by this point,
Speaker 1: Vernon had sat down and done the math, and he
Speaker 1: had counted back from Oprah's birth date in January of
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty four, and he'd realized that he was away
Speaker 1: with the army during the period of time in which
Speaker 1: she was most likely conceived. So he's got pretty good
Speaker 1: evidence that he is not, in fact the buyol logical
Speaker 1: father of this kid. But instead of being like, you know,
Speaker 1: you're on your own, Vernita, or she's on your own,
Speaker 1: this is a kid he's still bonded with that, he's
Speaker 1: he's thought of most of her life as his daughter.
Speaker 1: He says he'll take her back if Fernita gives up
Speaker 1: all claim to the girl. And that's what happens. Oprah
Speaker 1: moves back to Nashville, and, unbeknownst to everyone at this point,
Speaker 1: the fourteen year old girl was now pregnant with a
Speaker 1: baby she believed was the result of her uncle Trenton
Speaker 1: molesting her. So that's a lot to deal with, yeah,
Speaker 1: put lightly, but you know, big ups for Vernon there.
Speaker 1: That's like a pretty and this is like he's it's
Speaker 1: very interesting. He's like gotten basically nothing from Oprah, like
Speaker 1: asked for basically nothing from her. Like he takes a
Speaker 1: lot of pride in the fact that, like his barber shop,
Speaker 1: put her through school and supported her, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: he's right to do so, obviously, But this is probably
Speaker 1: the luckiest single break of her life. I think Oprah
Speaker 1: would say this was the luckiest single break of her
Speaker 1: life that Vernon, even when he got this kind of
Speaker 1: excuse to not be a father, decided to continue being
Speaker 1: her father. Yeah. How does she talk about him now?
Speaker 1: Very positively? Yeah, I think you get the feeling there's
Speaker 1: some stuff they don't quite agree on, but like, she's
Speaker 1: very open about the fact that she owes a lot
Speaker 1: to him, obviously, and Vernon's clearly clearly very proud of
Speaker 1: her success, even though again you get the feeling like, oh,
Speaker 1: he doesn't really understand like what she's been doing most
Speaker 1: of her career in a lot of ways.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, once she started high school in Nashville, Vernon again
Speaker 1: became a strict disciplinarian, imposing a dress code on her
Speaker 1: and demanding excellent academic performance. Oprah was always a great student,
Speaker 1: but she stopped. She had stopped by this point enjoying school,
Speaker 1: and part of why it was that in the winter
Speaker 1: of nineteen sixty eight, she was now heavily pregnant, hiding
Speaker 1: it under layers of jackets. Eventually she could not hide
Speaker 1: it from her father any longer, and she told him
Speaker 1: what happened and that his brother had been the life rapist.
Speaker 1: The short of it is, Vernon didn't believe her about
Speaker 1: his brother, and I still don't think he does. He
Speaker 1: doesn't say she's lying, it's he kind of like deflects
Speaker 1: the question. Like the most recent interview I've read was
Speaker 1: him saying something like, well, it's very hard to accept
Speaker 1: something like that, you know, with somebody that you're close to.
Speaker 1: I'm not privy to the full details there, but you
Speaker 1: get the Obviously, it's a significant pain point in the relationship.
Speaker 1: The way Oprah describes it, her earlier promiscuity was used
Speaker 1: as an excuse by the most stable adults in her
Speaker 1: life to be like, no, my beloved brother didn't do this, right,
Speaker 1: this is you know, there's some other explanation here, you know,
Speaker 1: And yeah, that's even the most supportive family member in
Speaker 1: her life is doing this to her. So that's not great.
Speaker 1: Oprah Grave birth too much prematurely in the later winter
Speaker 1: of nineteen sixty eight, for whatever it's worth. Vernon and
Speaker 1: his wife had pulled together in the eleventh hour in
Speaker 1: that point and agreed to raise the child so that
Speaker 1: she could start her life like that was their plan.
Speaker 1: We'll raise her. This child is like another of our kids,
Speaker 1: and you can go off and go to college and stuff.
Speaker 1: But none of them ever get that chance. The baby
Speaker 1: is very ill, it never leaves the hospital, and it
Speaker 1: dies after less than a month. Oprah describes this as
Speaker 1: the most emotional, confusing, and traumatic experience of her life,
Speaker 1: which yep, that it would be from what I can
Speaker 1: glean via reading. This is the kind of moment that
Speaker 1: basically ended her childhood, and it seems like everyone is
Speaker 1: aware of that. At the time. Everyone decides to lock
Speaker 1: down and bury what had happened as a family secret.
Speaker 1: They never talk about this again, right, and so Oprah
Speaker 1: has to process everything that's happened without being able to
Speaker 1: talk about it to her family. All Vernon would say
Speaker 1: to her was that he thought that God had given
Speaker 1: her a second chance, which is maybe not the best
Speaker 1: thing to say about you baby dying. I don't know,
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I mean, without like wholly extrapolating a lot, or like
Speaker 2: putting my I mean, you know, my parents are not
Speaker 2: of that generation, but that is the type of shit
Speaker 2: they would do. Like, yeah, there are types of parents
Speaker 2: that would think this is you know, and would think
Speaker 2: not talking about it is the best way because we
Speaker 2: mostly just have negative things to say.
Speaker 1: So let's just pretend it didn't happen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's it's yeah, fucking dark.
Speaker 1: But yes, yeah, not a lot of light levity in
Speaker 1: this part of the Oprah story, Guys.
Speaker 2: I gotta tell you that's sort of the nature of
Speaker 2: this show.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it'll get more fun when we're playing some clips
Speaker 1: of TV from the nineteen eighties. But first, here's a
Speaker 1: so Oprah returns to school the following year with a
Speaker 1: terrible secret, but also like, this is kind of she changes, right,
Speaker 1: she kind of takes this is like a new lease
Speaker 1: on life, almost is how it's described. She gets heavily
Speaker 1: into speech and debate. She starts doing competitive like drama contests.
Speaker 1: She starts winning championships. She starts telling her teachers that
Speaker 1: she's going to be a movie star. According to her
Speaker 1: drama teacher, Andrea Haynes, Oprah insisted she wanted to change
Speaker 1: her name from Oprah to Gail because she thought it
Speaker 1: would help her in Hollywood, and Haines advised her to
Speaker 1: keep going as Oprah because it was a unique name
Speaker 1: and Oprah had a unique voice, so probably good advice
Speaker 1: given what happens later, the new Oprah gets invited to
Speaker 1: speak as part of a church event in Los Angeles
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty nine. She gets to see Hollywood for
Speaker 1: the first time, and she came back telling her dad
Speaker 1: about the stars in front of Man's Chinese Theater and
Speaker 1: promising to earn one of her own. One day as
Speaker 1: a junior, when filling out yearbook questionnaires that asked where
Speaker 1: will I be in twenty years, she checked famous, So
Speaker 1: she has made a pretty clear decision about where she
Speaker 1: wants to go at this point. In nineteen seventy, she
Speaker 1: wins a contest sponsored by the Black Elks Club of
Speaker 1: Nashville and she gets invited to deliver a speech in Philadelphia.
Speaker 1: This was her first big crowd. There's like a ten
Speaker 1: thousand person audience, and she recalled later only that she
Speaker 1: felt totally comfortable addressing this massive group of strangers. The
Speaker 1: remainder of her high school career is basically an endless
Speaker 1: parade of tournament victories and a surprising amount of jet
Speaker 1: setting for a high school girl. She's flown to Palo
Speaker 1: Alto for in nineteen seventy one for a contest at Stanford.
Speaker 1: She's the only black student at the national forensics competition.
Speaker 1: That year. She gets into student government, winning election as
Speaker 1: vice president with a campaign slogan, put a little Color.
Speaker 2: In your life.
Speaker 1: Vote for the grand Ole Oprah. She's at like a
Speaker 1: majority white school, you know, like, yeah, I appreciate the humor. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: the grand All Oprah too. Now, one thing that's interesting
Speaker 1: because I haven't read as many as I should have
Speaker 1: of like stories of the first kind of generation of
Speaker 1: black kids to get integrated into like majority white schools.
Speaker 1: But Oprah is in that demographic and at her high school,
Speaker 1: the black students, as a minority decided that they had
Speaker 1: to work together as a block if they were going
Speaker 1: to win any school elections. So they all agreed, decided
Speaker 1: to agree ahead of time as to which candidates to
Speaker 1: put forward, and so they'd only nominate a single black
Speaker 1: student for each category and then they would all vote
Speaker 1: for them. Since the white kids, white students all inevitably
Speaker 1: had like several white students for each role, and there's
Speaker 1: one black student for each role, and all of the
Speaker 1: black students are voting as a block, you actually have
Speaker 1: a chance of doing pretty well. So that's part of
Speaker 1: how Oprah wins election as school vice president that year.
Speaker 1: But she has to get a lot of white vote
Speaker 1: since she's very good at this. She's been hanging out
Speaker 1: at the homes of a lot of white classmates as
Speaker 1: a way for them to like make their parents look good.
Speaker 1: And yeah, Oprah, you know, is able to like meet
Speaker 1: a lot of people and get a lot of votes
Speaker 1: this way. She shows this like very clear talent for
Speaker 1: politicking and talent for like charming people by this point.
Speaker 1: This is not lost on some of her black peers
Speaker 1: who claimed that she they who she claimed had taken
Speaker 1: to calling her an oreo. The first time this happened,
Speaker 1: she crossed. The first time this happened, she claims she
Speaker 1: crossed the invisible lines in the cafeteria to sit with
Speaker 1: the white kids. Quote. In high school, I was the
Speaker 1: teacher's pet, which created other problems. I never spoke in dialect.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure why. Perhaps I was ashamed and I
Speaker 1: was attacked for talking proper like white folks for selling out.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it's interesting because like I don't have any
Speaker 1: reason to doubt that, but it's also evident, like she
Speaker 1: gets these nominations that everyone has to agree on beforehand,
Speaker 1: so she clearly like it's not like she doesn't have,
Speaker 1: you know, any of that support from her peers either,
Speaker 1: because she's able to, like, you know, convince them she's
Speaker 1: the best person to be the school vice president too.
Speaker 2: Well, unless it's a calculated bid for electability when we
Speaker 2: all know how that comes.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I was gonna say, I see some echoes
Speaker 5: of some of our you know, we're talking about a
Speaker 5: school election, but I see some echoes of our current situation.
Speaker 1: Yeah's hard not.
Speaker 4: To read some parallels.
Speaker 5: I mean, no, No, the thing about her, so I mean, like,
Speaker 5: first of all, if you are a black person listening,
Speaker 5: every black person has been called an oreo at one
Speaker 5: point in their life.
Speaker 4: That is not a unique experience at all, take it
Speaker 4: from me.
Speaker 5: But it goes back to what I was saying of, Like,
Speaker 5: is it possible that it wasn't that the other black
Speaker 5: kids didn't like her or like, because they clearly liked
Speaker 5: her because she was the person that they picked. Is
Speaker 5: it possible that it wasn't about the way that she spoke.
Speaker 5: Maybe she was being an asshole at times and didn't
Speaker 5: notice it, and like that's why.
Speaker 4: They were picking on her in this way.
Speaker 5: Like it's very easy to internalized this as, Oh, they
Speaker 5: were picking on me because I was smart and ambitious
Speaker 5: and I was I smoke proper and got good grades.
Speaker 4: And it's like, well, is that really what was going on?
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's some of it that, like you wanted to
Speaker 1: be a star, you would talk constantly about being famous,
Speaker 1: and you're you're probably like I mean, anyone who goes
Speaker 1: into TV, there's a little bit of that narcissism cooking
Speaker 1: in the background that may have been some of what
Speaker 1: people were recognizing. Yes, yeah, I say that with love
Speaker 1: for all of my friends in TV.
Speaker 4: You know, but like talking about how you're going to
Speaker 4: go to Hollywood and be famous is annoying if your.
Speaker 1: Right, exactly, Like, no one likes hearing that, you know,
Speaker 1: like speaking as somebody who went to Hollywood to get
Speaker 1: into the entertainment industry, right, nobody wants to hear about
Speaker 1: that journey. There's also just why we only have four
Speaker 1: to six Oscar winning movies every year about doing that.
Speaker 2: There's also like, like I mean obviously not okay to
Speaker 2: call someone in oreo or attack their blackness for quote
Speaker 2: acting white, but also every kid was called something. I'm
Speaker 2: just like there's a little bit of like, you know,
Speaker 2: history is written by the winners, and the winner is
Speaker 2: definitely Oprah as far as narrative goes.
Speaker 1: So like, yeah, like I'm not saying it's a good
Speaker 1: high school.
Speaker 2: But everyone, it's just it is also high school.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So she is selected to be delegate
Speaker 1: at the nineteen seventy one White House Conference on Children
Speaker 1: in Youth. The organizer of this delegation was committed to
Speaker 1: making sure that it was not just a bunch of
Speaker 1: middle class white kids, and so the resultant group that
Speaker 1: he sends to DC is like extremely diverse, and they
Speaker 1: wind up voting on a series of recommendations to the
Speaker 1: Nixon government, which include legalized marijuana, denounce the invasion of Cambodia,
Speaker 1: launch a guaranteed income program for all Americans. Didn't work
Speaker 1: if you haven't been keeping track of US politics, But hey,
Speaker 1: we appreciate the kids who are now in their seventies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we don't really know how Oprah felt about any of
Speaker 1: these super progressive goals. She was not very political, As
Speaker 1: one classmate noted, she's not an activist, and the only
Speaker 1: march she ever took part in was the March of Dimes,
Speaker 1: which is like a way of fundraising for I think
Speaker 1: cancer research that she primarily uses as a way to
Speaker 1: get her leg in the door for a show business career.
Speaker 1: She walks several miles on foot to the studios of WVOL,
Speaker 1: a black radio station in the Nashville area, and she
Speaker 1: basically tells the DJ, Hey, you're going to sponsor me
Speaker 1: for this march. The DJ is so surprised by this
Speaker 1: that he's like, well, all right, I'll do it. And
Speaker 1: when she comes by to get the donation from him,
Speaker 1: he tells her, hey, you've got a good voice. We
Speaker 1: should see what it sounds like on tape. And this guy,
Speaker 1: this DJ, is John Heidelberg. He would later declare himself
Speaker 1: the man who discovered Oprah. And it's one of those I.
Speaker 4: Really hate that shit.
Speaker 6: I really hate that shit.
Speaker 4: I really like that is like every.
Speaker 6: Fucking like famous or powerful woman ever. It's the man
Speaker 6: who discovered her. Just that's all I need to know.
Speaker 2: He sucks, right, I thought there'd be a little more
Speaker 2: producer solidarity here. So here's the thing.
Speaker 1: I hadn't thought about that at all, Sophie. And I'm
Speaker 1: not saying you're wrong to be annoyed by that. I
Speaker 1: was so in this guy's corner because when I hear, oh,
Speaker 1: young seventeen year old girl meets a DJ who says
Speaker 1: that maybe she has a future in an entertainment I
Speaker 1: was ready for this to be a hideous story. She's
Speaker 1: never claimed it was. All she says about it, and
Speaker 1: all we know about it is that like John actually
Speaker 1: gets her her first job, and that is like where
Speaker 1: the whole rest of her career comes from.
Speaker 6: So it's entirely possible hate that narrative she got herself.
Speaker 4: I'm not saying you're wrong I hate.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying when I started reading this story, I
Speaker 1: was like white knuckling it, waiting for like the Crimes,
Speaker 1: you know, having just done the p ditty episodes, I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, God, this camp possibly and.
Speaker 6: Well I'm the woman behind Robert Evans see it's discuss Yeah,
Speaker 6: definitely are like this.
Speaker 4: Did not enjoy that. Everyone was.
Speaker 6: I mean, the reality of the situation is that like
Speaker 6: physically need to give myself a hug.
Speaker 4: It felt so uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: It's every successful person in media has a whole shitload
Speaker 1: of people who were like big parts of why they
Speaker 1: got successful. And you know, John Heidelberg is the only
Speaker 1: guy John John Heidelberg certainly knows how to market that said,
Speaker 1: I'm just so happy this didn't turn into another story
Speaker 1: about like horrible, horrible crimes.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, gave him a.
Speaker 6: Bat DJ seventeen year old, you know, not literally a
Speaker 6: good narrative.
Speaker 1: This is the most surprised I've been since we found
Speaker 1: out that l Ron Hubbard was never a sex criminal,
Speaker 1: where I was like, really, huh, okay, why did he
Speaker 1: do all that stuff? Weirder reasons, very weird reasons. He
Speaker 1: wanted young people to dig for gold in the ocean.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's not a sexual like metaphor.
Speaker 2: Nope, he's like a StarCraft guy basically, yes.
Speaker 1: By which you mean a hero right, Yes, anyway, that's
Speaker 1: part two of the Oprah story with surprise, not a
Speaker 1: villain John Heidelberg, as far as I know, if horrible
Speaker 1: stories come out about John Heidelberg after this, look, I'm
Speaker 1: not defending the bad I was just shocked that this
Speaker 1: didn't go into a dark place.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what a weird twist.
Speaker 1: Yeah, one, DJ, who is not a creep that we
Speaker 1: can prove right now?
Speaker 3: Yea.
Speaker 1: Honestly, you are in the top one scent of morality
Speaker 1: of moral DJs if you don't commit a sex crime.
Speaker 1: Like that's so rare for the DJ community.
Speaker 6: And I would like to formally apologize to our editor,
Speaker 6: DJ Danel for that comment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, joic to John Heidelberg too, who I think is dead.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to okay, but ouch, poor John.
Speaker 6: I don't need to apologize to men.
Speaker 1: I'm good.
Speaker 2: I'm good. Uh.
Speaker 1: Anyway, that's our episode. Everybody. How are we feeling about
Speaker 1: Oprah so far? Don't worry next week? Next week is set. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't feel good like I.
Speaker 2: Should.
Speaker 1: I have like summarized all of the bad things as
Speaker 1: bullet points. I felt like the whole story needed to
Speaker 1: be told.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I remain curious to see how they connect because
Speaker 2: this this, if, if the bad stuff is kind of
Speaker 2: what I imagine it is, this would be the least
Speaker 2: the least like connective tissue between at X one and
Speaker 2: two and act you know, the late the B side, basically.
Speaker 1: The connective tissue, and this is to an extent. Stuff
Speaker 1: that Oprah will even admit is that she grows up
Speaker 1: desperate to please, and that that is partly responsible for
Speaker 1: like her number one set of the stuff, like some
Speaker 1: of her contributions to toxic diet culture, but also maybe
Speaker 1: part of why she does not vet some of these
Speaker 1: you know, doctors types the way that she ought to
Speaker 1: have write like, I think you can draw some lines
Speaker 1: there between like some of the aspects of her career
Speaker 1: that are are not ideal. But yeah, uh, I gotta
Speaker 1: say reading through this this she it is definitely the
Speaker 1: most sympathetic person whose childhood we've talked about here.
Speaker 5: Yeah, when you were talking about her like heyday and
Speaker 5: she was going to Hollywood and win speeches and elections,
Speaker 5: it was hard for me to not feel I was
Speaker 5: kind of like beaming thinking about in life. I was like, yeah,
Speaker 5: like good, Like I'm imagining like a montage of her
Speaker 5: really leaving up, and I guess I'm waiting to see how.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess from that point of view, the
Speaker 1: good news is things don't ever go bad for Oprah, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's something tril Oprah go bad for the rest of us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I wonder.
Speaker 1: But yeah, anyway, you get some pluggables.
Speaker 2: I could go. I think I went first last time.
Speaker 5: Oh all right, Well you could check out my podcast
Speaker 5: on iHeartRadio called There Are No Girls on the Internet,
Speaker 5: or my other podcast with the Mozilla Foundation makers of Firefox,
Speaker 5: all about power and people and ethics in a I
Speaker 5: called I r L New season coming soon.
Speaker 4: Follow me on Instagram at bridget Marie and DC.
Speaker 1: Yeah, excellent, that's the week. Everybody go home. And I'm sorry, Andrew,
Speaker 1: I haven't slept in three days.
Speaker 2: Yeah, don't worry about it, Andrew edred fucking new Gares.
Speaker 2: Yos this racist? That's fine?
Speaker 1: Check out yo? Is this racist? And remember everybody, don't
Speaker 1: don't hang out with DJs. It usually doesn't go.
Speaker 6: This well except accept DJ Daniel do your jo is
Speaker 6: the best.
Speaker 4: And shout out to Joe. I love your DJ screw shirt.
Speaker 2: Oh thank you. This is a bootleg by probably don't
Speaker 2: hang out with Djscrew either.
Speaker 6: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
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Speaker 6: dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 6: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the
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Speaker 6: and Friday.
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