Speaker 1: Also media Welcome Back to Bastards the Behind podcast Robert
Speaker 1: Evans A. Uh, your brain will put that together in
Speaker 1: the right order. Or maybe that only works with written words.
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe it just sounds like I had a stroke.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Let's ask our guest today, Uh, bridget Todd andrew T,
Speaker 1: does it sound like I had a stroke? Always as
Speaker 1: a longtime friend of mine, Bridget that really that really
Speaker 1: helps as.
Speaker 3: A longtime friend of mine.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 5: Actually, pretty co here, that felt just like like lag.
Speaker 5: It didn't feel like you were having a stroke. It
Speaker 5: just felt like there's just some bit of a transmission problem.
Speaker 5: But it's fine.
Speaker 6: It's really your parent. You would be like, let's put
Speaker 6: an eye on it. He doesn't, let's keep it.
Speaker 1: Maybe we need to take the keys away though. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they shouldn't be driving that car anymore. We got to
Speaker 1: get the f one fifty away from Grandpa. He's gotta
Speaker 1: go right through a fucking farmer's mark.
Speaker 4: Kids.
Speaker 1: Oh shit, it just occurred to me actually because I
Speaker 1: met you both right around the same time, and like
Speaker 1: mid twenty eighteen to late twenty eighteen, it's been like
Speaker 1: six years that we've we've all been buddies. We should
Speaker 1: go to Vegas, to Vegas to meet you.
Speaker 6: Was it twenty sixteen?
Speaker 7: I think I think I've known Sophie, but I think
Speaker 7: I met you Sophie before I met Robert.
Speaker 6: Robert and I we went to a like you went
Speaker 6: to a Nazi team in DC.
Speaker 1: That was a great weekend.
Speaker 4: Boy, I remember, no, because I'm the one that was like, no, Robert,
Speaker 4: you're going to d See.
Speaker 6: You have to hit a bridget Uh huh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we had a great Time's great.
Speaker 7: Yeah, there'll be opportunities to go to Nazi marches in DC.
Speaker 6: Ample I'm sure that's coming before.
Speaker 1: Friend, I don't Yeah, that's a subject for a day.
Speaker 1: I will say. I gotta I gotta give a shout
Speaker 1: out because as we're talking right now, the US Marines
Speaker 1: have entered the California Mexico border, and there's footage of
Speaker 1: them with V twenty two Ospreys. So we are we
Speaker 1: are just hours away from the first time of V
Speaker 1: to twenty two osprey wipes out a squad of Marines
Speaker 1: on US soil. Yet again. If you're not aware, these
Speaker 1: are aircraft that exist almost entirely to kill United States
Speaker 1: Marines that the Marine Corps continues to use for reasons
Speaker 1: that make complete sense if you know a lot about
Speaker 1: the US Marine Corps. So I'm very happy to say
Speaker 1: that we're about to be suffering severe casualties in a
Speaker 1: war without anyone to fight but our own aircraft.
Speaker 5: The reason we'll use them is because they make the
Speaker 5: coolest Gi Joe toys.
Speaker 1: They look awesome, they're so cool looking, and it's just
Speaker 1: they're just death traps. They're just honorable death traps. Like,
Speaker 1: if you actually care, you would do more reducing American
Speaker 1: mentalities abroad. Stopping the V twenty two osprey then wiping
Speaker 1: out isis.
Speaker 5: It's it's just it's like a it's a drop ship,
Speaker 5: but with it's like a helicopter with like twice as
Speaker 5: many points of failure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, hell yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: It's it's like, what if you know how helicopters are
Speaker 1: absolute death traps? What if we made it twice as
Speaker 1: much of.
Speaker 2: A death trap.
Speaker 1: Yeah, speaking of getting lots of people killed, y'all ready
Speaker 1: to get back to Oprah.
Speaker 2: Wow?
Speaker 3: Wow, what a transition.
Speaker 6: We're gonna get sued.
Speaker 1: We're gonna get You're gonna get sued. You're gonna get sued.
Speaker 4: Once again, I checked under my chair and there was
Speaker 4: nothing there.
Speaker 1: No, this is I gotta say. People online were like, oh,
Speaker 1: only a matter of time before Oprah sues them. There's
Speaker 1: We've had not to mention anybody litigious subjects in the past.
Speaker 1: We are so far on Oprah's radar, Like again, this
Speaker 1: is the only people who have ever been more famous
Speaker 1: than her are certain pharaohs and Greek gods, like she
Speaker 1: does not give a shit about this podcast.
Speaker 2: People who.
Speaker 1: So kind of pivoting off of that statement. I do
Speaker 1: suspect some of the young'ins in our audience may be
Speaker 1: incredulous in me crediting Oprah with so much influence in
Speaker 1: trends that today seem like just like massive societal swings,
Speaker 1: stuff that's too big for one person to have incited.
Speaker 1: And I have to assure you Oprah really was that influential.
Speaker 1: There is, in fact, a direct line from Oprah to
Speaker 1: the sort of media that utterly dominates the digital attention
Speaker 1: spans of people today, particularly gen Z kids. Right, if
Speaker 1: you spend any time looking at surveys of what gen
Speaker 1: Z claims to look for and value in media figures
Speaker 1: that they follow, you'll come upon one word over and
Speaker 1: over authenticity. Now, I'm not saying they actually like authentic
Speaker 1: media figures, because authenticity is a costume that media figures
Speaker 1: put on. Nobody is really authentic, right, like, because that's
Speaker 1: just not the way the media works.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: It's all some sort of dress up, it's all some
Speaker 1: sort of glamor. But it's the ability to play at
Speaker 1: being authentic. And I want to quote now from a
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four study by the NIH surveying the media
Speaker 1: diet and preference of gen Z viewers. Quote, the qualities
Speaker 1: that young people wish to find in media, especially on
Speaker 1: social media, revolve primarily upon spontaneity and authenticity. Quote, nobody
Speaker 1: has a perfect life. I would like to see a
Speaker 1: real life that does not come from social media or
Speaker 1: reality shows. And this is them, quoting a female gen
Speaker 1: Z surveyed person. They seek a life without filters, much
Speaker 1: like what is portrayed by influencers like Emily Polini, who,
Speaker 1: despite having acne, chooses to show herself without filters and
Speaker 1: accepts herself as she is. And I'm not saying anything
Speaker 1: about that specific influencer, but like that's the idea, right that,
Speaker 1: like gen Z, they're moving away from like the super
Speaker 1: airbrushed and touched up, you know, marketed like celebrities of
Speaker 1: the past, which is again not true. There's more ability
Speaker 1: to fill to yourself than ever before thanks to social media.
Speaker 1: But that's the impression that people think that they want,
Speaker 1: and that impression really gets started. Authenticity becomes a virtue
Speaker 1: for media figures in the age of Oprah More than
Speaker 1: any other single person. She sparks the shift towards relatable,
Speaker 1: authentic media influencers who deliberately sought to inculcate and feed
Speaker 1: a parasocial relationship with their audiences. Oprah did this in
Speaker 1: part by being open about stuff like her struggles with
Speaker 1: weight loss, which made people think, oh, she's dealing with
Speaker 1: the same shit. I am right, she is the same
Speaker 1: kind of person I am. This is like she I
Speaker 1: like her because she's authentic, and that cuts out a lot,
Speaker 1: including the fact that, like Wilbrah has billions of dollars
Speaker 1: and enough money to hire personal chefs and personal trainers
Speaker 1: and take all of the different rich people drugs that
Speaker 1: make it a lot easier to lose weight and whatnot
Speaker 1: and stay youthful. Right, But again, its perception, it's really.
Speaker 5: Like pretty impressive, how easily, Like everyone is fooled. I
Speaker 5: think by this, Like, like the difference between authentic and authenticism.
Speaker 2: Is, like it seems big to me. Maybe am I
Speaker 2: just an idiot? Like I'm just like this is still
Speaker 2: very fake, guys.
Speaker 1: No, I think there's a degree to which I mean,
Speaker 1: you're right for TV, Andrew, Like you're in media, like Bridget, Like,
Speaker 1: We're all in media, so we all have experiences of
Speaker 1: like this is the product that people say is authentic,
Speaker 1: and we are aware of the degree of work that
Speaker 1: goes into the background of like make I mean, part
Speaker 1: of why I have the attitude I have on this
Speaker 1: is that, like I have the life experience of turning
Speaker 1: myself into a public figure and deliberately figuring out, like
Speaker 1: which aspects of my personality are more relatable and marketable
Speaker 1: to an audience. That's a thing that I did. It's
Speaker 1: part of my bisiness, right, But I.
Speaker 5: Would just argue that like every child I know with
Speaker 5: a phone knows the difference between use this pick not
Speaker 5: this pick right, which is the exact same thing like this, say.
Speaker 1: You also like everyone sees some like you know the
Speaker 1: person well, I like that they're honest. I like that
Speaker 1: they you know, they seem like a really honest person's like, well,
Speaker 1: but you're you are seeing what they've curated, you know,
Speaker 1: And I'm not even making a moral judgment about it. Right,
Speaker 1: it's not bad. As a public figure, you have to
Speaker 1: curate yourself, right, Like one thing, you go insane. If
Speaker 1: you don't have a part of you that's actually like
Speaker 1: your private human person, you will lose your mind. Right.
Speaker 1: We see this in certain public figures that happen to
Speaker 1: be the richest man on earth.
Speaker 2: Right, I wasn't.
Speaker 6: Even thinking about that, but yes, not even that.
Speaker 5: But just like, like the alternative would be a what
Speaker 5: three sixty spherical constant surveillance, which is believe a form
Speaker 5: of torture.
Speaker 1: It's a form of torture. And also how a number
Speaker 1: of people, a number of people get rich at least
Speaker 1: doing that for limited periods of time. Right, what is
Speaker 1: like a lot of the streaming ecosystem is I have
Speaker 1: for four hours a day, I make a panopticon in
Speaker 1: my gaming chair, right, Like that is one of the
Speaker 1: most profitable forms of entertainment on the planet right now.
Speaker 7: And I think when the because the alternative is like
Speaker 7: airbrushed and perfect and unattainable visions of people, especially for youth.
Speaker 7: I can understand why maybe deep down, you know, it's
Speaker 7: it's like manufactured authenticity in scare quotes. But because the
Speaker 7: alternative is so clearly manufactured, it's easy to think, like, well,
Speaker 7: this at least feels a little more authentic, even if
Speaker 7: it's bullshit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And you know, it may feel like
Speaker 1: especially because of how universal that that kind of talk
Speaker 1: about I like authentic, you know people in my media,
Speaker 1: is that it may it may feel like a thing
Speaker 1: that people have always wanted, but it really is not.
Speaker 1: I mean again, if you remember the nineties, that was
Speaker 1: not like people were obsessed with guys like Tom Cruise,
Speaker 1: and the last thing anyone would ever say about Tom
Speaker 1: Cruise is like that man is authentic, right, Like no,
Speaker 1: Tom Cruise is like a fucking like a mirror that
Speaker 1: we project onto you know. But he's like his his
Speaker 1: his popularity came from his fundamental emptiness, right, And like
Speaker 1: Arnold Schwarzenegger was a guy who was like actively created
Speaker 1: during the period of time that he was like in
Speaker 1: the public eye. If you look at early Arnold and
Speaker 1: you know, to the point where he kind of figured
Speaker 1: out who he was as a human being, Like, this
Speaker 1: is not the way we thought about celebrities the entire
Speaker 1: time that that has been a concept in like our culture,
Speaker 1: and Oprah plays a huge role in this stuff. Reality
Speaker 1: TV is in many ways downstream from Oprah. TikTok is
Speaker 1: downstream from Oprah, and the Trump presidency is downstream from Oprah. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying Opra is to blame for this. I'm
Speaker 1: saying is downstream from right in that I'm saying the
Speaker 1: things that she did helped prepare the culture for that.
Speaker 1: That's not implying a sort of moral responsibility for Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: a guy she doesn't like and didn't want to be
Speaker 1: the president. It's saying that the changes that she helped
Speaker 1: rat in our culture were part of why we are
Speaker 1: where we are today, right, And you can just see
Speaker 1: that at the level of influence. This is a person
Speaker 1: who at her peak thirty forty million people are tuning
Speaker 1: into her show. Like the degree to which she has
Speaker 1: changed the composition of our cultural soil can't be overstated.
Speaker 1: And I hope that people can like take what I'm
Speaker 1: saying without it being like Robert saying we should blame
Speaker 1: Oprah for Trump. I really don't think that's the case.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying part of why people like Trump is
Speaker 1: his authenticity quote unquote. You listen to his supporters, that's
Speaker 1: what they will say, and that being a huge virtue.
Speaker 1: Oprah isn't the only person who started it or the
Speaker 1: only person who led to that being the way that
Speaker 1: it is, but Oprah being Oprah was a massive part
Speaker 1: of why that shift occurred. Yeah.
Speaker 7: I also think something that she does so well that
Speaker 7: has really been made clear from the last few episodes
Speaker 7: is that idea of the personal being the political, like yes,
Speaker 7: really being able to blend those things in this way
Speaker 7: that's just irresistible and like it's the reason why her
Speaker 7: audience was getting up and sharing like their sexual assault
Speaker 7: stories without even really being prompted, like me too, before
Speaker 7: me too, with me too, you know, like this idea
Speaker 7: of really being able to blend those ideas in a
Speaker 7: way that make people want to connect and engage.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think that's that's a great way to point.
Speaker 1: And it's also weird that you make that comment about
Speaker 1: the personal being political because we're about to we're about
Speaker 1: to read a quote that's right along those lines. So
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety eight, Jet magazine defined Oprah the word
Speaker 1: as a verb meaning to engage in persistent, intimate questioning
Speaker 1: with the intention of obtaining a confession. Now, a good
Speaker 1: example of how pushy she got with this and this
Speaker 1: is I tried to find this clip every A lot
Speaker 1: of the bad Oprah clips that have gone viral have
Speaker 1: been purged from the internet, as we'll talk about. But
Speaker 1: in two thousand and four, Oprah has the Olsen Twins
Speaker 1: on her show as guests. Now at this point they
Speaker 1: are both seventeen years old. If you are on the
Speaker 1: younger side and you do not recall it, or you
Speaker 1: recall the Olsen Twins as you know adult movie stars,
Speaker 1: which they are today, let me kind of walk you
Speaker 1: through who the Olsen Twins are Culturally. These were two
Speaker 1: of alongside mcaulay coch and probably the two like two
Speaker 1: like of the three or four biggest child stars this
Speaker 1: country's ever had. Right, they are famous from the point
Speaker 1: that they are very little kids and they are famous,
Speaker 1: and this is kind of unusual. The entire time that
Speaker 1: their children effectively, this is not a thing where like
Speaker 1: they're in one big movie and then they kind of
Speaker 1: drop out of cultural awareness, like you know, Jake Lloyd
Speaker 1: or someone like that. They are in full house and
Speaker 1: they remain in movies that are very stuff like The
Speaker 1: Parent Trap all the way up until they are adults.
Speaker 1: And some of this is just you know, people like them.
Speaker 1: They're they're good child actors. But also there's a lot
Speaker 1: of like very creepy pedophile stuff in here. A significant number,
Speaker 1: a shocking number of adult men will openly admit to
Speaker 1: keeping track of the when the Olsen twins are turning eighteen.
Speaker 1: This was a big deal on the Internet in the
Speaker 1: early ads. It is as gross as it sounds, but
Speaker 1: it was not a fringe thing, Like I am telling
Speaker 1: you right now. This was not a tiny number of
Speaker 1: weirdo pedophiles. A lot of men were willing to put
Speaker 1: their names to keeping track of that. Ew yes, you.
Speaker 7: What fucked up time to the old young woman on
Speaker 7: the internet, Like the internet all came of age.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it's good to remember that as we talked
Speaker 1: about how bad it's gotten that like yeah, well and
Speaker 1: great back in two thousand and four, God, yeah, it was.
Speaker 4: Like this trend that's going around on TikTok right now.
Speaker 4: But it's like it's like, oh, you're so beautiful. And
Speaker 4: then it's like thanks, and then you list something that
Speaker 4: you grew up with that made you the way that
Speaker 4: you are, and it's like, this is exactly what that is.
Speaker 3: It's like, oh, your superpoints, Like thanks.
Speaker 4: I grew up in the error where grown men tracked
Speaker 4: told the Olsen twins.
Speaker 3: Were yeah again, my god.
Speaker 1: We talked about thought crime.
Speaker 2: Little joke.
Speaker 1: I'm generally against thought crimes. All of those men should
Speaker 1: have been arrested.
Speaker 7: All that.
Speaker 1: So, as a result of all this, the bodies in
Speaker 1: the weight loss were gain of the Olsen twins became
Speaker 1: regular fodder for tabloids. It should not be shocking. I
Speaker 1: think both of them developed eating disorders, not really surprising.
Speaker 1: So during their interview with Oprah, this comes up, and
Speaker 1: the interview starts with some pretty anodyne stuff. Part one
Speaker 1: you can still find unedited online, and they're talking about
Speaker 1: like who's messier, and they're in terms of keeping their
Speaker 1: room clean, what's their allowance that their dad gives them,
Speaker 1: et cetera. Later on in the interview, though, Oprah starts
Speaker 1: to probe the two about tabloid rumors that they had
Speaker 1: and eating that one or both of them suffered from
Speaker 1: an eating disorder, saying, quote, I know a new rumor
Speaker 1: that's recently surfaced has really upset you, right, you know,
Speaker 1: the one about eating. The girls get visibly uncomfortable, and
Speaker 1: Ashley immediately tries to shut the topic down. She replies, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, people are gonna write what they're gonna write.
Speaker 1: We try not to read the good or the bad
Speaker 1: because it just comes with the territory. Either you too fat,
Speaker 1: too skinny, and people are just gonna write what they
Speaker 1: And then Oprah interrupts her, asking what size are you?
Speaker 1: By the way, now, Oprah, you have dealt with some
Speaker 1: of the most unhinged fucking obsession with your body weight
Speaker 1: that like we've tried, we were I think quite sympathetic
Speaker 1: of in previous episodes. You should know that's fucked up.
Speaker 1: She's seventeen, God damn it.
Speaker 6: Like, oh, what's gosh? I mean not to like I.
Speaker 7: Know you've already you've probably talked about this when you
Speaker 7: did his episode, but like doctor Phil taking teenagers up
Speaker 7: on stage and like asking if they had preston plants,
Speaker 7: Like right, this was like yeah, kus, what was okay?
Speaker 7: On like mainstream daytime television when.
Speaker 1: We talk about modern social media being downstream from this.
Speaker 1: Think of all of the different parents who we now
Speaker 1: know were like who got famous as like mommy bloggers,
Speaker 1: or like I've got a YouTube channel featuring my kids
Speaker 1: and their development and it comes out three four, five,
Speaker 1: six years later. Oh, that was an incredibly abusive situation
Speaker 1: where they were basically turning their kids, like mining their
Speaker 1: children for money and deeply psychologically and often physically abusing
Speaker 1: them to make them more profitable.
Speaker 2: Right, I mean, speaking of thought crime the Internet.
Speaker 5: One of the Internet's sort of positive things is at
Speaker 5: least there's a paper.
Speaker 2: Trail for all this shit. Yeah, yeah, Jesus Christ, Yeah, you.
Speaker 5: Know what's crazy you were saying. So that part of
Speaker 5: the clip is scrubbed from the Internet. Where Oprah asks
Speaker 5: their size.
Speaker 1: It is very hard to find. So I want to finish,
Speaker 1: finish the scene. Oh sorry, So the girls respond after
Speaker 1: Oprah interrupts them to ask their size, like, well, like,
Speaker 1: you know, we're celebrities. We get our clothing tailored, Like
Speaker 1: I don't know what my size is, right, I don't
Speaker 1: like good with store and buy clothes, right, And Oprah responds,
Speaker 1: that's so interesting. I'm obsessed with size and You're like,
Speaker 1: I really don't know, there's a lot there. I don't know,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know, Like you put a
Speaker 1: team of psychiatrists on that that two sentences.
Speaker 5: It was more just what I was trying to what
Speaker 5: I was curious about, was like because in the last episode,
Speaker 5: we watched a clip of Joan Rivers doing a version
Speaker 5: of this to Oprah, right and.
Speaker 1: On misery demand, it builds up like a coastal shelf.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's like it's it is wild too for Oprah
Speaker 5: to have been upset by the Joe Rivers version of this,
Speaker 5: And then I mean, it's not surprising, but it is
Speaker 5: really like remarkably un self aware or on empathetic.
Speaker 7: When we talked about how much she regrets her wagon
Speaker 7: full of Fat incident, I really think that what she
Speaker 7: regrets is making like a lot of speculation about her weight. Personally,
Speaker 7: I don't think she has any problem with the way
Speaker 7: that she has foisted that same level of scrutiny about
Speaker 7: weight onto others. I think that she is perfectly fine.
Speaker 7: And if that's complacent in that dynamic that has been
Speaker 7: so unhealthy for so many people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would agree one hundred percent Bridget. Now, as
Speaker 1: we talked to I talked about a bit ago with you, Andrew,
Speaker 1: we're not watching this clip. I would have preferred to
Speaker 1: play it, because it's been pretty well expunged from the internet.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to say I did not spend hours
Speaker 1: on this, but I spent a good like twenty minutes
Speaker 1: or so trying to find this clip, and all that
Speaker 1: I was able to get are like viral clips on
Speaker 1: TikTok that are heavily edited because a couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: this particular chunk of the interview went kind of viral
Speaker 1: on TikTok because people have been one of the things
Speaker 1: that's been happening over the last two years or so
Speaker 1: on social media TikTok primarily but not exclusively, is people
Speaker 1: have been like kind of relitigating some of Oprah's worst moments,
Speaker 1: and she has been receiving some criticism. So this went
Speaker 1: viral and people were like, rightfully, this is pretty fucked up.
Speaker 1: As a consequence, though, damn near every pure clip I
Speaker 1: have not been able to find a pure, unedited clip
Speaker 1: of this moment. I'm able to find TikTok videos where
Speaker 1: the audio is overlaid with some shitty AI voice or
Speaker 1: asshole narrating that like makes me want to nuke every
Speaker 1: data center on Earth. Like the way these things are
Speaker 1: like edited and put together, and like the whole screen
Speaker 1: is covered with text, and I just hate it. I
Speaker 1: hate the way this stuff looks, and I haven't found
Speaker 1: a clean clip of it, That's what I'm saying. And
Speaker 1: that's often the case with some of Oprah's like worst moments.
Speaker 1: You know, a lot of this stuff has been purged,
Speaker 1: and because most of her stuff was on daytime TV
Speaker 1: in the eighties and nineties, a lot of it is
Speaker 1: effectively lost media for our purposes. Anyway, I just found
Speaker 1: that interesting.
Speaker 5: There's someone's parents have this on VHS somewhere. Next time
Speaker 5: you're a home for anie holiday. Check the tapes.
Speaker 7: Yes, probably my late mother, because she did tape Oprah's
Speaker 7: and she.
Speaker 6: Would watch them on VHS.
Speaker 7: I have so many, like burned in my memory clips
Speaker 7: of Oprah being not great, but like I probably could
Speaker 7: not find them, like I think. Nathan Lane has talked
Speaker 7: about how when him and the late Robin Williams were
Speaker 7: on the show, Oprah was really grilling him about his
Speaker 7: sexuality and that luckily Robin Williams stepped in to make
Speaker 7: a joke out of it and take the heat off
Speaker 7: of him because he wasn't out. She did the same
Speaker 7: thing to Dennis Rodman, like she really when it came
Speaker 7: to men and their sexuality, she did some like I
Speaker 7: think we would look at back at some of those clips,
Speaker 7: the way that she was grilling these people and think like, well,
Speaker 7: that really wasn't cool. But all of those clips are
Speaker 7: so difficult to find.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I mean I think it's a little bit
Speaker 5: too speaking of the political that like, because she's a
Speaker 5: black woman, make assumptions of what her like politics and
Speaker 5: values are that don't have to be true. And we
Speaker 5: see this in like the actual questions and like her
Speaker 5: the editorialslan, which is like, fine, she's obviously allowed to
Speaker 5: have those opinions, but it's I think there's there's a
Speaker 5: big like we build up as a culture, like who
Speaker 5: we think Oprah ought to be, and the bastardy happens
Speaker 5: in the difference between those two things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's I think actually a very good way of
Speaker 1: talking about it. Andrew also shout out to the late
Speaker 1: Robin Williams. You do like moments like this, do like
Speaker 1: reveal character on behalf of some people, and it's always
Speaker 1: nice to get like, Okay, he was a really nice man.
Speaker 3: That's good.
Speaker 1: I rewatched Goodwill Hunting. I think I may have been
Speaker 1: for the first time. I had like vague memories of it,
Speaker 1: and that like scene where he's hugging Matt Damon, I
Speaker 1: just had the thought, like, God, damn, there's not a
Speaker 1: problem in my life that wouldn't be fixed with a
Speaker 1: good Robin Williams hug. Like that man looked like he
Speaker 1: gave great hugs anyway. Yeah, Rip, we've probably talked about
Speaker 1: Oprah more. Around the same time Jet Magazine made Oprah
Speaker 1: a verb, the Wall Street Journal introduced the term oprah
Speaker 1: Fication in order to complain that political discourse in the
Speaker 1: country had become And this is what you had mentioned, Bridge,
Speaker 1: This is what you had mentioned, Bridget public confession as
Speaker 1: a form of therapy, Right, So great minds. Well, actually,
Speaker 1: I think you're considerably a better mind than anyone at
Speaker 1: the Wall Street Journal. But you guys had the same
Speaker 1: basic take. And this is kind of noteworthy because therapy
Speaker 1: is at the core of Oprah's appeal and the growth
Speaker 1: in our understanding of not just the value of therapy,
Speaker 1: which I think is generally good, but in the use
Speaker 1: of like therapy speak in everyday life, and to some
Speaker 1: extent the I think massive overuse of therapy speak at
Speaker 1: everyday life, this is very much tied to OPRAH. And
Speaker 1: the way in which therapy is tied to OPRAH is
Speaker 1: not actual clinical therapy, which is of course potentially extremely
Speaker 1: valuable for people, but a simulacrum of therapy, one that
Speaker 1: apes the definitions in terms used by clinicians and often
Speaker 1: apes actual clinical expertise by bringing in oaths like doctor
Speaker 1: phil who are in no way actually doing good therapy,
Speaker 1: and in fact are doing things that the ethics of
Speaker 1: the discipline condemn pretty strongly, but are doing it in
Speaker 1: such a way that people believe this is what therapy,
Speaker 1: This is medical work, right, This is somebody actually like
Speaker 1: functioning as a mental health clinician, and I think that
Speaker 1: does so in a way. Again, a lot of the way,
Speaker 1: a lot of dialogue of discourse on like Twitter, is
Speaker 1: downstream from this, this birth of understand that there's a
Speaker 1: value in like talking about mental health in a clinical way.
Speaker 1: But also none of us are clinicians, and none of
Speaker 1: us are doing it right, and so we're like medicalizing
Speaker 1: shit in ways that are in a lot of instances
Speaker 1: deeply toxic and damaging to people. A lot of that
Speaker 1: is tied directly to.
Speaker 7: Oprah spoken like a true gas lighting narcissist Rber.
Speaker 1: Yes, thank you.
Speaker 7: If you ever want to like win an argument in
Speaker 7: a certain kind of group house, if like you know
Speaker 7: what I'm talking about, just to be like, he's gaslighting
Speaker 7: me into taking up the garbage, Yes, you'll win.
Speaker 1: Yes, I'm being abused into doing the dishes effect.
Speaker 5: It's also even in the absence of the like perversions
Speaker 5: of it, just the simple act of doing it in
Speaker 5: public or as a performance, even if it were otherwise
Speaker 5: largely fine, which it isn't.
Speaker 1: I just I always think back to this happens every
Speaker 1: so often. There's one like six months ago, tens of
Speaker 1: thousands of people like liking and sharing it. If someone
Speaker 1: being like, you know, people with ADHD have no sense
Speaker 1: of object permanence, Yes they do, man, that's not that's
Speaker 1: not five year olds have object permanence, bro, that is
Speaker 1: not ADHD. You are you are in an attempt to
Speaker 1: bring up to create create empathy for people suffering from
Speaker 1: severe ADHD. You are like dehumanizing them, like this is
Speaker 1: actually quite bad.
Speaker 5: Oh my god, that's like that's like medieval like Layman's
Speaker 5: understanding of the world, Like that's just like burn the
Speaker 5: Witch type.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, we're back.
Speaker 1: Can we stop? Can we stop with some of this?
Speaker 7: I saw someone that said people that have ADHD can
Speaker 7: never pick a Halloween costume because there's too many choices,
Speaker 7: and then the reply on Twitter was like.
Speaker 6: Damn, can't you all do anything?
Speaker 1: Yeah again, my life is filled with and I have
Speaker 1: like ADHD. The stuff people say about it online just
Speaker 1: feels like someone talking about aliens. I don't mean to
Speaker 1: like harp on it so much, but this is one
Speaker 1: I have like so much personal experience with that, Like
Speaker 1: I really and I don't want to get like lost
Speaker 1: down a rabbit hole here. But there's a very complicated
Speaker 1: issue in it's good for people do have an understanding
Speaker 1: of mental health and do have an understanding of like therapy,
Speaker 1: and there are there's value in that some of that
Speaker 1: those discussions becoming more a part of like common parlance.
Speaker 1: And also it can be very very toxic because people
Speaker 1: use it and weaponize it to an extent, and a
Speaker 1: lot of the irresponsibility that we see now kind of
Speaker 1: reflected down in social media and the way people talk
Speaker 1: about this stuff really gets launched by doctor Phil on
Speaker 1: the Oprah Winfrey Show. Right where you are you are
Speaker 1: using actual clinical psychology as a costume as opposed to
Speaker 1: as a way to actually help people, Like you are
Speaker 1: dressing that way so you can say whatever and do whatever,
Speaker 1: you know, and in this case, it was for entertainment purposes, right,
Speaker 1: And a lot of this ties in directly to the
Speaker 1: self help movement. You know, this is and this is
Speaker 1: I think a toxic thing for therapy, right, because therapy
Speaker 1: should not be a thing that you do instead of
Speaker 1: helping other people and trying to better the world. And
Speaker 1: that's kind of the message of a great deal of
Speaker 1: like the way in which therapy is discussed on the
Speaker 1: Oprah Winfrey Show. And you even see stuff like Jordan
Speaker 1: Peterson saying like you can't fix the world until you've
Speaker 1: fixed yourself, which is simply untrue. And this ties into this,
Speaker 1: this kind of American civil religion of self help. If
Speaker 1: you remember the Woody Guthrie episodes, we talked about how
Speaker 1: during the Great Depression, starving farmers and their kids were
Speaker 1: listening to prototypes of Norman Vincent Norman Vincent Peel's The
Speaker 1: Power of Positive Thinking, right, which is basically this shares
Speaker 1: DNA with Prosperity Gospel, stuff with the Secret and mary
Speaker 1: Anne Williamson. The core of it is this idea that
Speaker 1: like attracts like. So if your negative thing, that's what's
Speaker 1: bringing bad things to you. And if you want to
Speaker 1: be wealthy, you have to think like a wealthy person, right,
Speaker 1: And you know some of the ways in which this
Speaker 1: gets passed down, like Prosperity Gospel, if you want to
Speaker 1: be wealthy, you need to give money. You don't have
Speaker 1: go into debt to give money to God, and then
Speaker 1: that kind of thinking will attract wealth towards you.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 1: Alternatively, if you put down five thousand dollars for this
Speaker 1: seminar on how to like automatically generate books and put
Speaker 1: them on Amazon, you know, in order to make money
Speaker 1: that will attract wealth back too. You have to make
Speaker 1: the universe needs to see you make a sacrifice in
Speaker 1: order to know that you're serious about this before you
Speaker 1: can start attracting the money. Right, All of this stuff
Speaker 1: is it doesn't start obviously, again, as we talked about,
Speaker 1: this has been going on since like the early nineteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: It doesn't start with Oprah, but by bringing on mary
Speaker 1: Anne Williamson and then by pushing later the secret, she
Speaker 1: supercharges this shit, and she supercharges it at the same
Speaker 1: time as she is continually on the show pushing this,
Speaker 1: pushing therapy and a specific attitude towards therapy, right, which
Speaker 1: the overall thing you're supposed to take away from this
Speaker 1: is you can fix every problem in your life by
Speaker 1: changing your attitude. Now, that is simply untrue. Right, there
Speaker 1: are social problems and issues that affect people's ability to
Speaker 1: be happy, that are rooted in politics, that are rooted
Speaker 1: in history, that are rooted in things you have no
Speaker 1: control over. And it is true obviously your own attitude,
Speaker 1: you know, can matter a lot, and your resilience. But
Speaker 1: there's this big thesis of like every problem can be
Speaker 1: fixed by altering your attitude. You can even change the
Speaker 1: way the universe works by altering your attitude. That gets
Speaker 1: wrapped up in the kind of pro therapy ethos being
Speaker 1: pushed with Oprah in a way that warps what therapy is.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it's just it's it's it's complicated, but I
Speaker 1: think very profoundly toxic.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it turns therapy into like telekinesis magic. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 5: at at sort of best where it's just like and
Speaker 5: I guess to me, it's like all this shit, it's like,
Speaker 5: do you never consider the counter factual of any of this?
Speaker 5: Like just like, oh, sorry kid, sorry about all your cancer.
Speaker 2: You should have had a better attitude.
Speaker 5: Like it's so fucking disgusting when you think about any
Speaker 5: failure case of this, and it's, oh, I don't know,
Speaker 5: it's so hard to argue against, but it's just like
Speaker 5: you're it's so gross for that reason.
Speaker 7: To me, Well, I actually think like it's incredibly like
Speaker 7: it's I completely it's like gross. It stocks like I
Speaker 7: completely agree, but it's also so enticing, right, Like I
Speaker 7: am some like I'll give myself as an example. I've
Speaker 7: been a little down the dumps, shall we say, since
Speaker 7: January twentieth, and you know, I like, you can feel
Speaker 7: very out of control and there's so much happening that
Speaker 7: I really can't control. Somebody coming in and saying, actually,
Speaker 7: you can control it, don't be afraid because it's all
Speaker 7: it's all in your head. And if you just did X,
Speaker 7: Y Z or got right in this way you can
Speaker 7: control it. That is so intoxicating, and especially as people
Speaker 7: feel out of control. Like I get why people like
Speaker 7: Oprah turned to this because it works. And I have
Speaker 7: to say, like, I get why it works. I get
Speaker 7: why it's effective.
Speaker 5: Well, because because there's like a germ of truth, like
Speaker 5: speaking of like Jordan Peterson. I did have a moment
Speaker 5: where I was like, you know, most of these boys
Speaker 5: that listen to him really could clean their room.
Speaker 2: More like and that would sensuably improve their.
Speaker 6: Lives, and then getting might help.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but then once once the little amount of information
Speaker 5: like actual of value that they've imparted has paid off,
Speaker 5: everything subsequent to that is complete bullshit.
Speaker 2: And it's just like the line of like how valuable
Speaker 2: this is is.
Speaker 5: But it's such a like even as we're talking, you
Speaker 5: see how you lose this argument because it's like.
Speaker 8: Well, okay, some of this works, but like not all
Speaker 8: of it, but I can't prove that none of it works,
Speaker 8: and no, da dah, and you just you become a
Speaker 8: dithering idiot in the face of all you have to
Speaker 8: do is be positive.
Speaker 5: Yeah, like a simple lie is always going to be
Speaker 5: better than a laborious.
Speaker 1: Refutation yeah, yeah, I think that's right, and I think fundamentally,
Speaker 1: you know, part of what's so poisonous here is that
Speaker 1: it's taking therapy and it's turning it into magic, right that,
Speaker 1: like this is a thing you can magically fix and
Speaker 1: have a breakthrough in twenty five minutes sitting on a
Speaker 1: couch in front of an audience with doctor Phil. Like
Speaker 1: that's the way therapy works. And also that's the way
Speaker 1: fixing the world works. Is if you change your attitude,
Speaker 1: all of these good things will come to you. You
Speaker 1: don't have to worry about dealing with structural problems in
Speaker 1: legislation and the government and all of this shit, like
Speaker 1: it's just you when in reality, therapy and making the
Speaker 1: world better work the same way, which is slowly doing
Speaker 1: laborious work consistently over long periods of time. Right, Yes,
Speaker 1: that's the problem.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 7: It's like that episode of Rick and Morty when Rick
Speaker 7: goes to therapy and the therapist is like, I get
Speaker 7: that this is like flossing for you, and it's like
Speaker 7: not exciting and it doesn't happen all at once and
Speaker 7: it's just boring maintenance. But like that's the trick, Like
Speaker 7: that's the magic is you do it a lot, and
Speaker 7: you get small gains and maybe over the course of
Speaker 7: years you feel a little bit better consistently and like tada,
Speaker 7: Like people do.
Speaker 6: Want that magic solution in that magic bullet.
Speaker 7: I get why that's really enticing, but that's just not
Speaker 7: the way it works.
Speaker 1: And I think this is as someone who was in
Speaker 1: psychedelic delic culture fifteen years ago. This was one of
Speaker 1: the issues that we had with it, which is psychedelics,
Speaker 1: particularly LSD mushrooms MDMA have massive potential as ais therapeutic aids,
Speaker 1: but they aren't magic, and there's a degree to which
Speaker 1: people treated them both as magic and also as inherently positive.
Speaker 1: At this point, I have gone through enough self described
Speaker 1: radicalization journeys by nazis who credited it to an LSD trip.
Speaker 1: I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, this is a
Speaker 1: knife what cuts both ways? My friends.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's just a big old scramble and you just wish,
Speaker 5: Yeah it works. And also it's such a it's such
Speaker 5: a like insidious grift because it's so easy. Then when
Speaker 5: it doesn't work, for you to point out that you
Speaker 5: didn't magic hard enough in various ways.
Speaker 7: Yeah, when your kid actually dies of the cancer they
Speaker 7: had because their vibes were off. You can just be like, no,
Speaker 7: you didn't want it, he didn't want to live enough,
Speaker 7: or whatever. It's never the huckster's fault.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now, speaking of your children dying, they never will if
Speaker 1: you purchase the products and services that are advertised on
Speaker 1: this on this podcast, it's the only way to keep
Speaker 1: your family safe. Probably we're back. So In her book
Speaker 1: The Age of Oprah, Jenny's Peck quotes a history of
Speaker 1: psychotherapy by Philip Cushman. He wrote in nineteen ninety five, quote,
Speaker 1: every era has a particular configuration of self illness healer technology.
Speaker 1: They are a kind of cultural package. They are interrelated, intertwined, interpenetrating.
Speaker 1: So when we study a particular illness, we are also
Speaker 1: studying the conditions that shape and define that illness and
Speaker 1: the sociopolitical impact of those who are responsible for healing it.
Speaker 1: Janis continues, Winfrey's identification is a spiritual healer. Her diagnosis
Speaker 1: of what ails us, and her prescribed cure are rooted
Speaker 1: historically in the therapeutic enterprise that emerged in the nineteenth
Speaker 1: century and was fully institutionalized in the United States by
Speaker 1: the mid twentieth century. Debbie Epstein and Deborah Steinberg suggest
Speaker 1: that the centrality of therapeutic discourse to the framing of
Speaker 1: the Oprah Winfrey Show issues from the increasing ubiquity of
Speaker 1: therapy as a language of self and interpersonal relationship, and
Speaker 1: even as a way of life. Winfrey's media enterprise draws
Speaker 1: heavily on a self help model of therapy, with its
Speaker 1: peculiarly American belief that the individual's power to initiate a
Speaker 1: renaissance of self, of nation, of other. This promise of
Speaker 1: individual efficacy and liberation is the ground upon which Winfrey's
Speaker 1: stakes are claimed to empower her followers. It is also
Speaker 1: the basis of observers claims that she is an inspirational phenomenon,
Speaker 1: a public leader, and quote almost a religion.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, you know, as we're talking, I just had
Speaker 5: the realization that, like what kind of what Oprah offers
Speaker 5: is kind of like those like right wing pregnancy crisis centers.
Speaker 2: They're like abortion.
Speaker 5: Clinics, because it's like it's a simulacrum of the thing
Speaker 5: that you actually need.
Speaker 2: And it just serves these horrible ends.
Speaker 5: Like yeah, I guess those are at least directed and
Speaker 5: intentional and full of lies and throughout all the I
Speaker 5: will say, the thing that is like still kind of
Speaker 5: there is like it doesn't it still doesn't seem like
Speaker 5: Oprah is being intentionally eve or anyway. There's enough plausible
Speaker 5: deniability here.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, I mean there's a ton of it,
Speaker 1: and like it's important not to as we kind of
Speaker 1: litigate bastardism like this is this is not an attempt
Speaker 1: by Oprah to shift the culture. This is just sort of,
Speaker 1: I think a mix of what she really believes, she
Speaker 1: really feels like personally, she had so much stacked against her,
Speaker 1: it was her attitude that allowed her to be successful, right,
Speaker 1: whereas the reality is, I mean, among other things, Oprah
Speaker 1: has said like she was an affirmative action higher that
Speaker 1: those programs and policies function the way they were supposed to,
Speaker 1: which was a person who maybe wouldn't have gotten that
Speaker 1: opportunity because of racism, got some opportunities that she proved
Speaker 1: to be excellently suited for. In addition to that, she
Speaker 1: had the fortune of like having a father who chose
Speaker 1: to be her father, did not actually have to take
Speaker 1: that role upon himself, and provided her with a lot
Speaker 1: of resources she otherwise wouldn't have had. And like, it's
Speaker 1: not just it wasn't just her attitude that led to
Speaker 1: her success, right, you know, as in this is the
Speaker 1: case for everybody.
Speaker 2: Right, But even even.
Speaker 5: While you're describing like like among her peers, she at
Speaker 5: least will acknowledge things like affirmative action, whereas like like
Speaker 5: every single billionaire you know, got to where they are
Speaker 5: with immense like moments of chance. They high they hire
Speaker 5: rolled many times in a row, and like the overarching
Speaker 5: like common commonality between most of them is they believe
Speaker 5: that none of that was chance. Yeah, over at least
Speaker 5: has a little bit of like like still least some millionaire.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. So there's an interesting bit about because I think
Speaker 1: it is important. The degree to which she was talked
Speaker 1: about as like a religious figure is kind of significant.
Speaker 1: And to kind of make that case, there's a chunk
Speaker 1: in the age of Oprah that talks about an expensive
Speaker 1: self help speaking to her when Free launched in the
Speaker 1: early two thousands, the Personal Growth Summit, And through that
Speaker 1: I found a review of the Personal Growth Summit in
Speaker 1: the La Times, which is a real newspaper that was
Speaker 1: purportedly reputable at least in that era. This is what
Speaker 1: this is the reviewer. A prophet walks among us, and
Speaker 1: her name is Oprah. You know her as a television
Speaker 1: talk show host, one of the most popular, successful, and
Speaker 1: recognizable women of our time. But make no mistake, she
Speaker 1: is also a healer, sent to earth to spread the word.
Speaker 1: Perhaps it is only fitting that a twenty first century
Speaker 1: wise man is a woman and that her chief medium
Speaker 1: is electronic Buddha might have taken to the airwaves had
Speaker 1: they been available. Gifted with a profound moral insight an
Speaker 1: exceptional rapport with her followers, Oprah Winfrey has grown from
Speaker 1: a masterful communicator into an inspirational phenomenon.
Speaker 6: I need to know who wrote that and where they
Speaker 6: are now.
Speaker 1: I could pull that up absolutely. Yeah, let's check this out.
Speaker 1: Flocking to the Church of Oprah June twenty fifth, two thousand,
Speaker 1: Times staff writer. They took a name on it, Ah,
Speaker 1: you sons a bit.
Speaker 7: You know, It's like somebody was embarrassed by that, and
Speaker 7: it was like, look at that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can't have this detention to me done that now.
Speaker 1: One thing that's really interesting to me about Oprah is
Speaker 1: that she demonstrates how quickly the worm can turn for
Speaker 1: a celebrity once they leave the public eye. Because like
Speaker 1: twenty eleven, I think is Winner Show stops being on
Speaker 1: the air as a daily thing, and QAnon starts about
Speaker 1: a decade later. Right, so she is. She stops being
Speaker 1: a daily figure for most Americans about a decade before QAnon.
Speaker 1: And yet in twenty twenty, a sizeable chunk of the
Speaker 1: QAnon movement starts spreading rumors that Oprah has been secretly
Speaker 1: arrested for sex trafficking. Now, this is obviously untrue, but
Speaker 1: there are some things that fuel the allegations. One of
Speaker 1: them is Oprah's long standing professional relationships with two men
Speaker 1: who have definitely did sex trafficking, Harvey Weinstein and our
Speaker 1: old friend p Diddy. Now, for Weinstein's case, there is
Speaker 1: a photo of Oprah kissing Weinstein on the cheek, which
Speaker 1: you can find without much effort. I have found zero
Speaker 1: solid information that implies anything beyond a professional relationship between Oprah,
Speaker 1: who stars in one movie produced by his company, and Weinstein. However,
Speaker 1: there have been allegations made by other celebrities. I should
Speaker 1: note that when interviewed about Weinstein by Gwyneth Paltrow, Oprah
Speaker 1: said what I knew about Harvey was that Harvey was
Speaker 1: a bully and that if Harvey's on the phone, you go, God,
Speaker 1: you don't want to take the call because you're going
Speaker 1: to get bullied in some way. That is probably true
Speaker 1: in that a lot of people talk about a lot
Speaker 1: of people who worked with Harvey talked about him that way.
Speaker 1: He's kind of the archetypal dick producer. That said. People
Speaker 1: have alleged that Oprah knew more was aware of a
Speaker 1: lot of the illegal, bad stuff Weinstein was doing. I
Speaker 1: think that's also very likely. A great deal of people
Speaker 1: in Hollywood knew something, and someone as powerful as Oprah
Speaker 1: was probably to some extent aware of Weinstein's problematic behavior. Now,
Speaker 1: that does not mean she was directly enabling or helping
Speaker 1: to hide it. It's just the kind of gross thing
Speaker 1: that a lot of people in the industry did, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, Seth MacFarlane is like came out and made
Speaker 1: some joke about Weinstein during one awards ceremony or the other.
Speaker 1: That was like a big deal because everyone was aware
Speaker 1: of the fact that Harvey was, you know, maybe not
Speaker 1: certainly not the extent of what he was doing, but
Speaker 1: everyone knew He's not a safe guy to leave a
Speaker 1: young woman alone with right to the extent that, like,
Speaker 1: someone would make a joke about that, and I think
Speaker 1: it was the Oscars, the Emmys or whatever, and people
Speaker 1: got it because he was that much of a famous creep.
Speaker 1: And in the case of Rose mcgo and, who called
Speaker 1: Winfrey as fake as they come as a result of
Speaker 1: her condemning Weinstein, her issue with Oprah comes from the
Speaker 1: fact that Oprah had been set to produce a movie
Speaker 1: about famed sex abuser Russell Simmons, and then resigned from
Speaker 1: producing that movie. Oprah claims she had creative differences. I'm
Speaker 1: not interested in litigating that, in part because that's all
Speaker 1: I can find on the matter, and that's not conclusive.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of reasons why you would drop out
Speaker 1: of producing a movie that doesn't really count as like
Speaker 1: you're trying to cover it up. I'm vun any evidence
Speaker 1: she tried to stop the thing from being made, right,
Speaker 1: Rose is not the only celebrity who was alleged that
Speaker 1: Oprah knew more about Weinstein than she let On Seal
Speaker 1: came out the guy who wrote Kiss from a Rose
Speaker 1: and has made allegations that basically, you knew a lot
Speaker 1: more than you're saying. Again, this may be true. Seal
Speaker 1: has also been accused of and investigated for sexual battery.
Speaker 1: So yeah, you know, I don't know where we want
Speaker 1: to go there.
Speaker 5: I mean it is sort of that like not mud slinging,
Speaker 5: because it's factual. That's like, I mean again, you're we're
Speaker 5: barely past the era of or not even we're still
Speaker 5: within the era of men on the internet being like
Speaker 5: oh I can't wait t other you know xyz like
Speaker 5: young Woman as eighteen. I It's it's a little bit
Speaker 5: of that, like this ship was definitely happening, by the way,
Speaker 5: definitely is happening, and there's whispers about it, but like
Speaker 5: you kind.
Speaker 2: Of just like there's there's a limit to what you
Speaker 2: can do.
Speaker 5: So like, yeah, it's that kind of thing where like
Speaker 5: every time, like like Democrats go after Republicans and they're like, oh,
Speaker 5: you wouldn't want this turn back on you, like, oh,
Speaker 5: we're gonna we're gonna go after your heroes, and it's
Speaker 5: like truly, like yes, they're all fucking horrible people. Get
Speaker 5: them all out of there. If you've done crime, I
Speaker 5: don't care what political party or like who you are
Speaker 5: in the culture.
Speaker 1: This does, though there's also a murkier aspect of it,
Speaker 1: where again, when we say Oprah probably knew something about Weinstein,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying Oprah new Weinstein had committed a litany
Speaker 1: of felonies. Oprah new he's kind of like he's like,
Speaker 1: he'll sexually harass you, he'll make gross comments. You know,
Speaker 1: he might like.
Speaker 2: Or it's like Hollywood in that, like, yeah, you heard
Speaker 2: a bunch of stuff.
Speaker 1: You don't have evidence, and like you can there's legal
Speaker 1: consequences for just like accusing someone to powerful and wealthy
Speaker 1: without those evidence, yea of like being a sex offender.
Speaker 1: Like and this is the kind of thing where it's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: so we're attacking Oprah for stuff like her involvement in Weinstein.
Speaker 1: I don't know how extensive it was. Everyone kind of
Speaker 1: involved in the mud slinging has ulterior motives and it's weird.
Speaker 1: What I can prove is that Weinstein and Oprah worked
Speaker 1: together at some point and that likewise, Oprah went to
Speaker 1: a number of Ditty's parties. And these are specifically the
Speaker 1: white parties, right, the ones that were not exclusively devoted
Speaker 1: to sex crimes. So I part of the issue is
Speaker 1: that these two are both very famous people and in
Speaker 1: the industry Oprah was in, and so obviously she had
Speaker 1: personal and professional connections to them. But again, when it
Speaker 1: comes to actual crimes, there is zero evidence of Oprah
Speaker 1: directly enabling or directly covering up either of those men's crimes.
Speaker 1: That evidence does not exist, and from what I've seen,
Speaker 1: it looks like she's probably guilty of the same thing
Speaker 1: most people at her level in Hollywood are, which is
Speaker 1: being like that guy seems fucked up. I'm just not
Speaker 1: going to get too close.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I do want to give a plug to the
Speaker 7: documentary that she pulled out of, because it did end
Speaker 7: up getting produced.
Speaker 6: It's called on the Record. It tells.
Speaker 7: It features Drew Dixon, who is this like very iconic
Speaker 7: hip hop producer who her entire career was almost derailed
Speaker 7: because of people like Russells, and so, yeah, I also
Speaker 7: agree that I think that when it comes to Oprah
Speaker 7: and these powerful men, I think that like that, I
Speaker 7: understand why it lends itself to conspiracy theories. Because powerful, rich,
Speaker 7: famous people know each other, they work together, they're photographed
Speaker 7: with each other like that doesn't mean that some that
Speaker 7: doesn't mean that Oprah like had a direct hand in
Speaker 7: enabling Weinstein's sex crimes, but like, like, that's just how
Speaker 7: it works.
Speaker 1: Weinstein wouldn't need her for that, right, There's no line
Speaker 1: between the women that he abused and like Oprah unlike.
Speaker 1: For examples, we'll talk about Oprah told women John of
Speaker 1: God was a safe guy to fly to fucking Brazil
Speaker 1: and get treated by and a number of women got
Speaker 1: raped because they took the advice of the Oprah Winfrey
Speaker 1: show endorsing this man. That is something that she should
Speaker 1: be held accountable for. I just don't have any evidence
Speaker 1: that she's done anything in the Weinstein case or in
Speaker 1: the p Didty case. Now, the most bullshit thing she
Speaker 1: gets accused of by the QAnon types is involvement with
Speaker 1: Jeffrey Epstein. If you google Oprah Winfrey Epstein, you will
Speaker 1: also come across this. Randomly. You will find articles and
Speaker 1: viral tweets and tiktoks, all of which have some variation
Speaker 1: of the sentence Oprah Winfrey mentioned five times and files
Speaker 1: related to the Epstein case. That sounds bad, right, Let's
Speaker 1: look into what that means. So one of the things
Speaker 1: that turned me onto this was a viral post on
Speaker 1: Facebook with the title justin Oprah has been revealed as
Speaker 1: a client on the Epstein list, capitalizing the first letter
Speaker 1: of each of those words, what's your reaction and that's
Speaker 1: complete bullshit. Oprah's name shows up five times in documents
Speaker 1: for the Epstein case. The first two times are because
Speaker 1: the files include screenshots of articles, one from Radar Online
Speaker 1: and one from the Daily Mail. Those articles in the
Speaker 1: bottom of them have a suggested other re You know
Speaker 1: how articles work. You finish an article will say, hey,
Speaker 1: you might be interested in this article on a different topic.
Speaker 1: Those articles that were suggested by the articles relevant to
Speaker 1: the Epstein trial mentioned Oprah. That's two of the five mentions, right,
Speaker 1: is something completely unrelated to the case that just because
Speaker 1: somebody fucking screen grabbed the whole page, Oprah's name winds
Speaker 1: up on it. The other three times come from emails
Speaker 1: introduced as evidence, where a journalist working with one of
Speaker 1: Epstein's accusers on a book tells a book agent, I
Speaker 1: think this book will sell well to Oprah's audience. Now,
Speaker 1: if you're keeping track, what does that mean? Which means
Speaker 1: Oprah has nothing to fucking do with Jeffrey Epstein.
Speaker 5: I mean the other just like heuristic way to look
Speaker 5: at it is if these fox had concrete evidence on
Speaker 5: a black woman, you sure as fuck we would know
Speaker 5: about it.
Speaker 7: Yes, oh my god, would you get the pictures that'd
Speaker 7: be screenshots or be emails tie wise whole works.
Speaker 5: Like there would there'd be no need for insinuation if
Speaker 5: any evidence existed.
Speaker 1: It's this way a question. So yeah, yeah, what.
Speaker 7: Like when so there are documented connections with Oprah and
Speaker 7: like men who turned out to be creeps who were
Speaker 7: safe to be around.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can see, and she's there's a picture of
Speaker 1: her kissing Weinstein on the neck, you know.
Speaker 7: But like, why do you think people obsess about these
Speaker 7: bullshit claims about her connection to people like Epstein when
Speaker 7: there are documented connections between her and people who were
Speaker 7: back like genuinely, Like that is a smoking gun where
Speaker 7: she said this guy was safe and endorsed him and
Speaker 7: then he wasn't. Like why do people focus so much
Speaker 7: on the ones that are bullshit?
Speaker 1: Because the people who hate Oprah and are making stuff
Speaker 1: up about her primarily hate her because she is a
Speaker 1: liberal figure and the celebrity is the same reason they're
Speaker 1: going after like Tom Hanks, right, because he was pro vaccine.
Speaker 1: The other thing is the stuff she's done that's bad
Speaker 1: is stuff they do in love and don't think is bad, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, like that's that's that's what it's why when
Speaker 1: people talk about the problem of child sex abuse in
Speaker 1: child sex trafficking, they obsessed with this largely fanciful idea
Speaker 1: of like three and four year olds being trafficked around
Speaker 1: the world in large numbers and abducted from their fucking
Speaker 1: white families, which is not really the issue. The issue
Speaker 1: is primarily a dope men related to sixteen and seventeen
Speaker 1: and fifteen year old girls molesting them, you know. And
Speaker 1: part of why they don't like to do that is
Speaker 1: that an awful lot of the guys who obsessed with
Speaker 1: shoot your local pedophile, think it would be fine if
Speaker 1: they married a sixteen year old as long as you know,
Speaker 1: they did it in the church and their parents were
Speaker 1: okay with it. Yeah, that's why, you know.
Speaker 5: Well, and then also the other big portion of it
Speaker 5: is in the fucking church.
Speaker 1: Itself right right where you can marry fourteen year olds
Speaker 1: in a lot of US states as long as you
Speaker 1: do it, you know, through God and their parents. Anyway,
Speaker 1: we don't need to make that the subject every time
Speaker 1: we talk about this shit. But I think when it
Speaker 1: comes to like properly criticizing here, one thing you have
Speaker 1: to note is that Oprah has made child abuse and
Speaker 1: child sex abuse constant sess of focuses with her fundraising activities.
Speaker 1: She has done harm through spreading misinformation about child abuse,
Speaker 1: but she's not a sex criminal. This is something she
Speaker 1: puts a lot of. She very much actively has tried
Speaker 1: to reduce again in imperfect ways, but she's put her
Speaker 1: money where her mouth is a lot. And one of
Speaker 1: the things she is really consistently puts effort into is
Speaker 1: trying to help underprivileged, at risk kids. And again, this
Speaker 1: is always a mixed bag. And this brings me to
Speaker 1: the story of the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls
Speaker 1: or OWLAG as we're going to be calling it, Bridget,
Speaker 1: you were excited to get into this topic. What have
Speaker 1: you heard of our LAG? This is our South African school.
Speaker 7: I remember it very clearly because my mother and my
Speaker 7: grandmother and I watched these episodes like it was a
Speaker 7: special family event to get together and watch Oprah in Africa,
Speaker 7: Like y'all, this was a big deal.
Speaker 6: I remember this again.
Speaker 1: Was yesterday, Yeah, yeah, and it was you know, this
Speaker 1: starts it open. The school opens in January of two
Speaker 1: thousand and seven. It is inspired the year before. She's
Speaker 1: vacationing in South Africa. She's hanging out with Nelson Mandela,
Speaker 1: because when you're Oprah, you get to hang out with
Speaker 1: Nelson Mandela, and she decides on the spot to while
Speaker 1: they're talking and like looking, you know, going through she's
Speaker 1: seeing the poverty of a lot of the poorest South
Speaker 1: African children. She decides on the spot, I'm going to
Speaker 1: create a school for very bright and very poor South
Speaker 1: African kids. These are kids who are at the top
Speaker 1: of their public schools in terms of test scores and
Speaker 1: come from households that make less than nine hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty dollars a month. Right now, the project is instantly
Speaker 1: controversial among the wealthy neighborhood where the school is built.
Speaker 1: They do not like that a bunch of poor black
Speaker 1: girls are going to be going to school in this
Speaker 1: largely white neighborhood. The administration is deluged with complaints. Neighbors
Speaker 1: begin staking out the school during recess, watching the few
Speaker 1: girls in this white neighborhood as they play soccer, Oprah
Speaker 1: has the school put up hedges to block the field
Speaker 1: from view. And so as we talk about the things
Speaker 1: that are criticizable about this venture, I don't want to
Speaker 1: lose the fact that like she is really pissing off
Speaker 1: a lot of South African racists, which again are the
Speaker 1: most racist racists, Like we're we're If we're ranking the
Speaker 1: racist the very top of that pyramid is South African racists.
Speaker 1: No one's ever been better. Speaking of South Africa, I'm
Speaker 1: fairly certain none of our sponsors are based in South Africa.
Speaker 1: We're back, Apartheid's not around anymore. So I guess we
Speaker 1: probably shouldn't have a blanket band on South African sponsors.
Speaker 5: But you know, uh, those guys are still doing I
Speaker 5: would say, whoever the sponsor, is high chance some South
Speaker 5: African racist has a stake in that company.
Speaker 1: There's a very good old British song. I've never met
Speaker 1: a nice South African that gets into gets into some
Speaker 1: of these issues. So Oprah is incredibly integral to the
Speaker 1: design of this school. She is not just This is
Speaker 1: not just a case for good and for ill. Oprah
Speaker 1: is not just somebody who throws money at a problem
Speaker 1: to have her name attached to it. This is a
Speaker 1: personal focus, and she pours hundreds of hours of her
Speaker 1: own personal labor into making this school. I want to
Speaker 1: quote from an article on Forbes. Winfrey severed ties with
Speaker 1: the state and decided to go it alone, hiring the
Speaker 1: architects behind Johannesburg's favorite famous apartheid museum. She donned Jean's
Speaker 1: in a hard hat and oversaw every aspect of construction.
Speaker 1: She thought of the little things. The tubs of umbrellas
Speaker 1: outside each building for use during South Africa's rainy season,
Speaker 1: when it pours almost NonStop for forty days. They're green,
Speaker 1: her favorite color, to match the girl's uniforms. At the
Speaker 1: school's first convocation, Winfrey took the stage to address the
Speaker 1: girls and their relatives, bust in from across South Africa.
Speaker 1: For many years, people always ask me why didn't I
Speaker 1: have children, she told the crowd. Now I know, and
Speaker 1: you know that's largely good. But you can also see
Speaker 1: a little weird, although again in like a very like
Speaker 1: sympathetic way. Oprah is, by this person point, very rich,
Speaker 1: and being very rich also means you're coming increasingly unhinged
Speaker 1: as you age. Some of the evidence for that is
Speaker 1: that in addition to the stuff that is pretty like fine, right,
Speaker 1: like okay, yeah, I give them green umbrellas because that's
Speaker 1: your favorite color. Whatever you're paying for it, that's your right.
Speaker 1: During like the big opening event for the school, because
Speaker 1: they're having a bunch of celebrities Nelson Mandela and like
Speaker 1: Diane Sawyer are showing up, she has the groundskeeper because
Speaker 1: it's during the dry season, she has the groundskeepers paint
Speaker 1: the yellow grass green, which is again not evil, just
Speaker 1: kind of like, oh yeah, that's the kind of thing
Speaker 1: you get to do and you have Oprah money.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the kind of thing you worry about.
Speaker 1: It's just like, I guess, yeah, this school's not going
Speaker 1: to look good enough if the grass is yellow. Now,
Speaker 1: Oprah has to date spent more than one hundred million
Speaker 1: dollars on both the school. This is initially I think
Speaker 1: supposed to be like a six million dollar project. It
Speaker 1: balloons to forty million. And again she's paid over like
Speaker 1: one hundred million at this point. So for one thing
Speaker 1: you cannot Faulter for is dedication. This is not something
Speaker 1: she is casual about. This is not something where she
Speaker 1: was just kind of like siphoning some money off for
Speaker 1: a tax break. She's personally involved in this. And this
Speaker 1: school has provided an excellent education for a lot of
Speaker 1: I think a couple hundred girls have graduated at this point.
Speaker 1: And Winfrey is also committed to pay for the secondary
Speaker 1: education of any girl who graduates from this school, which
Speaker 1: is where a lot of the cost comes from. She's
Speaker 1: not just paying for this school, She's paying for these
Speaker 1: kids to go to college. And in fact, recently the
Speaker 1: first of these girls received a PhD. Oprah showed up
Speaker 1: at her graduation ceremony. And this is good. This is,
Speaker 1: broadly speaking, a thing that has done good. There are
Speaker 1: valid criticisms of it, like the fact that Oprah's focus
Speaker 1: on luxury means that this one school, which again has
Speaker 1: only graduated a couple hundred girls, could have paid for
Speaker 1: a lot more schools that had a similar educational quality,
Speaker 1: if not for some of the expensive things that are
Speaker 1: largely a result of Oprah's sort of focuses. An article
Speaker 1: on the school in Reuter's Notes, Action Aid, a global
Speaker 1: development group, said the school exposes the stark disparities in
Speaker 1: South Africa's education system, still haunted by the legacy of
Speaker 1: apartheid and as an insult to millions of poor children
Speaker 1: worldwide wanting a decent education, and that is harsh. But
Speaker 1: there's a segment from Forbes Africa, based on an interview
Speaker 1: with Sam Blake, the director of operations, that does kind
Speaker 1: of back that up quote. Why were the girls sleeping
Speaker 1: on two hundred threadcount sheets? Why were there chandeliers hanging
Speaker 1: from the library ceiling and brightly colored mosaic tile pillars
Speaker 1: outside of the cafeteria. Blake grimaces when he's reminded of
Speaker 1: those early articles when you walk into a beautiful place,
Speaker 1: you think better of yourself. He explains, simply, again, I
Speaker 1: don't know that you would call I don't think it
Speaker 1: would be right to call that evil, but it is like,
Speaker 1: this is what you get when you have a very
Speaker 1: serious problem and somebody who is not an expert on
Speaker 1: education but has several billion dollars goes in to fix it.
Speaker 1: Is you can sometimes get a good thing to happen.
Speaker 1: And I think overall, this school is a good thing,
Speaker 1: but it's so much more expensive than it needs to be,
Speaker 1: and a lot more girls could be helped if, for example,
Speaker 1: that money had been like.
Speaker 5: Like if overpaid correct taxes and then went into the
Speaker 5: education system.
Speaker 1: And since she's not South Africa, I didn't. More to
Speaker 1: the point of that money, if that one hundred million
Speaker 1: had been handed to a group of actual education experts
Speaker 1: in order to build a system to improve educational quality
Speaker 1: for underprivileged Kitchen, South Africa, probably would have helped a
Speaker 1: lot more kids, right, And that's that's not bastardism, right,
Speaker 1: anymore than you're not a bastard if you ordered takeout
Speaker 1: last night. That's like a waste of money, right, But
Speaker 1: like it helps kids. It's just an it's an example
Speaker 1: of like what's problematic about even good billionaire charity.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's the same reason like Batman is a bastard
Speaker 5: because batmanning is by far the least effective use of
Speaker 5: your billions to keep crime down. Yeah, Like it's vanity
Speaker 5: and it's it's just like it's not bastardy, but it's
Speaker 5: like come.
Speaker 1: On evidence of like, yeah, we really ought to just
Speaker 1: tax these people a hell of a lot more so
Speaker 1: they can't exist as billionaires. But anyway, moving on, when
Speaker 1: it comes to this school, what's it's most famous for
Speaker 1: outside of South Africa is the allegations that have come
Speaker 1: out from within it that are problematic and those Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm just going to list what's happened. So, within months
Speaker 1: of the school opening, there were allegations that the matron
Speaker 1: of the dormitory of the dormitories for the kids, tiny
Speaker 1: Macoppo is her name, had attempted to kiss and fondle
Speaker 1: as many as six teenaged girls at the academy. Now,
Speaker 1: Oprah acted very quickly, as far as I can tell,
Speaker 1: as soon as evidence came out. There are allegations that
Speaker 1: she tried to hide it before it came out. I
Speaker 1: haven't seen anything that actually backs those up. Like what
Speaker 1: I have seen looks like she acted as quickly as possible.
Speaker 1: Who knows if there's stuff that I'm not you know
Speaker 1: that's not public, but that just seems to be people
Speaker 1: at this point kind of talking shit. She acts very quickly,
Speaker 1: She fires Macopo. I should also say Macopo is tried
Speaker 1: and is found not guilty three years later. So again
Speaker 1: I can't say I'm not going to do the Oprah
Speaker 1: thing and say she definitely did it.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm not an expert on this case.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: The incident does, however, leave a stain on the school
Speaker 1: that deepens in early two thousand and nine when seven
Speaker 1: students are expelled for bad behavior that includes sexual harassment
Speaker 1: of classmates. And around the same time, a seventeen year
Speaker 1: old student is found with a dead infant child in
Speaker 1: her handbag. Yeah, and this is like I think she
Speaker 1: had a stillbirth or something like that. Like this is
Speaker 1: a case of like somebody who gets pregnant very young,
Speaker 1: and like the baby doesn't make it. And these are
Speaker 1: all of this stuff. The fact that you have a
Speaker 1: bunch of the kids there who are abusing other kids.
Speaker 1: This has and the fact that there's these allegations from
Speaker 1: this teacher, this has led to accusations. And you'll get
Speaker 1: this a lot. And like the QAnon side of things
Speaker 1: that Oprah started like a sex abuse factory to molest
Speaker 1: kids in South Africa. And as a guy who has
Speaker 1: told stories about schools that were sex abuse factories for
Speaker 1: the express purpose of allowing certain people to lest children,
Speaker 1: I have to tell you that's not what's happening here.
Speaker 1: Our lag is a school for underprivileged kids living in
Speaker 1: a country where the deepest poverty is unimaginable to most Americans.
Speaker 1: As Winfrey herself said, by the time a girl gets
Speaker 1: to my school, normally she suffered on average six major
Speaker 1: life traumas they've lost a parent or both parents, multiple accidents,
Speaker 1: death in your family, aides, rape, sexual molestation, all of it.
Speaker 1: Unimaginable things have happened. Creating an institution where these students
Speaker 1: are taken in away from their families. I should note
Speaker 1: you supported and asked to live together is a huge, messy,
Speaker 1: complicated thing. There's no way stuff like this wouldn't happen
Speaker 1: to some extent. So what you have to judge the
Speaker 1: school on is did they set up guard rails to
Speaker 1: make it possible to report this stuff to make it
Speaker 1: less likely? And did they act quickly when evidence came out?
Speaker 1: And as far as I can tell more or less, yeah,
Speaker 1: again there's some critiques there. It certainly was not a
Speaker 1: set up perfectly, but like generally, yeah, it seems to
Speaker 1: be the case.
Speaker 7: Well, this is exactly why I think the point that
Speaker 7: you two are making a moment ago is so salient,
Speaker 7: because I don't think that Oprah should have been involved
Speaker 7: in a school like this to begin with. I think
Speaker 7: it is fundamental criticism, like you cannot take extremely at
Speaker 7: risk girls who have been living in extreme poverty. Doesn't
Speaker 7: matter how nice the sheets are or how the chande
Speaker 7: of leers are. These are going to be girls who
Speaker 7: probably have problems, and it's like, of course, this is
Speaker 7: the kind of thing is going to happen when they're all,
Speaker 7: you know, taken away from their support systems and their
Speaker 7: families and all of that.
Speaker 6: I think it's the pinnacle.
Speaker 7: Of nsists, narcissism in vanity to be like, oh, well,
Speaker 7: certainly my money can foster an environment of safety for
Speaker 7: these girls. If you care so much, just give the
Speaker 7: money to people who know what they're doing, who are
Speaker 7: already doing this.
Speaker 6: Don't try to set up a school with your name
Speaker 6: on it.
Speaker 7: Like it's It's one of my biggest pet peeves, people
Speaker 7: who think like, oh, I've got money and my heart's
Speaker 7: in the right place, so I'll start my own nonprofit
Speaker 7: and it'll be it'll be in my image, and it's like, no,
Speaker 7: people have been doing this.
Speaker 6: People know what they're doing.
Speaker 7: There are people who specialize in working with at risk youth.
Speaker 6: Give the money to them, like, don't do it on
Speaker 6: your own for.
Speaker 5: All, like the like the billionaire classes railing against the
Speaker 5: inefficiencies of bureaucracy, like their own vanity and hubris is
Speaker 5: so much more wasteful, disgusting and damaging, and there's no
Speaker 5: way to make them see it. I mean, part of
Speaker 5: what like is here, it's like there's because I was
Speaker 5: going I was almost going to say, like, you know,
Speaker 5: what is the comparison you know, between what happened at
Speaker 5: the Oprah Academy and a baseline when you realize there
Speaker 5: is no baseline, there's nothing to compare this to, Like
Speaker 5: nothing like this exists for a good reason.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 7: And I really there is a thing this needs to
Speaker 7: be studied. Wealthy people trying to open schools like Kanye
Speaker 7: West doing it like there's something.
Speaker 5: I mean.
Speaker 7: I say this as a former educator where when you
Speaker 7: are an educator, everybody thinks.
Speaker 6: They know how to do your job better than you.
Speaker 7: People who have never been in a classroom before, people
Speaker 7: who have never been involved in education before, somehow are all,
Speaker 7: you know, know exactly what to do. There's something about
Speaker 7: education that I think makes rich people who got successful
Speaker 7: in one lane feel like they could open a school
Speaker 7: or they know how to do it.
Speaker 6: It's very frustrating.
Speaker 5: Well because it's partially my guess is that like everyone's like, well,
Speaker 5: I've been to school, I've been a scuted before.
Speaker 1: Well that's really where a lot of this comes from
Speaker 1: with Oprah, where it's like, you, I had a lot
Speaker 1: of trauma as a kid. I was abused and like,
Speaker 1: but also very smart and I got an opportunity and
Speaker 1: so I succeeded. So I know how other smart kids
Speaker 1: that are suffering in like difficult circumstances, I know what
Speaker 1: they need and like, no, every kid's different, Oprah. Like,
Speaker 1: and also, you don't fully understand all of the things
Speaker 1: that helped you because you weren't one of the You
Speaker 1: weren't your dad, right, Like there's things that just like
Speaker 1: all of us, we all and this is part of
Speaker 1: the process of like reconciling, oh, my parents did this
Speaker 1: stuff that was fucked up and also realizing, oh my god,
Speaker 1: I never realized my parents did this thing that was
Speaker 1: like absolutely crucial in me turning out like having these
Speaker 1: positive traits that must have been really hard for them.
Speaker 1: That's just like, yeah, we're.
Speaker 5: How difficult it is, Like, oh, I was fucked up
Speaker 5: by this, but like you're not aware of the choice
Speaker 5: that had to be made. Like yeah, it's a little
Speaker 5: bit like being like, oh, I've eaten at a restaurant before,
Speaker 5: therefore I can be a chef, Like.
Speaker 1: Right, a far, it's just more complicated than that, okay,
Speaker 1: And like this should not have been your gig. You know,
Speaker 1: every now and then you get one of these. Really,
Speaker 1: the only time it's worked is like James Cameron becoming
Speaker 1: a deep sea explorer. But nearly every other time. I
Speaker 1: guess she is second because at least the school is
Speaker 1: a good school.
Speaker 7: But and having I remember so viscerally watching the Oprah
Speaker 7: and Africa specials and again like I want to give
Speaker 7: her grace because I get it right, Like it's like
Speaker 7: the most beautiful, precocious little girls in green uniforms and
Speaker 7: like smiling ear to ear, and it shot with that
Speaker 7: like that like filter on it that everything looks kind
Speaker 7: of like you know what.
Speaker 6: The like glazy filter. It was beautiful.
Speaker 7: I remember crying, like I get why this is more,
Speaker 7: why she would rather do this than just send money
Speaker 7: to somebody who's already doing it.
Speaker 6: But it goes back to.
Speaker 7: That idea of like the the thing that is boring
Speaker 7: and the kind of like commonplace isn't what you want?
Speaker 7: You want your name on a school girls in uniforms
Speaker 7: lined up, smiling from ear to ear, like that's the
Speaker 7: thing that gives you the warm fuzzies.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Well, and also, it's like making one perfect school is
Speaker 5: something you can do, making a dozen pretty good.
Speaker 2: Fixing the system is a lot harder.
Speaker 1: No. I mean, it's like when I started my summer
Speaker 1: camp to teach kids how to blow up trains and
Speaker 1: effectively conduct counterance or insurgent operations. I wanted to teach them,
Speaker 1: but I had to eventually accept that, like, look, I'm
Speaker 1: not an expert educator, which is why I trained a
Speaker 1: LLM on Lawrence of Arabia's books Seven Pillars of Wisdom.
Speaker 1: And I've just let that loose on the kids. You know, now,
Speaker 1: this AI is teaching them everything, and it's go wanna be.
Speaker 7: Fine, Robert, stop trying to recruit for your boy army.
Speaker 1: They're not all boys, said, there's a lot of girls
Speaker 1: not buyinary kids. Look, we don't discriminate as long as
Speaker 1: you're willing to man what wrap it up, If.
Speaker 5: Your fingers are nimble enough to get into the little
Speaker 5: grenade pins your.
Speaker 1: Fingers, if you know how to mix gel ignite, I
Speaker 1: don't care about anything else. Just like the no, okay,
Speaker 1: we should probably stop at this point.
Speaker 4: Now, Anderson says stop.
Speaker 6: Also, are you preparing to.
Speaker 1: Wrap the part? God willing?
Speaker 2: Great?
Speaker 1: So? There are some valid complaints about the school. Parents
Speaker 1: of voice frustration that their time to see their children
Speaker 1: is unfairly curtailed. Restrictive rules for kids have been compared
Speaker 1: by some to some as prison like an article for
Speaker 1: the Atlanta Black Star notes. There's also the recent firing
Speaker 1: of the former head of operations, Simon Metiko after one
Speaker 1: year was reported in December of twenty twenty three. Court
Speaker 1: documents reveal complaints about abuse of authority, intimidation and victimization,
Speaker 1: as well as the mistreatment of learners. Mitiko alleges he
Speaker 1: was fired for his performance during private arbitration at the school.
Speaker 1: Further investigation found other employees who voiced their difficulty with management.
Speaker 1: Once said, working under pressure, threats, and other issues, we
Speaker 1: don't discuss issues with our management as we fear we
Speaker 1: will lose our jobs as we are not given clarity
Speaker 1: or relevant answers. Another said, our lag used to be
Speaker 1: a place where one contributed more than required because there
Speaker 1: was a culture of working together, listening and respecting professional
Speaker 1: opinions that has changed. There is a culture of distrust
Speaker 1: and fear, and I don't know the perfect reality here,
Speaker 1: but again I think we've we've litigated this more than enough.
Speaker 1: The broader problem here is that like the issue of
Speaker 1: rich people launching into crusades to fix major problems without
Speaker 1: knowing much about them, you know, And that's an issue,
Speaker 1: you know, that goes right to the top of this country.
Speaker 1: And probably the best example of OPRAH contributing to this
Speaker 1: in a really toxic way, because our lag at least
Speaker 1: has given a lot, you know, a couple hundred kids
Speaker 1: of very good education. Probably the best example of her
Speaker 1: diving into something she was not really competent to handle
Speaker 1: that had a toxic, toxic knock on effects is her
Speaker 1: support of orphanages in Haiti. There's one specific orphanage that
Speaker 1: she's devoted a massive amount of attention and money towards,
Speaker 1: and this is an orphanage that was started by an
Speaker 1: American family to protect and shelter some of Haiti's hundreds
Speaker 1: of thousands of orphaned kids after a massive earthquake. Oprah
Speaker 1: has repeatedly highlighted and supported the work of missionaries operating
Speaker 1: adoption services to help these orphaned kids get connected to
Speaker 1: people who will adopt them and bring them over, generally
Speaker 1: to the United States. That sounds great, unproblematic. What could
Speaker 1: be bad about supporting an orphanage. This is where we
Speaker 1: get to talk about the problems with the international adoption industry,
Speaker 1: And largely the problems of the international adoption industry is
Speaker 1: that it is an industry that profits off of facilitating
Speaker 1: the adoption of, in this case, poor black children by
Speaker 1: white foreigners with money, in many cases, who are more
Speaker 1: interested in converting the child to their specific brand of
Speaker 1: Christianity or showing the child off to their friends than
Speaker 1: raising a traumatized child. Now, to make this even worse, many,
Speaker 1: if not most, of these orphans aren't actual orphans. Yes,
Speaker 1: after the twenty ten earthquake in Haiti, the number of
Speaker 1: orphanages in the country more than doubled from two hundred
Speaker 1: to seven hundred and fifty two by twenty thirteen. Now,
Speaker 1: Oprah was just one of the mint of the media
Speaker 1: figures making documentaries about these generally operated by foreigners orphanages.
Speaker 1: And really it's one of these like these heroic white
Speaker 1: missions coming to this dangerous place and like really risking
Speaker 1: themselves in order to help these poor, underprivileged kids. Oprah
Speaker 1: is again not the only person doing this, but her
Speaker 1: sheer popularity gives her an outsized role in making this
Speaker 1: a popular cause. At least thirty thousand children wound up
Speaker 1: in Haitian orphanages, and about eighty percent of those thirty
Speaker 1: thousand kids one living parent at least from CNN quote.
Speaker 1: Unable to sustain their children's well being, these parents are
Speaker 1: persuaded to relinquish them to privately run orphanages that promise
Speaker 1: that children will receive shelter, food, and education. This is
Speaker 1: often not the outcome. Instead, the children living in Hades
Speaker 1: orphanages face exploitation and trafficking unintentionally funded by foreign donors.
Speaker 1: Jamie Vernalde of Lumos and GEO, advocating for the institution
Speaker 1: of the Institutionalization of Children, says this this orphanage business,
Speaker 1: where orphanages are established and recruit children to raise donations
Speaker 1: from foreigners, is becoming increasingly recognized globally as a form
Speaker 1: of trafficking. These Haitian orphanages employ people called child finders,
Speaker 1: who seek out struggling families and bribe them for their children.
Speaker 1: The going rate is around seventy five dollars. The money
Speaker 1: to pay these child finders to bribe families for their
Speaker 1: kids comes from the one hundred million dollars a year
Speaker 1: in mostly faith based donating sent to these orphanages. This
Speaker 1: is a much larger issue than Oprah, but she plays
Speaker 1: a significant role in it, and this whole period of time,
Speaker 1: she's running all of these tiery stories praising missionaries who
Speaker 1: take children away from Haiti, and actively defends a system
Speaker 1: that is desperately broken. A good example of this comes
Speaker 1: in February of twenty ten, a group of ten Baptists,
Speaker 1: mostly from Idaho, were arrested in Haiti with thirty three
Speaker 1: children who were absolutely not related to them. When confronted
Speaker 1: by authorities, these Baptists assured them the kids were all
Speaker 1: orphans being taken to loving homes in the United States.
Speaker 1: The Haitian authorities looked into this for three seconds and
Speaker 1: realized no, they had no permission to be doing this,
Speaker 1: and also a lot of those children were in fact
Speaker 1: not orphans. Here's how CNN describes the way those kids
Speaker 1: wound up in the care of missionaries. Most of the
Speaker 1: children appear to be from cabellas parents there told the
Speaker 1: Associated Press they had surrendered their children on January twenty eighth,
Speaker 1: two days after, a local orphanage worker, acting on behalf
Speaker 1: of the Baptists, convened nearly the entire village of about
Speaker 1: five hundred people in a dirt soccer pitch to present
Speaker 1: the Americans offer. The orphanage worker, Isaac Adrian, said he
Speaker 1: told the villagers their children would be educated at a
Speaker 1: home in the Dominican Republic so that they might eventually
Speaker 1: return to take care of their families. Many parents jumped
Speaker 1: at the offer. The village school had collapsed and their
Speaker 1: homes were destroyed at Haites's catastrophic January twelfth quake. They
Speaker 1: had no money to feed the children. They said.
Speaker 5: It's truly like you know, you said it earlier, but
Speaker 5: it's like they're looking for child trafficking here.
Speaker 2: It is. They just don't like it because it's Christians.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, because this is the child trafficking. Now. It
Speaker 1: is unclear to me how much the American missionaries and
Speaker 1: their leader, Laura Silsby knew about what the Haitian parents
Speaker 1: had been told. Laura had met the childfinder who got
Speaker 1: them these kids two days earlier and it's possible he
Speaker 1: did the bulk of the lying. When questioned by authorities
Speaker 1: in the newsletter, Silsby and the missionaries insisted the kids
Speaker 1: had all been handed over by distant relatives who were
Speaker 1: frightened the kids might starve to death. Now that's their
Speaker 1: side of events. The childfinder Adrian, for his part, says
Speaker 1: he had no idea that the entire point Silsby and
Speaker 1: the Americans were in eighty four was to take children
Speaker 1: back to the United States. He thought they were trying
Speaker 1: to take them to an orphanage in the Dominican where
Speaker 1: their families would still have access to them and be
Speaker 1: able to get them back at some point when conditions
Speaker 1: were better. And I tend to think he may be
Speaker 1: the one telling the truth because of lines like this
Speaker 1: from that IP article. The parents of four children taken
Speaker 1: by Silsby said the Americans took down contact information for
Speaker 1: all the families and assured them that a relative would
Speaker 1: be able to visit them in the Dominican Republic. So again,
Speaker 1: when questioned by authorities, Silsby and the missionaries are like, oh,
Speaker 1: distant relatives handed them over because obviously they don't have parents.
Speaker 1: When questioned, the parents say no, no, no, like they
Speaker 1: gave us. They took our contact info and said would
Speaker 1: be able to visit their kids. They were just going
Speaker 1: over the Dominican Republic. So if that's true, this really
Speaker 1: doesn't sound like child theft. On behalf of the missionaries
Speaker 1: and Silsby. Now I'm going to spoil the end and
Speaker 1: say everybody but Silsby gets off scott free, although thankfully
Speaker 1: not with the kids. Silsby did due time in Haitian jail,
Speaker 1: but it was essentially knocked down to like a misdemeanor basically,
Speaker 1: even though the evidence I think might suggest something more nefarious.
Speaker 1: NPR dug into Laura Silsby and described her in an
Speaker 1: article as a woman who found arguably a woman who
Speaker 1: arguably found a lot of society's rules optional. Silsby live
Speaker 1: both in interviews and to the Haitian government about having
Speaker 1: proper paperwork. Back home, she ran a personal shopping internet business,
Speaker 1: and it was being actively pursued by creditors for failing
Speaker 1: to pay her employees or any of the other people
Speaker 1: she owed money. Despite this, Silsby convinced her church that
Speaker 1: she was in the process of putting together a shagra
Speaker 1: law in Idaho for the lucky Haitian kids she was
Speaker 1: about to rescue. The Wall Street Journal rights quote. Miss
Speaker 1: Silsby and miss Coulter traveled into Dominican report Public and
Speaker 1: Haiti last July, late and late last year. They were
Speaker 1: laying the groundwork then for opening an orphanage, said mel Coulter,
Speaker 1: Miss Colter's father. They coordinated with people who they thought
Speaker 1: were handling necessary details and running interference for them, he said.
Speaker 1: So they thought they had everything they needed in documentation.
Speaker 1: Mister Colter said Miss Silsby had an equally grand ambition
Speaker 1: greatered a home. According to a local builder, the Idaho
Speaker 1: plan called for a multimillion dollar complex for runaway children
Speaker 1: on a forty acre lot in Kuna County, Idaho. According
Speaker 1: to Eric Evans, owner of Evans Construction in Meridian, Miss
Speaker 1: Silsby told him it would have an indoor swimming pool,
Speaker 1: tennis courts, and dormitories for the children, said mister Evans,
Speaker 1: adding that she had discussed having him build the project.
Speaker 1: Miss Silsby's mother said that she had never heard of
Speaker 1: any such plan.
Speaker 6: Oof.
Speaker 7: I have to say as someone who grew up in
Speaker 7: the church, so I can say this, Yeah, you can
Speaker 7: get like church folk to hand over money and believe anything.
Speaker 6: Like if you're like I.
Speaker 1: OO now to get back to where Oprah is in.
Speaker 1: I'm not reading this for no reason. Oprah and her
Speaker 1: website and o magazine, Oprah goes to bat for these
Speaker 1: specific missionaries, writing having very sympathetic articles written, doing features
Speaker 1: on how these people are. They're just trying to help.
Speaker 1: They got caught up in this corrupt government and it's
Speaker 1: just a big misunderstanding. But like, these people are really
Speaker 1: good people trying to help, you know. Here's a quote
Speaker 1: from Oprah's write up. The oprah dot com write up
Speaker 1: I should say Jim said he traveled with his group
Speaker 1: to a number of orphanages around Porta Prince. During those visits,
Speaker 1: Jim says they were introduced to children who were said
Speaker 1: to have no home or parents to go home to.
Speaker 1: He says, one of the orphanage directors asked if they
Speaker 1: could take the children to try to help them. As
Speaker 1: we got their name and birth dates, we wrote those
Speaker 1: down and they got on our bus and we started
Speaker 1: taking care of them, basically, he says. The plan, he says,
Speaker 1: was to take the children to a restored hotel in
Speaker 1: the Dominican Republic that had been set up as an orphanage. Now,
Speaker 1: maybe Jim is unaware, but as we know from Salesby's account,
Speaker 1: he was not planning to take these kids to the
Speaker 1: Dominican Republic. And also a lot of the parents say no,
Speaker 1: it wasn't an orphanage director that handed them over. They
Speaker 1: got them from us, right. The closest we get to
Speaker 1: scrutiny of any of this and that oprah dot com
Speaker 1: article is this paragraph. Since the story broke, there have
Speaker 1: been allegations in the media that the group leader, Laura Silsby,
Speaker 1: intended to make a profit on the children by charging
Speaker 1: large fees to get them placed. Jim says he doesn't
Speaker 1: know anything about those.
Speaker 2: Class all be.
Speaker 6: Open and shutcase.
Speaker 1: That open and shutcase. And I know Sophie's fuming right
Speaker 1: now because this has gone very long. But that is
Speaker 1: the end of the episode. I just felt we had to,
Speaker 1: we really had to end this one on the Haitian orphanageists.
Speaker 7: Yeah, oh, Oprah, why'd you get mixed up with these people?
Speaker 2: Why?
Speaker 3: Indeed, and we have we have one more part left,
Speaker 3: don't we, Robert.
Speaker 1: We suare do we have a sixth partner? There are
Speaker 1: still ten pages left in the script, which has finally
Speaker 1: come down to twenty four and sixty eight words.
Speaker 6: That's like a novel.
Speaker 1: It's half of what is generally considered to be the
Speaker 1: length of like a book. Right, fifty thousand is like
Speaker 1: kind of the cutoff. Now that said, I don't want
Speaker 1: to make it out to like I wrote half of
Speaker 1: a nonfiction book. Here, I'm taking other people's original reporting
Speaker 1: and like chopping it up and you know, remixing it.
Speaker 1: That's That's what a lot of this is is. Oh,
Speaker 1: here's three different accounts of this thing. Well, I'm going
Speaker 1: to tell you the similarities and the differences between them.
Speaker 1: Here's different attitudes these different people have about stuff. Right,
Speaker 1: Like I'm not doing I didn't go to Portaprince. I
Speaker 1: didn't do the original reporting on this kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: But this is one of the longest scripts we've ever done.
Speaker 1: This is a Kissinger linked script.
Speaker 2: It's wild.
Speaker 6: Oh I feel him. Oh, I'm honored to be part
Speaker 6: of this like mega episode.
Speaker 5: This really is just I mean, at least now we're
Speaker 5: really getting into like having having gotten the early biography
Speaker 5: out of the way. It's like, Oh, Jesus Christ okay, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: This is the behind the Bastards I'm used to.
Speaker 7: I still think it has like like I don't know,
Speaker 7: I find it's so weird.
Speaker 6: I find myself rooting for her.
Speaker 7: I when I hear the thing about like the Haiti thing,
Speaker 7: I'm like, damn, I was rooting for you, Oprah. I
Speaker 7: wanted to be the voice of like no, guys, it's
Speaker 7: really complex and nuanced.
Speaker 6: But here's it like that and it's hard to say that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yep, all.
Speaker 1: Right everybody, Well this has been behind the Bastards. You
Speaker 1: guys want to plug your pluggables before we roll out here?
Speaker 6: Uh yeah.
Speaker 7: You can listen to my podcast on iHeartRadio called There
Speaker 7: Are No Girls on the Internet. Check it out, and
Speaker 7: you can follow me on Instagram at bridge in rendc
Speaker 7: mm hmm.
Speaker 2: My podcast is Joseus Racist.
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Do whatever you want. People have been finding me on
Speaker 2: Blue Sky. It's nice.
Speaker 1: Find Andrew on Blue Sky. You know, stop him a
Speaker 1: little bit, send him pictures of your food and see
Speaker 1: if he'll send you pictures of his food.
Speaker 2: They did.
Speaker 5: Oh well, that might have been off a Daily's like
Speaker 5: iced appearance, but definitely someone did excellent.
Speaker 1: All right, everybody got out. I Love You.
Speaker 3: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
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