Speaker 1: As Media.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to Behind the Bastard's We're.
Speaker 3: On page eighteen fifty two.
Speaker 2: I know a podcast where Robert Evans accidentally wrote twenty
Speaker 2: almost twenty four thousand words about Oprah for this these episodes.
Speaker 2: The normal length of a book is fifty thousand words,
Speaker 2: so half of a book about fucking Oprah, And like
Speaker 2: I was having panic attacks at the end of this
Speaker 2: of like, oh my god, I'm leaving so much out.
Speaker 2: I'm leaving so much from like this, this this really good
Speaker 2: book age of Oprah out because like I just don't
Speaker 2: even know how to like fit everything in. But I
Speaker 2: have to start this episode with our wonderful guests, the
Speaker 2: inimitable bridget Todd and the glorious Sainted. I don't know,
Speaker 2: Andrew t I'm trying to think of new new adjectives to.
Speaker 4: Continua becomes what did you do to become a saint?
Speaker 2: What's a saying I actually have to die? No you don't, No,
Speaker 2: you don't. I think you don't have to die. I'm
Speaker 2: probably okay.
Speaker 4: Just let me know I'm down.
Speaker 2: Bridgie, you could also be a saint, but I'm not.
Speaker 2: I just don't get major Catholic vibes from you.
Speaker 3: Oh, I actually did go to Catholic school.
Speaker 2: Oh you did, well, Okay, I'm gonna I'm going to
Speaker 2: redirect the habit that I've got headed for Andrew, and
Speaker 2: it's going to go to you, Andrew. Sorry, I'm not
Speaker 2: saying anything.
Speaker 5: You have to uh, you know, live virtuously.
Speaker 2: You have to die for the faith, so like you have.
Speaker 5: To martyr h perform miracles.
Speaker 2: He's performed a miracle.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 5: I don't know if all of these are required at once.
Speaker 2: And I think there's every everyone who's made it on
Speaker 2: time for Behind the Bastards recording, since that sat through
Speaker 2: a whole episode as a guest has performed a miracle.
Speaker 3: I said, it has been a martyr.
Speaker 6: But yeah, my most miraculous thing is since we're doing
Speaker 6: video is I'm holding up my favorite coffee cup.
Speaker 2: Wow, I love that.
Speaker 3: By chance to buy that in Maryland? Did you? That's
Speaker 3: giving me big Maryland vibes?
Speaker 4: I'm sure from Maryland? Maine.
Speaker 3: Oh, they have they do crabs out there too?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 4: Not good?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 4: Could they?
Speaker 7: I can't imagine mastations. It's so hardcore lobster territory. I
Speaker 7: don't know if lobsters and crabs fight. Sorry for we're
Speaker 7: already over.
Speaker 6: We're The whole discussion has been how long this is
Speaker 6: going to be? And I've just trying to figure out
Speaker 6: if there's crabs in Maine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's there's. There's for sure crabs in Maine. They've
Speaker 2: got lobster at McDonald's.
Speaker 4: In part part But that's my whole point.
Speaker 3: Part three seems normal.
Speaker 2: Part four is I there's there's there's no logic to
Speaker 2: the number of parts. This might may wind up more
Speaker 2: episodes than we thought. I have to start with something,
Speaker 2: which is a mea culpa. I made some mistakes in
Speaker 2: the last episodes. Guys, tell us I'm so sorry. I'm
Speaker 2: so so sorry. So here's the thing. When you're doing
Speaker 2: a podcast like this, like it's a mix of you
Speaker 2: do a bunch of research and you write a bunch
Speaker 2: of things to get a bunch of facts out that
Speaker 2: you are as accurate as you can, but you're also
Speaker 2: having a conversation, so you do stuff like, oh, I'm
Speaker 2: bringing up the biblical story of Ruth. I don't know
Speaker 2: much about Ruth. I only included it in the episode
Speaker 2: to make a bad joke about Star Wars. The Phantom Menace,
Speaker 2: and so I made a comment about it. I don't know,
Speaker 2: I think she's got something to do with Moses. She
Speaker 2: does not, And all of the Bible people got onto
Speaker 2: me for that one, and I'm sorry.
Speaker 7: How big a part of your audience is the Bible people.
Speaker 2: A shockingly large number of Well, I think it's because
Speaker 2: we have a lot of like ex vangelicals in the audience,
Speaker 2: like a lot of people who were raised evangelical and
Speaker 2: then got better.
Speaker 6: I'm just gonna throw this out there. That wasn't an error.
Speaker 6: That was a fucking dork trap, and they all fell
Speaker 6: into it.
Speaker 2: They felt the same cannot be said for my heinous
Speaker 2: and unforgivable comments about the March of Dimes because I
Speaker 2: made a comment that like, I don't know, I guess
Speaker 2: it's probably a cancer charity, and then a bunch of
Speaker 2: people popped in and be like, no, it's for this,
Speaker 2: and then other people were like, actually, when Oprah was
Speaker 2: a kid, it didn't do that. It was for a
Speaker 2: completely different thing. So we're all wrong, although again it
Speaker 2: had nothing to do with cancer. So I was wrongest,
Speaker 2: but like you guys were wrong too. Most of you
Speaker 2: who criticized me because it wasn't about that then, so
Speaker 2: fuck you. I love you. I'm sorry.
Speaker 3: What is it for?
Speaker 2: It's it's right now. I think it's for like 's's
Speaker 2: let's look up the march at times, let's let's get
Speaker 2: it right. Babies, Yeah, immature babies. But it was like
Speaker 2: about polio before that and.
Speaker 5: Trying to correct Robert.
Speaker 3: That is my mother.
Speaker 2: Improved the health of mothers and babies, right, Robert.
Speaker 3: Robert is never wrong, He's perfect.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I never like say stuff during Like one of
Speaker 2: the things you learn about yourself during doing this is
Speaker 2: like how often in daily conversation and we all do this,
Speaker 2: you just like say things that are a part of
Speaker 2: your understanding of the world that are not right, because
Speaker 2: that's like life. We all pick up a bunch of bullshit,
Speaker 2: like the number of time.
Speaker 3: I just don't think you should have to apologize.
Speaker 5: Right now, I take that burden from you.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry saying Robert, but he's innocent.
Speaker 2: All I'm saying is record everything you've ever you ever
Speaker 2: say in a single day of conversations with people, and
Speaker 2: then run them by a fact checker, and you will
Speaker 2: be amazed at how much of like the load bearing
Speaker 2: fat pillars of your reality are things you absolutely believe
Speaker 2: without thinking that are not true. It's amazing.
Speaker 8: It's the worst part of being a podcaster is like
Speaker 8: having a public record of stupid shit that you thought,
Speaker 8: or if you're me, shit that you thought was pronounced
Speaker 8: one way and it's put another way.
Speaker 2: The pronunciation like, So for this episode, I spent almost
Speaker 2: three hours looking at Oprah's uh one of her charity's
Speaker 2: tax returns. None of that made it end of the
Speaker 2: episode turned out not to be interesting. But you know
Speaker 2: what I didn't remember to do was look up whether
Speaker 2: or not Ruth had anything to fucking do with Moses, Like,
Speaker 2: I just don't.
Speaker 5: I think you just you're you're doing great, Pal.
Speaker 4: I've fail to see how this is a problem.
Speaker 3: I think.
Speaker 6: Also, I just wanted to jump in March of Dimes
Speaker 6: previous Polio charity.
Speaker 4: The way things are going, they might need to go back.
Speaker 4: I know.
Speaker 2: That's that's again. I love Polio. And I feel like
Speaker 2: because we got a lot of my favorite writers, Robert,
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 5: We're fifty two pages.
Speaker 2: Okay, well let's get into this. So when we last
Speaker 2: left off, Oprah had gotten her first radio gig with
Speaker 2: a radio DJ who was surprisingly not problematic John Heidelberg.
Speaker 2: People online have been pointing out other stuff about him apparently, fine,
Speaker 2: So congratulations John Heidelberg. When we're talking about DJs being problematic,
Speaker 2: I'm talking about old timey radio DJs, because if you
Speaker 2: look into the history of like very famous old timey
Speaker 2: radio DJs, not a lot of them were great people.
Speaker 2: But apparently John was so good for you, John Heidelberg,
Speaker 2: you went our behind the Bastard's Award for being a
Speaker 2: sex best as a DJ in the nineteen seventies. You're
Speaker 2: the only person who's won that award, by the way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's got to be a club of one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is a club of You are the loneliest
Speaker 2: man in history. So the next several years of Oprah's
Speaker 2: life involved a pretty boring time in college. We're not
Speaker 2: going to get into it, but she starts doing beauty contests,
Speaker 2: and she's very good at beauty contests. One of the
Speaker 2: biggest moments in her early life is she wins the
Speaker 2: miss Fire Prevention contest. Now, I know what you're all saying,
Speaker 2: what the fuck is miss fire prevention? And to understand this,
Speaker 2: you have to know that back in the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 2: everything was flammable. People only wore petroleum products, Every couch
Speaker 2: was made out of petroleum products, and everyone fell asleep
Speaker 2: with a lit cigarette in their mouth, so everything and
Speaker 2: everyone was constantly on fire. Yeah, so this was a
Speaker 2: real problem. Also, everyone was on binzos, so you would
Speaker 2: it was like every week in your neighborhood either a
Speaker 2: drunk day labor like either either the husband would come
Speaker 2: home from like his work in a fucking law factory
Speaker 2: and pass out drunk with a cigarette in his mouth
Speaker 2: and wipe out the entire family, or the housewife would
Speaker 2: take too many benzos and pass out with a lit
Speaker 2: cigarette in her mouth and wipe out the whole family.
Speaker 2: But either whatever was happening, fire was killing absolutely everyone,
Speaker 2: and so we were like, we have to find the
Speaker 2: hottest person in order to represent not burning your family
Speaker 2: to death because you fell asleep with a lit cigarette
Speaker 2: in your mouth, and Oprah was that person. Isn't that nice.
Speaker 3: Fun fact about that.
Speaker 8: That's why we have like flame retardant couches now, because
Speaker 8: the cigarette industry was like, we can't keep getting popped for.
Speaker 3: That were possibility.
Speaker 2: We're fine with killing people so many other ways, but
Speaker 2: all these house fires are really cutting into our business.
Speaker 6: Please tell me the first fire retarded couches were just
Speaker 6: made of asbestos.
Speaker 2: It probably will. God, I'll have to go for a
Speaker 2: nice asbestus couch to know that I'm both like sitting
Speaker 2: down on the couch to watch horrible news happen and
Speaker 2: also shortening my time on this earth. Beautiful. Oprah was
Speaker 2: the first black woman to win the Miss Fire Prevention contest,
Speaker 2: and that's great. During questioning by a panel of judges,
Speaker 2: she said that she wanted to be a journalist like
Speaker 2: Barbara Walters. She was asked what she would do if
Speaker 2: she was given a million dollars, and everyone else in
Speaker 2: the contest expressed kind of like, I'll help the poor,
Speaker 2: I'll help my family, whereas Oprah just admitted I would spend, spend, spend,
Speaker 2: I'd just be a spending fool.
Speaker 3: Awesome, Actually love that.
Speaker 2: You better respect that. Look, I grew up poor as shit.
Speaker 2: I would spend it.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: This was definitely a legitimate win Miss Fire Prevention. However,
Speaker 2: her next big contest win, the Miss Black Nashville contest,
Speaker 2: was a little bit shadier. Everyone involved about it seems
Speaker 2: to agree that another girl, Maud had been a better contestant,
Speaker 2: but Oprah shocked everyone by winning, and the motor of
Speaker 2: the event would later claim that several people complained to him,
Speaker 2: and so he did a recount of the votes and
Speaker 2: found out that Maud had in fact been the rightful winner,
Speaker 2: but her name had gotten switched with Oprah's by somebody
Speaker 2: for unknown reasons. Now we don't know what happened. Some
Speaker 2: people have theorized Oprah set the whole thing up somehow.
Speaker 2: I think there's at least an equally good probability based
Speaker 2: on just like the vibes. I get that the promoter
Speaker 2: of the event kind of had a weird thing for Oprah.
Speaker 2: His name was Gordon El Greco Brown, and I don't
Speaker 2: trust that name. I just don't trust that name like
Speaker 2: that that is the name of like a used car
Speaker 2: dealer from fucking Encina who also happens to be a
Speaker 2: neo Nazi. I'm not saying that's Gordon Ell Greco Brown.
Speaker 2: I'm just saying that's the name Gordon O. That's what
Speaker 2: that conjures, Gordon El like the Greco Brown Elco.
Speaker 4: So he's Gordon Gecko L Brown.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, that that man has so many different opinions
Speaker 2: on the various coke dealers in his area that he
Speaker 2: has to keep track of them in a notebook. Anyway,
Speaker 2: when Oprah was notified, I'm not saying that about the literal.
Speaker 2: I'm not slandering the actual man. I'm just saying that's
Speaker 2: how his name sounds. Anyway. Oprah gets notified of this
Speaker 2: error that Maud really won, and she says like, well,
Speaker 2: fuck it, you guys gave me the award. I'm not
Speaker 2: giving it back. In Kitty Kelly's kind of mean biography,
Speaker 2: a lot is made about the fact that Oprah like
Speaker 2: doesn't give this up and I don't know, I don't
Speaker 2: really care, like you handed her the award, so she's
Speaker 2: not wrong to be like, fuck you, guys. Oprah goes
Speaker 2: to Tennessee State University, or TSU, which is a black college,
Speaker 2: but she doesn't go to the more prestigious in nearby
Speaker 2: Fisk University, known locally as the Black Harvard. I think
Speaker 2: this is just a matter of expense. Oprah seems to
Speaker 2: be insecure about this. Later, she spends her social time
Speaker 2: hanging out at FISK. Her dad is like, look, you
Speaker 2: know I could afford to send her to TSU. And
Speaker 2: so I did. I will say, because Kitty Kelly makes
Speaker 2: a lot about like, yeah, Oprah couldn't get into the
Speaker 2: good school, she couldn't hack it. I've read like from
Speaker 2: the anecdotes we get about TSU, it doesn't sound great.
Speaker 2: There's a good one from one of her professors, doctor W. D. Cox,
Speaker 2: that and this, this is what this guy, doctor Cox,
Speaker 2: this actual professor says later about teaching Oprah. And I
Speaker 2: think he thinks this makes him sound funny. During our
Speaker 2: stay in the city, a girl was reported raped on
Speaker 2: the second floor. I told a lie on Oprah. If
Speaker 2: Oprah had known about the rape, she'd have shouted you
Speaker 2: who I'm up here. Oprah didn't take too kindly to
Speaker 2: that joke. She was quite provoked. Do you guys catch that?
Speaker 2: He says a girl got raped? And I said, hey, Oprah,
Speaker 2: you would like that. That's the talking about this decades later,
Speaker 2: being like, can you believe she didn't find it funny?
Speaker 2: That's nuts, that's insane.
Speaker 5: Somebody laughed at him though, and he that like charged
Speaker 5: that shit.
Speaker 2: Maybe or the whole like, I don't know what things
Speaker 2: you're like in the seventies.
Speaker 5: Laugh at men's jokes that aren't funny.
Speaker 2: Just you should get fired, period.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The whole joke is I bet you'd like get it
Speaker 2: like that's yeah, wild stuff.
Speaker 8: You want to me that he like even in retelling
Speaker 8: that he's like and she didn't even find it funny.
Speaker 3: She wasn't. Can you believe it?
Speaker 2: He describes it as enjoying a little foolishness at Oprah's expense.
Speaker 2: He's still going, that's not what that is, a little
Speaker 2: foolish should be like, you know, talking about I don't
Speaker 2: know the fact that she's obviously wants to be a star,
Speaker 2: making a little bit of joke about how she likes attention,
Speaker 2: not like that.
Speaker 6: This is not yeah, like and this this dude has
Speaker 6: been holding onto that joke.
Speaker 2: For Kitty Kelly in twenty ten ten Jesus Christ, Oh
Speaker 2: you just know, like just I'm guessing based on his
Speaker 2: age that like she goes to see him in an
Speaker 2: old folks home and like his fucking kids come in,
Speaker 2: They're like, oh no, get her out of here. We
Speaker 2: can't let dad be talking to a journalist like, oh
Speaker 2: my god, so Oprah. The big standout detail from her
Speaker 2: college years is she plays Coretta Scott King in a
Speaker 2: local production of the Tragedy of Martin Luther King Junior.
Speaker 2: And the main reason this is relevant is that a
Speaker 2: reviewer for the school paper reviews this play by saying,
Speaker 2: Martin Luther King murdered twice? I do love how bit
Speaker 2: you that is?
Speaker 9: That's good?
Speaker 2: Like shit? Imagine because he had to have sat with
Speaker 2: that review title just being like, I can't say this,
Speaker 2: can I?
Speaker 3: I'm so glad for.
Speaker 2: I'm doing it. Near the end of nineteen seventy two,
Speaker 2: oh forgets her first TV gig when her boss at
Speaker 2: WVOL called a local TV station WTVFTV and told them
Speaker 2: that he had a girl who was interested in broadcasting.
Speaker 2: This was during a period where the FCC had just
Speaker 2: introduced diversity requirements for on air talent, and Oprah was
Speaker 2: hired quickly. She generally describes this as an affirmative action.
Speaker 2: Hire Again, the guy you hires her is like, no,
Speaker 2: she was the best qualified candidate, you know, I don't
Speaker 2: know either way. It doesn't really matter because this proves
Speaker 2: to be a very good hiring decision. The truth Oprah
Speaker 2: was a skilled performer and had experienced both on the
Speaker 2: radio and as a pageant winner. That said, she was
Speaker 2: hired to be a journalist, which she had no experience doing,
Speaker 2: and she winds up reporting on city Hall, she cheerfully admitted.
Speaker 2: As soon as she starts the job, she tells all
Speaker 2: her coworkers, I lied during my interview. I don't know
Speaker 2: how to do this job. Like her first day, she
Speaker 2: tells the crew, I don't know what I'm doing. Please
Speaker 2: help me because, like I told the director, I understood
Speaker 2: how to do this job. And it's a remark. It's
Speaker 2: a mark of her charisma that everyone on the crew's like, well, okay,
Speaker 2: that's kind of nice.
Speaker 6: Damn yeah, Like what a it's not even a hail Mary,
Speaker 6: But what do you like? Like high variants, play the Hey,
Speaker 6: by the way, what's up?
Speaker 4: How do you do this job?
Speaker 2: I mean that is how like entertainment works, right, Like
Speaker 2: everyone I know in this industry has a story of like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I talked myself into a room that I probably didn't
Speaker 2: have the right to be in and then it worked hard.
Speaker 4: Yes, the b side of admitting yeah, I would say
Speaker 4: a lot.
Speaker 2: Less yeah, I one of the Again, we're about to
Speaker 2: get into all of the horrible things Oprah has been
Speaker 2: involved in. But one thing that I do consistently admire
Speaker 2: about her is that she doesn't dress up this aspect
Speaker 2: of her life. She's like, yeah, man, I lied, sheeated
Speaker 2: and stolen until I could be on TV. You know,
Speaker 2: is everyone who gets famous on DV right, Like, yeah, I.
Speaker 8: Got my first podcast job lying about knowing final cut
Speaker 8: pro and then I had to like go on learn
Speaker 8: how to use pro.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's how. Look, kids, if you're looking at getting
Speaker 2: entertained into entertainment, get good at lying, because that's the
Speaker 2: job Oprah experienced. A This is an uncomfortable transition, but
Speaker 2: there are a lot of racism on the job. A
Speaker 2: large part of it was like she's the first black
Speaker 2: on air talent that they have.
Speaker 10: Uh.
Speaker 2: She winds up interviewing a lot of people who like
Speaker 2: they see a black journalist and just start calling her
Speaker 2: slurs to her face. She won awards though she's very ambitious.
Speaker 2: Her colleagues. That's the primary thing her colleagues from this
Speaker 2: period remember about her is that Oprah is a climber.
Speaker 2: She is somebody who is like crawling up to the top.
Speaker 9: Right.
Speaker 2: At one point, she takes over for a producer who,
Speaker 2: like she gets on set, he clearly doesn't know what
Speaker 2: he's doing for this Black History Week presentation, and she
Speaker 2: directs the entire segment herself. She is also, by everyone's admission,
Speaker 2: doing Hella drugs during this period, although everyone at the
Speaker 2: TV station is doing Hella drugs, this is a local
Speaker 2: TV station in the seventies. I want to read a
Speaker 2: paragraph from the book Oprah, a biography based on a
Speaker 2: conversation with her former colleague Patty Outlaw. It was just
Speaker 2: nuts working at that station. Drugs, drugs, drugs all the time,
Speaker 2: drugs all over the place. They were even selling window
Speaker 2: panes of LSD in the hall. Drugs were so prevalent
Speaker 2: that the new staff gave Vic Mason, Oprah's co anchor,
Speaker 2: a coke spoon as a gift. Chris and I look
Speaker 2: the other way, said Jimmy Norton, who confirmed that station
Speaker 2: management removed a vending machine once they discovered it had
Speaker 2: been rigged to dispense marijuana. That sounds pretty cool.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, in Chicago, where was this?
Speaker 2: Yeah? No, no, No, they're not even in I think
Speaker 2: they're Yeah, they're in Nashville, Stone, Nashville. Yeah, they're in Nashville. Still,
Speaker 2: she does move up to the big leagues pretty quickly,
Speaker 2: but she doesn't go straight to Chicago. After a few
Speaker 2: years in Nashville, she gets a job in Baltimore. She's
Speaker 2: not really happy there, even though this is a big
Speaker 2: step up Baltimore obviously being a bigger city, because she
Speaker 2: feels like she's on a ticking timer right but like
Speaker 2: by the time, her attitude is like, by the time
Speaker 2: I'm twenty four, I have to be where I want
Speaker 2: to be because then I'm like too old and washed up,
Speaker 2: which you know, that's the way a lot of people,
Speaker 2: that's the way TV is for a lot of women aligently,
Speaker 2: but like it's certainly not going to be that way
Speaker 2: for Oprah. Baltimore turns out to be a disaster though.
Speaker 2: The longtime anchorman for the station, who she has made
Speaker 2: to be like the co anchor, hates her and she's
Speaker 2: not really experienced enough, like he's been doing it for decades.
Speaker 2: She doesn't really know what she's doing yet, so she
Speaker 2: very quickly gets demoted, but she's still on contract. So
Speaker 2: it's one of those things where she's getting a lot
Speaker 2: of money, but she's basically not doing the job that
Speaker 2: she got hired to do. She's instead getting all these
Speaker 2: terrible little human interest stories that she considers beneath her.
Speaker 2: So this is a frustrating period, but her saving grace
Speaker 2: is always her ambition. Denied itansmen at the station, she
Speaker 2: starts performing at churches, schools in different black community spaces,
Speaker 2: building a fan base locally the hard way. She also
Speaker 2: has a series of interracial relationships while she is working
Speaker 2: at the station, which is noteworthy because that is not
Speaker 2: a common thing at the time, and the fact that
Speaker 2: she is dating white guys in her personal life becomes
Speaker 2: public news. A bunch of local white radio DJs make
Speaker 2: it like a reoccurring thing that they talk about on
Speaker 2: the air, like Oprah is dating. I don't just bring
Speaker 2: that up to be like wow, and like it's like no, no, no,
Speaker 2: this is like she has to deal with this being
Speaker 2: part of like local news.
Speaker 8: Can I say something because I do think it highlights
Speaker 8: how unequal the playing fields are for black women in media.
Speaker 8: I mean black women across the spectrum of any profession,
Speaker 8: but like like local radio DJs, so people who ostensibly
Speaker 8: are also colleagues are also in media, making it a
Speaker 8: joke segment about who she is dating romantically privately like
Speaker 8: that having to contend with that on top of having
Speaker 8: to do your job with all these eyes on you.
Speaker 8: I mean like it's completely ridiculous.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, like it's nuts and like, for an example
Speaker 2: of how fucking insane it is, one of these local
Speaker 2: radio DJs described she's dating like a Jewish reporter right
Speaker 2: who works at a competing station. One of these guys
Speaker 2: on the radio describes their relationship as Omar Sharif is
Speaker 2: dating aunt Jemima Jesus Jesus Christ. Oh boy, you should
Speaker 2: just explode when you say something like that.
Speaker 4: God.
Speaker 2: So, she had always been something of a binge eater,
Speaker 2: largely as a response to stress, and as is probably
Speaker 2: not surprising, the stress of like being in the public
Speaker 2: eye and having all of this shit about you be
Speaker 2: public discussion causes that to be even more of a problem.
Speaker 2: In nineteen seventy seven, she starts paying a diet doctor
Speaker 2: to help her drop weight for the first time, and
Speaker 2: she starts attending overreaders anonymous courses. Sure of stress and
Speaker 2: starving herself causes her hair to fall out, or at
Speaker 2: least that's one story. Oprah later is going to insist
Speaker 2: that she lost her hair because executives at the station
Speaker 2: demanded that she go to New York for a French
Speaker 2: hairdresser to quote make me a Puerto Rican by bleaching
Speaker 2: her skin and changing her hair. I don't know. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 2: because you get these two different versions of how she
Speaker 2: loses her hair, it's very hard to say what the
Speaker 2: truth is. The news producer is like the company didn't
Speaker 2: have the budget to send her to New York. She
Speaker 2: also claims that the former news director tries to get
Speaker 2: her to change her name to Susie. He denies this.
Speaker 2: I don't know, it's all a little muddled. It doesn't
Speaker 2: I don't know how much like where the truth lies
Speaker 2: here super matters, Right, There's definitely some stuff that she's
Speaker 2: like exaggerating, but she's also literally people are talking about
Speaker 2: her relationships on the air in a very racist way.
Speaker 2: So like, I don't know, I feel like you get
Speaker 2: the general gist, which is that she is in an
Speaker 2: incredibly stressful and unfair situation here at work.
Speaker 6: Yeah yeah, Like the public record is like even if
Speaker 6: she's straight up lying about literally is yeah like here
Speaker 6: say like who cares?
Speaker 2: Like yeah, right right, Like that's kind of where I
Speaker 2: land on this. That said, I will say this station
Speaker 2: allows her to work her way like that she is
Speaker 2: not like locked out of moving back up, and she
Speaker 2: works her way back up to reporting the news over
Speaker 2: the next couple of years in Baltimore, and in fact,
Speaker 2: she rebuilds her reputation with her bosses well enough that
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy seven, the new station manager, William Baker, gives
Speaker 2: her the big break that is going to lead her
Speaker 2: to the position of kind of impossible wealth and cultural
Speaker 2: power that she's going to attain. He had been brought
Speaker 2: on to the station after creating in another station a
Speaker 2: morning talk show called Morning Exchange, and his job was
Speaker 2: to do the same thing for Baltimore. Right, morning shows
Speaker 2: are a new concept, like this is this is the
Speaker 2: guy playing a video game while ranting about politics on
Speaker 2: a stream of nineteen seventy seven is like people waking
Speaker 2: up in the morning to see one to two charming,
Speaker 2: handsome people talk about bullshit while you like, get the
Speaker 2: kid's breakfasts ready.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: The hottest new thing in entertainment. Phil Donahue had kind
Speaker 2: of helped to kick off the trend of like talk
Speaker 2: shows in nineteen sixty eight, and his show, which was
Speaker 2: just named Donahue, had become like the most popular thing
Speaker 2: on television. Morning shows were a refinement of this idea. Right,
Speaker 2: you generally have a male host and a female co host,
Speaker 2: and this is how you lock in viewers who are
Speaker 2: either getting ready for work or like stay at home
Speaker 2: moms starting their day. Baker's wife, Jean Marie, was the
Speaker 2: one who recommended Oprah to be the female co host
Speaker 2: of this new morning show. Apparently at some sort of
Speaker 2: like work event, she sees Winfrey and she like says
Speaker 2: to her husband, that's your host. And Baker listens to
Speaker 2: his wife, which proves to be a wise decision because
Speaker 2: for whatever I mean, there's a number of reasons, but
Speaker 2: tens of millions of American women feel the exact same
Speaker 2: way that the first time they see Oprah, like, oh yeah,
Speaker 2: this is somebody I want to watch every morning. Right,
Speaker 2: So Jean Marie was definitely keyed into something there. Oprah
Speaker 2: does not like that she's been picked for this job.
Speaker 2: She's horrified at first, actually, because in her attitude, she
Speaker 2: sees this as another demotion. Right, she had been a
Speaker 2: co anchor and then kicked down to doing these like
Speaker 2: human interest kind of like, oh, you know there's a
Speaker 2: new you know, it's the kind of stuff they make
Speaker 2: fun of an anchorman, right, there's like a new puppy
Speaker 2: parade or some bullshit, and she's like that, that's this,
Speaker 2: This is like fluff. I want to be doing like
Speaker 2: I think that the I want to be Barbara Walters.
Speaker 2: I want to be doing something more hard nosed. Part
Speaker 2: of what discussed her is that a big fit thing
Speaker 2: on this morning show is dialing for dollars, which is
Speaker 2: a way that new stations would keep people watching because
Speaker 2: you don't want anyone to switch to another channel if
Speaker 2: they get bored for a second. So you have this
Speaker 2: thing where periodically throughout the day people submit their phone
Speaker 2: numbers to the station and we randomly Oprah draws one
Speaker 2: out of a bowl and the station will just send
Speaker 2: money to that person. Yeah, that's how they and you
Speaker 2: have to be watching constantly to know if your number
Speaker 2: gets picked. Like that's literally how they They're like bribing people,
Speaker 2: please keep watching the show.
Speaker 6: I mean, gambling has never not been the underlying driver
Speaker 6: of everything.
Speaker 2: All of American society. Yes, yes, this whole country's one
Speaker 2: big roulette wheel. And Oprah didn't want to be the creupier.
Speaker 2: It's a croupier for Roulette, is that how you say it?
Speaker 8: It is about to get another people being like, actually,
Speaker 8: you said it wrong, Robert.
Speaker 3: It's this.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry. All of the people who would correct me
Speaker 2: on that will die if they spend more than eleven
Speaker 2: seconds away from a slot machine. Those are life support
Speaker 2: systems for a chunk of the populace.
Speaker 4: I think Roulette is also a croupier, but I don't know.
Speaker 2: I think I got it, I don't know. I don't care.
Speaker 2: I like the word creupia, speaking of gambling, gamble on
Speaker 2: whether or not these products actually do what they say
Speaker 2: they are they do probably, And we're back. So Oprah's
Speaker 2: got this job offer to host this morning show, and
Speaker 2: she's like, this sounds like death right, This sounds like
Speaker 2: the end of my career. Like you're trying to fob
Speaker 2: me off on this thing, and I will be locked
Speaker 2: into this, you know, doing something nobody respects for the
Speaker 2: rest of my life. The thing that she tells Baker
Speaker 2: is I'm a news person. I don't want to do
Speaker 2: a talk show. Then she films her first episode and
Speaker 2: her mind completely changed. The way she describes this is
Speaker 2: as soon as she sits down and makes an episode
Speaker 2: of the Morning Show. Her opinion on it changes on
Speaker 2: a dime. And the reason why is because she gets
Speaker 2: to hang out with famous people and she's like, oh
Speaker 2: wait oh, and I'm going to read a quote now
Speaker 2: from the People Profiles biography of Oprah. This she told
Speaker 2: herself is heaven. She recalled, I interviewed Benny from All
Speaker 2: My Children and the Carvel ice cream Man, and thought,
Speaker 2: heaven because you get to say whatever you feel. You
Speaker 2: truly get to be yourself. Within a year, people are talking,
Speaker 2: which is the Morning Show was beating Donahue in Baltimore,
Speaker 2: the only show in America to do so. Winfrey would
Speaker 2: never read another headline. The minute that first show was over,
Speaker 2: she told good Housekeeping, I thought, thank god, I found
Speaker 2: what I was meant to do. It was like breathing
Speaker 2: for me. And that's like very interesting to me because
Speaker 2: it's hard to get across like Donahue is. He's like
Speaker 2: the mister Beast of his era, if you'll forgive me
Speaker 2: from trying to like make he is like the biggest
Speaker 2: guy on on daytime TV, and Oprah is the like,
Speaker 2: this is the only local show that beats Donahue anywhere
Speaker 2: in the United States, and it's due to the fact
Speaker 2: that Oprah is on it right and she has this
Speaker 2: absolutely unique electric connection with her audience. This is recognized
Speaker 2: by people with money and television, and things start to
Speaker 2: move very fast for Oprah after this point, as Pel
Speaker 2: scholar Amanda Colin writes in her thesis paper on it
Speaker 2: was role in American culture. In nineteen eighty four, Oprah
Speaker 2: moved to Chicago, Illinois to host wlstv's morning talk show
Speaker 2: Am Chicago, which became the number one local talk show,
Speaker 2: surpassing ratings for the most popular show at the time,
Speaker 2: Donahue just one month after she began. The show where
Speaker 2: national syndication in nineteen eighty six, becoming the highest rated
Speaker 2: talk show in television history. In nineteen eighty eight, Oprah
Speaker 2: established Harpo Oprah Backwards Studios, a production facility in Chicago,
Speaker 2: making her the third woman in the American entertainment industry
Speaker 2: after Mary Pickford and Lucille Ball, to own her own studio.
Speaker 2: AM Chicago became the Oprah Winfrey Show and remained the
Speaker 2: number one talk show for twenty consecutive seasons. So this
Speaker 2: is like a very rapid explosion in popularity. She goes
Speaker 2: from getting the show to it becoming number one, to
Speaker 2: it being entirely reframed to being just around Oprah. And
Speaker 2: she establishes a production company and gets like a significant
Speaker 2: degree of ownership in her own show, which is like,
Speaker 2: this is one of the things that's most interesting about
Speaker 2: Oprah is, especially for somebody who was raised without any
Speaker 2: access to money, the sheer degree of like business savvy
Speaker 2: that she has the fact that she owns a large
Speaker 2: piece of everything she's involved in and eventually owns all
Speaker 2: of it, right, Like she is not like she she
Speaker 2: kind of has this, probably because of how she got
Speaker 2: fucked over with that first job. This understanding that like,
Speaker 2: if I don't own it, it's not worth shit to me,
Speaker 2: right anyway, Oprah.
Speaker 9: So I just.
Speaker 8: Realize something crazy, which is that Oprah, the character that
Speaker 8: Oprah plays in The Color Purple, she's married to a
Speaker 8: character named Harpo.
Speaker 3: Really, It's like, isn't that crazy?
Speaker 2: Because I started rewatching it, but I'm gonna be honest,
Speaker 2: I didn't finish it, uh because I was tired. Harpo
Speaker 2: is name.
Speaker 8: She's married to a character named Harpo in the movie.
Speaker 8: That's why I doesn't realize that that. It's also the
Speaker 8: name of her, it's also her name backward.
Speaker 2: Yeah, uh huh Yeavy. That's I wonder that has to
Speaker 2: do a beit because she already had harpo the studio.
Speaker 2: At that point, we're gonna talk a little bit about
Speaker 2: the color purple, and Steven Spielberg comes in. I don't
Speaker 2: know if he's a hero. Well, he's not a hero.
Speaker 2: He's a weird kind of villain in this story. But
Speaker 2: we'll get to that. And that's that. I can't wait
Speaker 2: so for about a full generation after nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 2: Oprah's fame is a rocket ship. It just keeps going
Speaker 2: up and up and up. But what made her show
Speaker 2: so special. Colan's argument is that she offered quote, despair
Speaker 2: disguised as entertainment. In other words, she sensationalized and repackaged
Speaker 2: human suffering for an audience. Quote. When Oprah came on
Speaker 2: the scene, she mirrored this Donahue formula, but with a
Speaker 2: unique twist of her own. She, unlike Donahue, revealed her
Speaker 2: own personal struggles and stressed to self help mantra. The
Speaker 2: audience loved it, and the Oprah Winfrey Show quickly surpassed
Speaker 2: her predecessor's ratings. Commonly referred to as trash TV. Oprah
Speaker 2: transformed the talk show genre by turning trash into treasure.
Speaker 2: And that's kind of she starts out and she is
Speaker 2: viewed as like trash. She's viewed as Jerry Springer right
Speaker 2: for a while, because she's doing that stuff. She's bringing
Speaker 2: on like I'm going to bring on a bunch of
Speaker 2: single undred mothers who are fighting with their dads. I'm
Speaker 2: gonna bring on like some clansmen to have an argument with,
Speaker 2: like you know whoever on stage and like hope that
Speaker 2: there's a fistfighter some shit. She's doing pieces of that,
Speaker 2: But kind of what shifts the meaning of what she's
Speaker 2: doing is that, unlike a Springer or a Donna Hue
Speaker 2: kind of character, she's not standing back and being like,
Speaker 2: look at this zoo I've brought to you. She's like
Speaker 2: opening up her own difficult, troubled past, which kind of
Speaker 2: adds this this like shot of vulnerability into the whole
Speaker 2: mixture that makes it unique and that you can see
Speaker 2: it immediate. That's why it stands out right, That's why
Speaker 2: she rises above these other figures so quickly, right.
Speaker 6: The most Spring and Donaghue, you never got the impression.
Speaker 6: Their point of view was like, look at this shit,
Speaker 6: look at.
Speaker 2: This crazy shit.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, like I have an opinion on this crazy shit.
Speaker 2: I have an opinion. And also like like you people,
Speaker 2: like all you troubled people that I bring on the show,
Speaker 2: I also have had my troubles and I'm not too
Speaker 2: big to admit them, whereas like Cherry Springer would never
Speaker 2: like break down and cry in front of his audience.
Speaker 8: Even's final thought, Oh god, yeah, I'm sure of course.
Speaker 2: The one thing I remember from that show is when
Speaker 2: Haroldo got his nose broken by a chair. I think
Speaker 2: that was on Jerry. Was that on Heraldo or Jerry?
Speaker 2: I thought it was.
Speaker 3: I think it was that might have been Heraldo.
Speaker 2: Is that just on Herald? Whatever the is? Rivera got
Speaker 2: his nose broken by a chair. Everybody never forget.
Speaker 8: But I think your point about like this setting Oprah apart,
Speaker 8: I think it really is a testament to how her
Speaker 8: troubled background really is something that she draws from and
Speaker 8: is able to like like that's I think that is
Speaker 8: the secret sauce of what made this connect in a
Speaker 8: different way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because it's like we're taught it's the same kind
Speaker 2: of like quote unquote trash, but there's less of a
Speaker 2: voyeuristic attitude because, like anytime it starts to lean too much,
Speaker 2: Oprah will drop some sort of anecdote about her own
Speaker 2: background and you're like, oh, okay, so she's really she's
Speaker 2: on the same level as us, right, which she's not,
Speaker 2: but that's how it feels to the viewer at least.
Speaker 2: The most significant moment for her career in this period
Speaker 2: came right after she moved to Chicago to start The
Speaker 2: Oprah Winfrey Show. On Thursday, December fifth, nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 2: at nine AM, Oprah started her morning show by bringing
Speaker 2: on a young white abuse victim named LORII. She opened
Speaker 2: up by reading some statistics about sexual abuse, namely that
Speaker 2: one in three women in the United States had experienced it,
Speaker 2: and then asked, Laurie, your father started out fondling you.
Speaker 2: When did it lead to something other than fondling? She
Speaker 2: pressed with more and more detailed questions, asking what did
Speaker 2: he say to you, how did he tell you? What
Speaker 2: did he tell you? And this is all very uncomfortable
Speaker 2: to see on TV right, and even especially like reading
Speaker 2: the transcript, it's there's an element of it that seems
Speaker 2: a little bit exploitive, kind of constantly pushing for those
Speaker 2: details in front of an audience that said it. Also,
Speaker 2: this is kind of how interviews work. It's just usually
Speaker 2: when journalists interview people about these kind of experiences, you
Speaker 2: don't get the direct interview transcript. You get an article
Speaker 2: where they've kind of taken out the details but also
Speaker 2: kind of softened aspects of it so that it doesn't
Speaker 2: feel that uncomfortable. Oprah's kind of giving you the raw feed,
Speaker 2: and seeing something like this, which is normally a private
Speaker 2: process rendered as public entertainment, is kind of a new thing.
Speaker 2: And particularly what's new about it is that because of
Speaker 2: the way Oprah does this, rather than people feeling like, oh,
Speaker 2: she's kind of exploding this woman, people from the audience
Speaker 2: start to join in spontaneously sharing their own stories of
Speaker 2: sexual abuse as children. People in the audience start breaking
Speaker 2: down into tears, and then Oprah starts talking about her
Speaker 2: own sexual abuse, telling everyone the fact that I had
Speaker 2: all these unfortunate experiences permeates my life and I'm gonna
Speaker 2: quote from Kitty Kelly's book here. For the next few seconds,
Speaker 2: Oprah appeared to be discovering for the first time that
Speaker 2: what she had experienced as a nine year old child
Speaker 2: was indeed rape, a defilement so unspeakable that she had
Speaker 2: never been able to put it into words until that
Speaker 2: very moment. Her audience felt as if they were watching
Speaker 2: the fissures of a soul split open as she admitted
Speaker 2: shameful secret. And nothing like this had ever happened on
Speaker 2: daytime TV. There had certainly been like people talking about
Speaker 2: sexual abuse, but the fact that an episode interviewing a
Speaker 2: survivor would lead to both members of the audience breaking
Speaker 2: down and sharing their own stories and then the host
Speaker 2: doing it, that's a totally novel thing, right, Like that
Speaker 2: has never happened before on television, and it creates a firestorm.
Speaker 2: The fact that Oprah does this on air becomes national
Speaker 2: and then international news, and it is people like the
Speaker 2: people running the station are not happy, Like the actual
Speaker 2: executive is the station are like this is supposed to
Speaker 2: be a happy morning show. This is this is like
Speaker 2: this is like for people to like watch what they're drinking?
Speaker 2: What the what the hell is going on here?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 2: Why why are we having stories of child sexual abuse?
Speaker 2: But the ratings are off the charts. It's one of
Speaker 2: those things where she both gets in trouble with the
Speaker 2: people running the station and also this makes her too
Speaker 2: big to fail, Like this is this, this is It's
Speaker 2: impossible to overstate what a massive moment this is for
Speaker 2: both television as a medium and also for Oprah's career.
Speaker 4: Yeah it's I mean, it's there's also just that yeah,
Speaker 4: like what a I guessed risk or like thank god,
Speaker 4: it's a.
Speaker 2: Huge risk because like if the ratings had like her her,
Speaker 2: the people running the station are not happy if the
Speaker 2: ratings had not been there, like she could have gotten
Speaker 2: fired for this. And it's also there's it's such a
Speaker 2: complicated thing to parse out because one thing she's doing
Speaker 2: is this is one of the very first times and
Speaker 2: a public space with this much exposure, that you have
Speaker 2: victims of rape talking about it, not in a way
Speaker 2: that's mediated by psychiatrists or law enforcement or anything like that,
Speaker 2: but is just like survivors talking about it.
Speaker 9: Right.
Speaker 2: And at the same time, Oprah very sees the reaction
Speaker 2: to this, sees how well it does, and her immediate
Speaker 2: takeaway is like sex cells, we need all of the
Speaker 2: sex episodes, every kind of sex, not just like this
Speaker 2: where people are talking about you know their trauma, but like,
Speaker 2: whatever we can get that involves sex, that's what's going
Speaker 2: to make this show keep it on top, right, So, like,
Speaker 2: after this episode she starts Invite. She invites a bunch
Speaker 2: of female porn stars on to talk about the penises
Speaker 2: of her post stars of their co stars. That episode
Speaker 2: gets a thirty percent share of the Chicago audience and
Speaker 2: provokes even more news articles about Oprah because people are
Speaker 2: now like, is this smut? Like how do we talk
Speaker 2: about what she's doing? Nobody's done anything like this before,
Speaker 2: and a lot of the coverage is super critical, super
Speaker 2: like this is incredibly irresponsible. People shouldn't be doing this.
Speaker 2: But it all just drives viewers right more. And the
Speaker 2: more stuff that she puts out there that gets people
Speaker 2: shocked and like angry or you know, titillated, the more
Speaker 2: people watch her show. When reporters interviewer about this, Oprah
Speaker 2: tells them, my mandate is to win, admitting that her
Speaker 2: overriding purpose and bringing victims of sexual violence and sex
Speaker 2: workers onto her show is to draw eyeballs. Kitty Kelly
Speaker 2: quotes her former producer, Deborah de Meo, paraphrasing the way
Speaker 2: Oprah pitched show ideas to her team. I'd love to
Speaker 2: get a priest to talk about sex. I'd love to
Speaker 2: get one to say, yes, I have a lover. I
Speaker 2: worship Jesus and her Yes, I love her, and her
Speaker 2: name is Carolyn.
Speaker 8: I love how Like that's a life like pretty twisted
Speaker 8: over was like I want the like free, I want
Speaker 8: some freaky d in here.
Speaker 2: Find me a priest who's fucking some lady named Carolyn
Speaker 2: and get her on, get him on. Oh man. So yeah,
Speaker 2: that's like I don't even you can, I guess moralize
Speaker 2: that however you want. It's so fascinating that it goes
Speaker 2: from I have like shared my own horrible experience and
Speaker 2: people connected with that, to like, so we got to
Speaker 2: get some priest who's fucking a lady on this show
Speaker 2: right where that's where this guy has to continue going.
Speaker 4: You know. It is also weird to conclu not weird,
Speaker 4: but like I mean, I guess like more media savvy
Speaker 4: than I am to conclude from that first show that
Speaker 4: sex cells rather than like vulnerability cells or authenticity cells
Speaker 4: or whatever.
Speaker 2: But also all of them sell because her vulnerability and
Speaker 2: authenticity keeps her piet. It's a huge part of her
Speaker 2: ongoing popularity. But so is the sex, So is the
Speaker 2: really sleazy stuff. They never stop doing that, right, I
Speaker 2: guess the answer is all of it. And Oprah has
Speaker 2: very good instincts, you know, wherever we want to land
Speaker 2: morally on what she's doing here. This shit works now.
Speaker 2: It is worth noting that she is depicted in the media.
Speaker 2: This is very hard for like, I had trouble grasping
Speaker 2: this because by the time I was aware of Oprah,
Speaker 2: she had such a different like reputation in the eighties.
Speaker 2: She in late seventies and eighties, She's Jerry Springer right.
Speaker 2: She is not a respectable media figure to a lot
Speaker 2: of people. That is not how she's talked about to
Speaker 2: a lot of people around this time. An article in
Speaker 2: McCall's magazine on the Oprah Winfrey Show described what it
Speaker 2: did it best as quote get him in the gut
Speaker 2: show topics, sexual disorders, battered wise, self mutilation, overweight people
Speaker 2: and the people who hate them, you know, all that
Speaker 2: kind of stuff. Oprah often would say, nothing is taboo,
Speaker 2: and she meant it. Whinfrey's own struggles with weight loss
Speaker 2: and gain quickly became a central part of the show,
Speaker 2: as well, we open this series with the infamous wagon
Speaker 2: of fat incident from nineteen eighty or ninety eight. That
Speaker 2: was gross and bad, but it's also worth noting if
Speaker 2: you want to put that into the context, like how
Speaker 2: we could get to something that gross. It comes after
Speaker 2: a decade of constant public obsession with every pound Oprah
Speaker 2: lost or gained. And this is where we're gonna talk
Speaker 2: about the color purple again. So as I've noted, Oprah
Speaker 2: struggles with you know, binge eating, with her body self
Speaker 2: image from adolescence on like a lot of us, like
Speaker 2: maybe everybody, she has a habit of stress eating and
Speaker 2: was noted by co workers to binge to really uncomfortable
Speaker 2: levels during parties and the like. When she becomes this
Speaker 2: TV star in the mid eighties, people start talking about this,
Speaker 2: like it becomes both in gossip columns and shit like
Speaker 2: the fucking you know, National Inquirer and stuff. There's like
Speaker 2: articles about, you know, stories of Oprah and eating and whatnot.
Speaker 2: And she kind of pivots on this to become radically
Speaker 2: open to her audience about her dieting and her struggles
Speaker 2: with weight gain. Now this helps drive her popularity, but
Speaker 2: it's also it both is in part a reaction to
Speaker 2: and also helps lead to ship like this nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: five appearance on the Tonight Show with Joan Rivers, which
Speaker 2: I'm gonna play for you now. This is one of
Speaker 2: the most uncomfortable things I've seen on television.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, Joan was such a bit. I can't
Speaker 3: wait to see. This is so bad. I mean, I
Speaker 3: like Loki, love her, but like, let's be real.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, this is this is not great. As
Speaker 2: you went into beauty contest, they tell me your beauty
Speaker 2: contest win us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm those fifty pounds ago or so, yeah, but.
Speaker 2: So what'd you win?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 1: I wont them as fire prevention contest?
Speaker 2: Was that a who?
Speaker 1: What fire prevention to?
Speaker 3: Has you gained the weight?
Speaker 1: I ate a lot because.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 2: No, you said fifty pounds.
Speaker 1: You shouldn't let that.
Speaker 9: Happen to you, very Jody.
Speaker 8: You know what, No, I don't want to hear let
Speaker 8: me tell you that, pretty girl, are you single?
Speaker 3: You must lose the weight.
Speaker 1: I'm going to you know what we are now am Chicago.
Speaker 1: In Chicago, we're starting a diet with Oprah Grace. Yes,
Speaker 1: in conjunction with a tribute so that I have been
Speaker 1: put under pressure to finally do it.
Speaker 10: I am trying to lose five pounds.
Speaker 1: Will you know how to laugh with me in March
Speaker 1: when I'm back and you lose fifteen, I'll lose five.
Speaker 1: But well, listen, that's you. I'll do I'll keep these
Speaker 1: and I'm not.
Speaker 4: I'm fer I'll do it.
Speaker 3: If you do it, you will.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a deal.
Speaker 3: It's a deal. It's a deal.
Speaker 10: Five pounding it.
Speaker 1: Grace.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's great, that's great, that's great.
Speaker 1: I'm excited about it though, because I've gone up and
Speaker 1: down and up, and I've been on every diet. If
Speaker 1: you tried the banana, weeni and egg diet, you might
Speaker 1: know a banana weening and egg? Where eat a banana,
Speaker 1: a weeni and egg? And I've done the pickles and
Speaker 1: peanut butter diet. I just eat cookies.
Speaker 9: But I only eat like eight hundred callies with the cookies.
Speaker 9: I forget you do it that way?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah. I saw nel Carter on her last night
Speaker 1: who'd lost Yes, but you couldn't tell. She's still very chubby.
Speaker 1: She just lose more. You lose more, well, I think
Speaker 1: wall people go oh I'm not people and help friends
Speaker 1: that die truth to say, you are still a pig?
Speaker 2: Okay, well, why you are eating disorders so rampant? Is
Speaker 2: it because these are our parents? Effectively?
Speaker 8: Oh I gotta say though, like that was not as
Speaker 8: this is.
Speaker 3: That was not as bad as I thought it was
Speaker 3: going to be.
Speaker 8: It's people talk to bigger people, Like people feel totally
Speaker 8: comfortable saying shit like this two people's faces and they
Speaker 8: don't even think twice about it.
Speaker 3: It says like totally how people talk.
Speaker 2: Part of what you're seeing there is like Oprah being
Speaker 2: a professional, because when she describes this moment, she's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: like I was not happy, like this was that, Like
Speaker 2: the the laughing and stuff was all faked. I was
Speaker 2: very unhappy that we were having this conversation, right like
Speaker 2: obviously yeah, no, It's like I can't believe the kind
Speaker 2: of shit that you'd saying there. It was made like
Speaker 2: this whole situation was made worse at the time because like,
Speaker 2: not long after this, while she is like doing this
Speaker 2: very famous publicized diet, it gets announced on the Joan
Speaker 2: Rivers Show. Like the first big thing she does after
Speaker 2: this is she sent to Ethiopia to report on Chicago's
Speaker 2: efforts to help the famine. So the story is simultaneously
Speaker 2: Oprah trying to lose thirty pounds and Oprah reporting on
Speaker 2: a famine and the Ethiopia not great vibes. One of
Speaker 2: her colleagues asks like, hey, is this kind of gross?
Speaker 2: And Oprah applies, You're right, it's sick, isn't it?
Speaker 3: It is sick.
Speaker 2: It is kind of sick.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 2: One fair critique of these episodes is that we're not
Speaker 2: going to go into super clinical detail about all of
Speaker 2: the different fad diets and dangerous weight loss missinformation that
Speaker 2: comes out of the Oprah Winfrey Show. Part of why
Speaker 2: is because the podcast maintenance Face has done a ton
Speaker 2: of that, so you can check all of that out.
Speaker 2: I think part of it is just that, like you
Speaker 2: get the idea here, right, It's both important to note that,
Speaker 2: like Oprah like that that clip there, there's a lot
Speaker 2: of pushing on everyone listening to that. Feel bad about
Speaker 2: your body, be ashamed if you've gained weight, embrace dangerous
Speaker 2: strategies to lose it. Oprah has a lot, and Oprah
Speaker 2: will admit it today, a lot of guilt and spreading that.
Speaker 2: But also she is in such a unique position where like,
Speaker 2: I don't know if there's ever been a single person
Speaker 2: that so many Americans have been so obsessed with their
Speaker 2: body size. Like it's kind of hard not to not
Speaker 2: for that to affect you in a bad way. Like
Speaker 2: we really were insane about Oprah. Yeah, I don't know
Speaker 2: what else to say about that. I will say in
Speaker 2: order to kind of point out the way in which
Speaker 2: people talked about her. One of the most prominent TV
Speaker 2: critics of the day, Richard Blackwell, described Oprah as bumpy, frumpy,
Speaker 2: and downright lumpy on the cover of TV Guide. Jesus So,
Speaker 2: right around the time this is all happening, Oprah is
Speaker 2: on the Tonight Show. Like right around when she's on
Speaker 2: the Tonight Show, she is auditioning for a role in
Speaker 2: the color Purple. After the episode, where again this is
Speaker 2: not as friendly a situation as it appears on the air,
Speaker 2: she's very unhappy about this. She's stress each she gave
Speaker 2: more weight, and then she checks herself into a fat farm,
Speaker 2: an emergency weight loss boot camp type program to lose
Speaker 2: the weight. Steven Spielberg, who had directed the movie, finds
Speaker 2: out and he calls Oprah and Spielberg says, I hear
Speaker 2: you're at a fat farm, you lose a pound, you
Speaker 2: could lose this part, she's like, she's fucked no matter what.
Speaker 8: I don't love anybody like micromanaging somebody else's weight.
Speaker 2: But yeah.
Speaker 8: The color Purple is based on a novel by Alice
Speaker 8: Walker and the character she was portraying, like, I like,
Speaker 8: I get it's not something I think he should have said,
Speaker 8: but I get where he's coming from.
Speaker 2: It's it's yeah, I don't know, I don't know, I
Speaker 2: don't know where I should. Yeah, yeah, it's uncomfortable.
Speaker 11: Does Oprah talk about like like not not like to well, yeah,
Speaker 11: I mean, I guess what I'm about to say is
Speaker 11: gonna sound victim. But I'm just caring because part of
Speaker 11: the like this like like attention to her weight. She
Speaker 11: even if it was like going to happen anyway, she
Speaker 11: did profit from like it was like part of the
Speaker 11: like editorial strategy of her show, right, Like, does she
Speaker 11: talk about leaning in on that?
Speaker 2: She She hugely leans in right like she does? She does.
Speaker 2: She in part she makes the specifics of like how
Speaker 2: much she's gaining or how much she is losing and
Speaker 2: what diet she is doing. Part of the show. A
Speaker 2: lot of the money that comes in as a result
Speaker 2: of diet advice. She has deals and gets millions and
Speaker 2: millions from groups like weight Watchers, right pushing a lot
Speaker 2: of different diets she gets paid and also just like
Speaker 2: fills airtime and makes money that way. Putting on different
Speaker 2: diet experts and diet books and a lot of that
Speaker 2: stuff is extremely dangerous. It is both she is being
Speaker 2: victimized by the whole media environment and also profiting on
Speaker 2: that by pushing the same kind of poison on everyone else.
Speaker 2: Right like that That's what's happening here, right like it
Speaker 2: is a story of both victimization and profiting off of
Speaker 2: putting some pretty toxic and oprah. You know, the thing
Speaker 2: she's doing right now is at least copying to some
Speaker 2: of that right now, copying to some of that while
Speaker 2: also getting money from weight Watchers. So, I don't know,
Speaker 2: I don't know where we want to put that out.
Speaker 6: The one thing I am curious about is when we
Speaker 6: as a culture made the transition from saying weenies to
Speaker 6: hot dogs.
Speaker 2: A hot dog based diet today which you should never
Speaker 2: have had a hot dog based diet.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I guess I guess not.
Speaker 2: You would know. Yeah. Anyway, so she gives up after
Speaker 2: or at least the way that Oprah tells the story.
Speaker 2: After Spielberg's like, if you lose a pound, you could
Speaker 2: lose this part, Oprah does like fuck it and gives
Speaker 2: up on getting the role and keeps the role, and yeah,
Speaker 2: she winds up doing very well. She gets like massively,
Speaker 2: you know. Like one of the interesting things about Oprah
Speaker 2: is she could have had just a whole career as
Speaker 2: a major Hollywood star. Like she just decides to keep
Speaker 2: being Oprah Winfrey because that turns out to be much
Speaker 2: better for her than being like a movie star. But
Speaker 2: she's very like has a very successful acting career starting out.
Speaker 8: Oh, I mean Color Purple is like it is a classic.
Speaker 8: It's probably the movie I have seen the most times
Speaker 8: in my life. Like it is like a like the
Speaker 8: way that she was in that movie, it was a revelation,
Speaker 8: like even thinking about it now, as good as like
Speaker 8: Whoopi Goldberg is in that movie and Danny Glover is
Speaker 8: in that movie. Danny is the standout character. Even so,
Speaker 8: probably her big scene in the Color Purple is when
Speaker 8: she gives the speech to Seeley all my life. I
Speaker 8: had to fight. If you've heard that Kendrick Lamar song,
Speaker 8: all right, that's the beginning of that song comes from.
Speaker 8: Is Oprah's big scene in that movie? Like that movie,
Speaker 8: the way it shifted the culture we like really cannot
Speaker 8: be overstated.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And it's so fascinating to me that like
Speaker 2: that would be for most people, like, oh shit, I've
Speaker 2: made it. I've like been in this highly praised Hollywood.
Speaker 2: You know, that's the rest of my life. Is I'm
Speaker 2: going to be in movies. Oprah's like, no, no, I
Speaker 2: know a better way to get really famous. So while
Speaker 2: this is going on, her movie career is starting, Oprah
Speaker 2: is continuing to you know, be trash TV. Right, that's
Speaker 2: really this era. And sex is not the only thing
Speaker 2: that she finds out that sells racism gets people to
Speaker 2: tune in. So during Black History Month in the eighties,
Speaker 2: Oprah started booking KKK members to show up wearing sheets
Speaker 2: and hoods. Intermittently, she would book guests with something important
Speaker 2: to say too, like when she did the Women with
Speaker 2: Sexual Disorders episode and talk to a woman who had
Speaker 2: never orgasmed. Oprah brought in a sex surrogate to coach
Speaker 2: her on air, which elicit a flood of complaints, as
Speaker 2: Kitty Kelly documents, yesterday's show was gross, said one woman.
Speaker 2: I don't know how else to describe it, absolutely degrading.
Speaker 2: There are millions of women who never experienced sexual pleasures,
Speaker 2: said Oprah. We had six hundred and sixty and thirty
Speaker 2: three calls for women yesterday after the show on the computer.
Speaker 2: We made lots of women feel there, not alone. And
Speaker 2: this is what makes especially in this era, it's always
Speaker 2: back and forth, right, because there's this mix of like, oh,
Speaker 2: that's some of the grossest TV I've heard about, and like, oh,
Speaker 2: you're really pushing out some very unhealthy attitudes towards dieting
Speaker 2: into society. And also it's incredibly important for people to
Speaker 2: know about stuff like sexual dysfunction and that there's like
Speaker 2: coaching for that, and to not feel ashamed, like this
Speaker 2: is a thing that we can talk about in public.
Speaker 2: And Oprah's always so much of both of those things.
Speaker 2: That said, when for every episode like this, you'd get
Speaker 2: where it's like, yeah, I'm glad someone in the fucking
Speaker 2: eighties was talking about like sexual dysfunction and the fact
Speaker 2: that there are treatments available that you can and should
Speaker 2: seek you. So right from that to Oprah being like, also,
Speaker 2: the devil is coming for your children, and this is
Speaker 2: going to get us onto one of my favorite subjects,
Speaker 2: how Oprah Winfrey helped start the Satanic Panic? But first, ah, yes,
Speaker 2: but first you know who else is the devil? But
Speaker 2: like the sexy devil, Like the devil when he's played
Speaker 2: by that guy who also played the President in the
Speaker 2: Command and conquer Red Alert too. You know that guy.
Speaker 4: I'm just nodding. I'm just nodding.
Speaker 2: Everyone's just nodding. Nobody else remembers that guy. He played
Speaker 2: the devil once. Look him up. We're back. Four people
Speaker 2: are so happy I just made that reference. Everyone else
Speaker 2: has stopped listening forever. So Satanic Panic. In nineteen eighty nine,
Speaker 2: a Canadian psychiatrist and con man named Lawrence Pasder wrote
Speaker 2: a book about his patient, who he later married, Michelle Smith,
Speaker 2: claiming he recovered her memories of participating and elaborate impossible
Speaker 2: Satanic rituals while being abused for the devil's gain. This book,
Speaker 2: Michelle remembers, helped launch the Satanic Panic, a religious moral
Speaker 2: panic that ruined hundreds of lives and laid much of
Speaker 2: the groundwork for QAnon to take off today. We maybe
Speaker 2: don't get the Trump presidency without the Satanic panic. That
Speaker 2: was some necessary groundwork, right, You got to put in
Speaker 2: those load bearing pillars, and this is where that's coming from.
Speaker 2: And Oprah helps get it off the ground. She brings
Speaker 2: Laurence and Michelle onto her show, along with several other
Speaker 2: prominent If you are a Satanic panic con person, right
Speaker 2: who is like I worship the Devil, I sacrificed babies,
Speaker 2: Oprah will let you say whatever to At this point,
Speaker 2: literally tens of millions of people are tuning into her show.
Speaker 2: I want to start with a clip of a nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty six episode which wasn't about the Satanic Panic, but
Speaker 2: contained a sting for their upcoming episode on devil worshipers.
Speaker 2: And I want to it's just because you know, we talk.
Speaker 2: I throw to ads in a lot of you know,
Speaker 2: different ways here, but I got a bow to the
Speaker 2: master class here.
Speaker 1: All right, we'll come back and we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about sex some more.
Speaker 3: Back in a moment, the Devil.
Speaker 2: The screen after she says that is just a picture
Speaker 2: of the devil on a TV screen holding his own tail,
Speaker 2: with the Thursday Victims of Satanic worship. I love that
Speaker 2: iconic coming next to the devil.
Speaker 4: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: Also, we're gonna talk about sex and more. We should
Speaker 2: have thrown to ads now, Sophie, Sorry, that would have
Speaker 2: been the way.
Speaker 5: To do it.
Speaker 3: Uh, next time, Bud, you got to.
Speaker 2: Learn from the masters here. Now I'm gonna play or
Speaker 2: I'm gonna have Sophie play another clip. I think from
Speaker 2: closer to nineteen eighty nine or nineteen ninety. Most of
Speaker 2: Oprah's early shows are not preserved in a convenient way,
Speaker 2: So I did my best here.
Speaker 10: Our next guest was used also in word shipping. The
Speaker 10: devil participated in human sacrifice, rituals, rituals, and cannibalism. She
Speaker 10: says her family has been involved in rituals for generations.
Speaker 10: She's currently an extensive therapy suffers from multiple personality disorder,
Speaker 10: meaning she's blocked out many of the terrifying and painful
Speaker 10: memories of her childhood. Rachel, who is also in disguise
Speaker 10: to protect her identity, you come from generations of ritualistic abuse.
Speaker 9: Yes, my family is an extensive family tree, and they
Speaker 9: keep track of who's don In thousand and.
Speaker 2: She's in disguise, good really yes, yeah, okay, okay, what's
Speaker 2: the disguise?
Speaker 5: What's disgus like?
Speaker 2: Is this there?
Speaker 3: Isses?
Speaker 2: Okay? Okay, yeah, the clark can her?
Speaker 4: Yeah, she put on.
Speaker 2: When she takes those glasses off, her family's not going
Speaker 2: to recognize the devil can't catch.
Speaker 5: Her, sorry, presuming just was very.
Speaker 2: Thrown off by them. That is funny, Okay.
Speaker 3: In disguise, it's impossible to tell on her.
Speaker 2: And I don't say this to shame her. I'm shaming
Speaker 2: the nineties. You can't tell a bad wig from normal hair.
Speaker 4: In like nineteen you know you can't.
Speaker 2: There's no way to do it.
Speaker 3: But that brooch is long, that brooches something.
Speaker 9: Yes, thousand who hasn't been involved and it's gone back
Speaker 9: who by seventeen hundred and so you were right. I
Speaker 9: was going into a family that believes in this.
Speaker 10: And this is it. This is Does everyone else think
Speaker 10: it's a nice Jewish family from the outside? You appear
Speaker 10: to be a nice Jewish girl, definitely, and you all
Speaker 10: are worshiping the devil inside the home?
Speaker 9: Right, there's other Jewish families across the country not just know.
Speaker 4: Really, so.
Speaker 2: I don't think I have to tell you why this
Speaker 2: is dangerous. That's a real bad thing to have twenty
Speaker 2: million people watching, like not great, Well, the Jews are
Speaker 2: secretly worshiping the devil.
Speaker 6: Gee.
Speaker 8: They might appear as like wholesome, normal family, but the
Speaker 8: hind closed doors.
Speaker 2: So yeah, Oprah is literally just doing the blood libel
Speaker 2: on data TV, on the most popular talk show in
Speaker 2: the country. And we're going to continue here because it
Speaker 2: just gets I am shocked that this was allowed.
Speaker 10: What kind of things went on in the family.
Speaker 9: Well, there would be rituals in which babies would be sacrificed,
Speaker 9: and you would have to you.
Speaker 10: Know babies, So are people who bread.
Speaker 9: Babies in our family, no one would know about it.
Speaker 9: A lot of people were overweight, so you couldn't tell
Speaker 9: if they were pregnant or not.
Speaker 4: Or they would.
Speaker 9: Supposedly go away for a while and then come back.
Speaker 9: The other thing I want to point out, not all
Speaker 9: Jewish the sacrifice babies.
Speaker 10: I mean, it's not kind. I heard of any Jewish
Speaker 10: people sacrifice some babies.
Speaker 4: But anyway, so you.
Speaker 9: Witnessed the sacrifice right when I was very young, I
Speaker 9: was forced to participate in that in which I had
Speaker 9: a sacrifice an infant, and.
Speaker 10: The purpose of sacrifices to what is to bring you what?
Speaker 9: What are you sacrificing for?
Speaker 4: For power?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have a lot of questions. First off, do
Speaker 2: we think it makes it better for Oprah to offhandy
Speaker 2: to be like I've never heard of Jewish people sacrificeing
Speaker 2: babies before anyway, tell me about these Jewish baby sacrifices.
Speaker 2: Oh god, I mean this does get closer to her
Speaker 2: future crimes.
Speaker 4: Of like like clearly if even even if you want.
Speaker 6: To remove like the any sort of like willful malice
Speaker 6: from Oprah, like a pretty shameful credulity is on display here, yes, Like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like Mike, as a middling journalist, my first question
Speaker 2: would be, are you not worried you're gonna get arrested
Speaker 2: because you just admitted to murdering a baby on television?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: You know that's a crime, right, But there's no statut
Speaker 2: limitations on killing a baby.
Speaker 3: So I have a question.
Speaker 8: Like, like what is the production of this, like behind
Speaker 8: the scenes, Like where do they find this?
Speaker 3: Lady? Did they are just like, oh, you've got.
Speaker 8: A story about killing babies and sacrifice, come on on
Speaker 8: the air or tell us about it?
Speaker 2: You know, you get pieces of this. Nobody will directly
Speaker 2: say like we just we're full of shit, right, we
Speaker 2: just lied, you know, but but you can tell that
Speaker 2: what's happening. You get this, Like that previous clip rope
Speaker 2: was like I want a priest too, did this and
Speaker 2: this and this right, because it'll it'll sell an episode.
Speaker 2: She's like, I want someone talking about sacrificing babies. And
Speaker 2: you know what is exists in the world, and you
Speaker 2: don't have to coach people on this. If you let
Speaker 2: enough people know, you can get on TV in front
Speaker 2: of twenty million people, if you talk about sacrificing a baby,
Speaker 2: there will be someone whose desperation for attention is so
Speaker 2: high that they will come on television and claim to
Speaker 2: have sacrificed a baby. That's the way people are.
Speaker 8: That's the person you should give a platform for sure.
Speaker 8: That's a healthy person, well adjusted. Help them spread their message.
Speaker 2: Yes, we love Oprah Winfrey doing things that are Again,
Speaker 2: as a guy who's read a lot of Nazi propaganda,
Speaker 2: almost indistinguishable from Nazi propaganda like this is specifically one
Speaker 2: of the major justifications of the Holocaust. Jews are abducting
Speaker 2: Christian babies and sacrificing them to the devil, like that
Speaker 2: is really bad to do. I really can't emphasize enough
Speaker 2: how dangerous this thing is. And if you look at
Speaker 2: shit like in QAnon right where there's a like a
Speaker 2: third of the country believes that the Democratic Party are
Speaker 2: literally eating babies to gain everlasting youth, which like just
Speaker 2: look at Nancy Pelosi, Guys, she's not getting everlasting youth,
Speaker 2: like her hip just broke. This is unequivocal bastardism, right, Like,
Speaker 2: this is a bad thing to be doing.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and you know, I mean presumably the thing was
Speaker 6: like wink, We're not going to ask you any hard questions, right,
Speaker 6: let's just get the rating.
Speaker 2: Just tell me, give me some detention. And it's it's
Speaker 2: so fucked up that, like, on one hand, when you're
Speaker 2: doing this about like you are talking to someone about
Speaker 2: their their difficulty. You know, I've never experienced an orgasm.
Speaker 2: You're asking these kind of questions to get them to
Speaker 2: say more. That is making other people with the problem
Speaker 2: of whom there are many feel less alone. Same thing
Speaker 2: with like sexual assault survivors. And then the fact that
Speaker 2: you have your you have absolutely no compunction with like
Speaker 2: I'll do the same thing for Lias about juice sacrificing babies. Yeah,
Speaker 2: fascinating stuff.
Speaker 8: I'm curious if she because it sounds like at one
Speaker 8: point in her her career she really thought of herself
Speaker 8: as like a news person, a journalism person.
Speaker 3: What does she think about her career now?
Speaker 2: You know, here's the thing, because Oprah never really trained
Speaker 2: in journalism very much. I don't know if she maybe
Speaker 2: believes this, if she thinks these are the same, Like,
Speaker 2: that's kind of the thing to me because but also
Speaker 2: I want to be like, you are clearly brilliant. You
Speaker 2: are a once in a lifetime genius at least it's
Speaker 2: some things. But also, as we've all seen, we've all
Speaker 2: become increasingly aware of people who are like, well, you're
Speaker 2: clearly brilliant at one thing, and now your access to
Speaker 2: Twitter has made us all aware that you don't understand
Speaker 2: anything else.
Speaker 4: So, I mean, the evidence is seems to be that
Speaker 4: people who are brilliant on one thing may actually.
Speaker 2: Be terrible in everything.
Speaker 4: Standard.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it may just be that Oprah is a once
Speaker 2: in a lifetime mind when it comes to the business
Speaker 2: of entertainment, and also honestly believed this woman sacrificing babies
Speaker 2: with her family.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Now that said, we have the fact that we have
Speaker 2: quotes from her being like, hey, get me a priest
Speaker 2: who said this makes me kind of lean more in
Speaker 2: the direction of Norah Oprah new right. Some of this,
Speaker 2: A lot of this is bullshit and it was just
Speaker 2: trying to get eyeballs on the TV, don't I think
Speaker 2: it's often a mix, Like, I don't know how much
Speaker 2: she's able to parse it herself. I want to talk
Speaker 2: about another incident that kind of really makes me go
Speaker 2: back and forth, which is the McMartin preschool satanic abuse scandal.
Speaker 2: Now we cover this in our episodes on the Satanic Panic,
Speaker 2: but the gist of the case is that a bunch
Speaker 2: of parents became convinced that their children, more than three
Speaker 2: hundred of them at all, had been systematically abused by
Speaker 2: a Satanic cult headed by the McMartin family, who ran
Speaker 2: a private preschool. The initial allegations, which included claims that
Speaker 2: one of the alleged molesters could fly, were made by
Speaker 2: Judy Johnson, who suffered from schizophrenia and was a hardcore alcoholic.
Speaker 2: From her allegations, a community hysteria developed, which was stoked
Speaker 2: by an abuse therapy clinic run by Kee McFarlane, who
Speaker 2: provided investigations that pushed children with leading questions towards generating allegations.
Speaker 2: A whole lot of people had their lives ruined by this.
Speaker 2: And despite the fact that the investigation literally dug up
Speaker 2: the ground around the school to try to find secret
Speaker 2: satanic torture tunnels, no one was ever convicted of molesting
Speaker 2: any kids and people. I don't. I hate relitigating this
Speaker 2: because people are always like WEO. But they did find tunnels, No,
Speaker 2: they didn't. They found trash buried underneath the school because
Speaker 2: a farm had been there and people bury trash. All
Speaker 2: of the shit that was buried in there was stuffed
Speaker 2: from the era at which there was a farm there
Speaker 2: where people were burying trash, the dead animal bones. That's
Speaker 2: just what happens in the ground, guys. That's just how
Speaker 2: things are. It's not they weren't running tunnels to molest
Speaker 2: toddlers for the devil.
Speaker 12: It's also just it's like the logistics of like running
Speaker 12: a fucking satanic call, Like what the fuck are you
Speaker 12: talking about again?
Speaker 2: It's one of those and like I'm not saying no
Speaker 2: kid ever got molested at this or other preschools like that.
Speaker 2: A lot of times the satanic abuse does come from
Speaker 2: there's a real sexual abuse problem, and then it gets
Speaker 2: turned into something that absolutely isn't happening, and again, shitloads
Speaker 2: of innocent people get wrapped into it too. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: don't think I'm not saying that was a happen at
Speaker 2: Macmartin because again, nobody got convicted of anything.
Speaker 4: So it's not highly correlated with Satan. No, in fact,
Speaker 4: it might be higher correlated with Satan's old friend.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And in fact, church leaders, Southern Baptist leaders, Catholic priests,
Speaker 2: police officers, these are the people who are molesting kids.
Speaker 2: And honestly, more than any of those their own parents
Speaker 2: and relatives, that's who does it. That's who molests kids.
Speaker 8: But it's so much more satisfying to believe it's I'm
Speaker 8: like big conspiracy, and Andrew to your point.
Speaker 2: Look at a cousin and uncle. Huh sorry what they
Speaker 2: can fucking fly?
Speaker 4: What do they need tunnles for?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, what do they need?
Speaker 3: Why?
Speaker 2: Why are they doing.
Speaker 3: This in tunnels?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 3: Why does that make more sense?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So as this in this case winds on for
Speaker 2: like like a couple of years, Oprah, it is constantly
Speaker 2: on the show, they are following. This is like the
Speaker 2: OJ Simpson trial, you know, before the OJ Simpson trial
Speaker 2: for Winfrey. And here like they are following every twist
Speaker 2: and turn in this case breathlessly. And when these people
Speaker 2: don't get convicted, Oprah and her audience are outraged. She
Speaker 2: refuses to accept this. She brings a bunch of the
Speaker 2: children and parents and even some of the jurors onto
Speaker 2: the show to relitigate the case. And She's not the
Speaker 2: only person doing this. She's part of a trendon daytime TV.
Speaker 2: Heraldo Rivera does the same thing, so does Sally Jesse Raphael,
Speaker 2: But as La Times columnist Howard Rosenberg noted, compared to them,
Speaker 2: Raaldo was as judicious as the Supreme Court. In other words,
Speaker 2: he's saying Heraldo's coverage of this was responsible next to Oprah's.
Speaker 2: And Heraldo Rivera is not a responsible man. I don't
Speaker 2: know how else to describe him. Again, when he got
Speaker 2: hit in the nose with that share, it was the
Speaker 2: best thing that ever happened to this country. Quote and
Speaker 2: here's Rosenberg, the level of fairness here was typified by
Speaker 2: Winfrey's admission that she would have made a poor macmartin
Speaker 2: juror because I would say the children said it, all right,
Speaker 2: you're right. The studio audience applauded. You see pieces this
Speaker 2: too that like if the children say it, it's true,
Speaker 2: If a mom says it, it's true, it's like, No,
Speaker 2: you have to have an evidentiary standard when you are
Speaker 2: accusing huge numbers of people of hideous crimes. You can't
Speaker 2: just say we put a bunch of kids in a
Speaker 2: room and wouldn't let them leave until they told stories
Speaker 2: of satanic molestation tunnels and then lock people up forever.
Speaker 2: That's a bad way to run a society. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: don't know good stuff. So while she's doing this, she
Speaker 2: like has all these people on. She tells like a
Speaker 2: former mcmartin's student, like to tell the audience what she
Speaker 2: told the jury, like over sixteen days of testimony. And
Speaker 2: while this is happening, like you're getting these frequent shots
Speaker 2: of the audience like shaking their heads and like listening
Speaker 2: to these horrible stories. One of the moms tells Winfrey,
Speaker 2: I'm outraged at this verdict, And yeah, it's it's just
Speaker 2: it's very irresponsible. I don't know. I think it's probably
Speaker 2: bad for there to be a case where all of
Speaker 2: these people are rung through the mud on television, then
Speaker 2: acquitted and then have a whole show where you're like,
Speaker 2: but actually they were still guilty. These people molest these
Speaker 2: innocent people molested. A shitload of kids are running us
Speaker 2: like their lives are already ruined. Oprah, what are you doing?
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't like this. I don't like this.
Speaker 4: Has she ever spoken about any of that? No? No,
Speaker 4: no, no no.
Speaker 8: And I'd have to imagine if she did, the answer
Speaker 8: would be like, well, everybody was doing it, like this
Speaker 8: is what people didn't but.
Speaker 2: You were the most popular of them, right right right?
Speaker 6: Yeah, he use this thing with I mean even the
Speaker 6: most popular shows. Though, It's like you are still following trends,
Speaker 6: like you may have a hand on the scale for sure,
Speaker 6: but there is a point to where you know the yeah,
Speaker 6: as we've seen multiple times, like the snowball gets out
Speaker 6: of control and you are simply, regardless of your size,
Speaker 6: you are along for the ride.
Speaker 2: Yep, Well how's everyone feeling so far?
Speaker 4: Finally got bad?
Speaker 2: It did it did?
Speaker 6: It was pretty bad before, but finally Oprah's doing some
Speaker 6: evident bad.
Speaker 2: The worm has turned, you would say, Uh, anyway, plugs.
Speaker 3: Love that everybody's been bummed.
Speaker 7: Play to go.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know that was like a like a tough
Speaker 3: spot to end at.
Speaker 8: I guess, although I will say I'm still thinking about
Speaker 8: that headline or that title of her of the review
Speaker 8: MLK shot twice.
Speaker 3: That I'm gonna be thinking about that one for a
Speaker 3: long time.
Speaker 4: That's that is a level of petty. That is very beautiful. Yeah,
Speaker 4: very nice. I don't know. I got a podcast called
Speaker 4: Jos Racist. It's fine.
Speaker 2: Check out?
Speaker 9: Yo?
Speaker 2: Is this racist? Check out? There are no girls on
Speaker 2: the internet. Uh, and find our our hosts online and
Speaker 2: let them know your favorite moment from the Oprah Winfrey Show.
Speaker 2: Bombard us all on Blue Sky with your favorite Oprah clips.
Speaker 2: Don't do that, oh do it to me?
Speaker 8: I mean I had to like bite my tongue as
Speaker 8: I have so much to say. Go ahead and sumam
Speaker 8: me on behind our on Blue Sky. I want to
Speaker 8: hear your favorite Oprah takes. I will tell you mine.
Speaker 2: Don't bite your tongue.
Speaker 8: Oh it would just be me talking about and another
Speaker 8: time on Oprah she did this and then another episode
Speaker 8: she did that it would be so unfun to listen to.
Speaker 2: Well, part four, we're gonna we'll find out, We'll find out,
Speaker 2: We're gonna supercharge Bridget. Just just let you loose until
Speaker 2: next time. Folks, don't put people up in front of
Speaker 2: the country and tell them that you sacrifice babies for
Speaker 2: the devil.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
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