Oprah’s farewell was plainly about Oprah. This wasn’t a surprise; Oprah has over the years blurred the lines between the person and the brand so successfully that it’s impossible to tell anymore where the human ends and the enterprise begins. So, the end of The Oprah Winfrey Show after 25 years and 4,559 episodes is not simply the end of a long-running television series, it is the denouement of something specific to the woman herself.
Still: the hubris was remarkable.
It’s not just that Famous Person after Famous Person was trotted out to metaphorically kiss her ring, it’s that all of them — Tom Hanks, Tom Cruise, Madonna, Halle Berry, Maria Shriver (!) — proclaimed the goodness that Oprah had bestowed upon the world. They didn’t just congratulate her on a great run, they had to thank her profusely for it. It was a sentiment considerably bolstered by the tributes from various ordinary folk from America and abroad who explained how Oprah had, for example, allowed them to get over the loss of a child or move past the death of their mother. The message was simple: I wouldn’t be where I am today without you, Oprah. (Peter Wynn Thompson/AFP/Getty Images)
(Source: nationalpost)
The pink is at risk, the grey is safe.
