Oprah Winfrey Used An Old Trick: Creating racial division to promote her new movie ‘The Butler’
Oprah Winfrey used the oldest trick in the book as far as promoting the latest “progressive” film containing her direct involvement. Her film The Butler already has Oscar buzz as a surprising summer hit and tells the story of a White House butler who served eight American presidents over three decades. The film traces the dramatic changes that swept American society during this time, from the civil rights movement to Vietnam and beyond, and how those changes affected a man’s life and family. Forest Whitaker stars as the butler with Robin Williams as Dwight Eisenhower, John Cusack as Richard Nixon, Alan Rickman as Ronald Reagan, James Marsden as John F. Kennedy. This is the same film where Jane Fonda played Nancy Reagan. The cast is a who’s who of the extreme political left, and primary spokesman of modern progressive philosophy. If Winfrey didn’t know how to use such tricks, she wouldn’t be one of the richest women in the world. But she does, and she did—one week before The Butler hit theaters she managed to say something that angered half of America and empowered the other half putting her name in all the news outlets ahead of the movie’s release. Her film which cost only $30 million to make pulled in nearly all that total during its opening weekend, an amount that was likely spiked 7% – 9% due to Oprah’s controversy.
In case you missed the inflammatory statements, Oprah’s played the race card one week before The Butler hit theaters when a trip to a Zurich shop ended in a supposedly disturbing racial encounter for the billionaire media mogul — a national humiliation that forced the Swiss tourism board to issue a public apology. Winfrey had said she was in town for Tina Turner’s wedding last month and stopped in the posh Trois Pommes boutique where she asked a clerk to see a $38,000 Tom Ford bag behind a glass case. Oprah claims that the clerk looked down on her assuming that she couldn’t afford the bag because she was a black woman. Pictures of all these characters and more about the story can be fond at the following link.
Oprah Winfrey has also chosen this past week to break her silence on the controversy surrounding her friend Paula Deen, the disgraced television chef’s use of the N-word in the past. “I think Paula Deen was sort of used as a symbol, but I think lots of people use the word inappropriately all the time,” Oprah said during a revealing interview on Entertainment Tonight Monday. The 59-year old television mogul says she’s very sensitive to racism — a major theme in her new movie, “Lee Daniels’ The Butler.” “I do not run in the circle of people who use the word loosely,” she told ET. “For me it’s out of respect to those people who it was the last word they heard while they were being hung, the last word they heard when they were being fired, the last word they heard when their house was being burned. “It’s the word heard every day when they were walking down the street and they had to step off the side-walk to let other people pass.”
I understand the use of playing such cards to promote works of entertainment, especially when in so doing it reveals what kind of person is really behind the image. I’ve played similar cards for similar reasons such as before the release of my novel Tail of the Dragon. I don’t see anything wrong with it so long as the advocate is being authentically revealing—standing up for what they truly believe in. That’s why it’s easy to see what Oprah was up to. She knew exactly what she was doing, and the results are in the box office of The Butler. And I also believe that Oprah believes she was a victim of racism at the Swiss purse store. I believe that Oprah also believes that when she heads a board room conference that the reason there are people jealous of her, as she claims, is because she’s a black woman—and that white men despise her for her role of authority. So for me, it is not surprising that she said any of the things she has recently. My sentiments about Winfrey reflect those of Glenn Beck in a recent radio broadcast that he gave on the matter declaring that Winfrey’s action disgusted him.
Behind the public image of Oprah Winfrey is a woman who was given a tremendous chance by Steven Spielberg after the release of the film, The Color Purple to launch a media empire, which she did. The doors were opened for her to take the wheel and steer herself to an unfathomable destiny, and she did not hold back once given the chance. Many “white guys” wanting to prove they were not racist or sexist were actively seeking a black woman to advocate progressive philosophy to mainstream America in the late 1980s, and Oprah was up for the challenge. The media got behind the effort for the same reason they get behind Barack Obama. Their public and college educations taught them that the civil rights issues of the 1960s were the most important historical aspects of America’s development and they all want to play a part in shaping that history for the better.
In spite of what public image Winfrey has been able to build for herself through aligning her career path with progressive politics, deep down inside she is still the same woman she was before she stared in The Color Purple, and that personality comes out when she is being candid. With her new film The Butler, as conservatives were angry with Jane Fonda playing Nancy Reagan, Winfrey did what progressives have done for years and that was disarm the critics and raise awareness for her film project by soaking up all the media attention with a blind accusation that could never be proven as millions of Oprah fans went to the theater to see her new movie—who otherwise would have passed. By choosing to see The Butler over other kinds of movies, like Kick Ass 2 or some other film, Americans felt that it would prove that “they” were not racist by going to see such a movie, a challenge that Oprah initiated with her statements about racism.
I don’t see Oprah as a success even though she is one of the richest people on earth. I see a highly paid progressive spokesman who has been given power to help re-shape the world—which she has done. No matter how much you dress up someone, and prop them up with photo shoots, films, and enamoring articles, they are what they are, and Oprah revealed what she was to the world during her press tour for The Butler. I don’t blame her for trying to boost her ticket sales with inflammatory remarks. But I do for being a phony all other times of her life and only revealing her deepest, darkest beliefs when it is financially advantageous to do so. She knows as well as anybody that she would not have gained so much global popularity uttering such things during her rise to the top in the 1990s where nearly every woman in America looks to Oprah as the tribal chief of their global village. But I do blame Oprah for being an inflammatory phony and seeking to use race as a way to prop up ticket sales and a possible Oscar nomination for her new movie purely out of fear of being called a civil rights violator. It’s not a free market of equal ideas that people like Oprah are after, it is in the use of guilt, fear, and scandal where advantage is gained through such methods and why people like her “are” the most powerful people in the world when they would otherwise be store sellers of used junk in a flea market.
Remember above everything, Oprah is an actress. She is paid to say what other people write for her. In her case, she is extremely well paid to act not only on the silver screen, but also in real life.
Rich Hoffman
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