Today’s column is about the responsibility of leading by example. And Oprah.
Everybody likes Oprah just fine, and if they have never seen her television program, they probably have some idea of what Oprah represents. The “truthiness” of Oprah, as Stephen Colbert might say. We feel what it means to be Oprah, or we sense her essence.
And for the most part, this essence does not include hard drugs.
Why, then, in the latest issue of O magazine, is one of her perky young journalists popping Ecstasy in pursuit of a story? She says the article is about learning this technique for obtaining freedom from post-traumatic stress disorder.
I don’t understand it. Oprah (in magazine form) hangs around my house in the most mundane and accessible of places—the bathroom floor, for instance, right on top of the scale.
She is there to do good, not evil. She is blocking the scale, and she is offering good clean family reading with lots of primary colors on the cover. What the heck is she doing selling drugs?
Okay, she’s not selling anything. But here’s what happens in this issue. It turns out that this illegal drug is being used illicitly by certain therapists in pursuit of psychiatric goals. Well, mazel tov to them. But there is no way on God’s green earth that you are going to get me to say that this is all right in a family magazine.
Let’s see: Oprah is telling us to use sponges in new ways. She shows us how to make holiday gifts that say love without costing too much money. And she knows how to heal a broken heart through decorating.
Turn the page. There she is, helping older women get back on track by dressing for success. She’s waving her magic wand and making it all better. But now, she’s making everyone into little clean cut addicts (or at least experimenters) who also sport cute bangs.
How do we reconcile the two? Oprah/Ecstasy/Ecrah/Opstasy. That’s not it.
When we look at the other magazines on the bathroom floor, we see this choice tidbit: our glossy alumni publication! Now that I’ve read Oprah, I offer this submission about my family’s approach to their problems…
My Family
Poppy is back from psychocutaneous camp. She’s stepping down!
Cash knows he is getting better with his bug problem because he was playing Club Penguin in the basement and he saw a bug and he just kept playing!
On Pretty Little Liars last night there was a lot of kissing.
The van driver who takes Mo in the morning said he overheard Mo say she wasn’t going to hack into anyone else’s account.
When you are a member of Club Penguin you have so many more perks. You can buy stuff like wigs.
“Instead of picking your skin, finger knit!” – Conference Program for the National Conference on Hair Pulling and Skin Picking Disorders
I’m not saying that my entry for the alumni magazine means that my family is better than the families that solve their problems using Ecstasy. I’m just saying that maybe Oprah should encourage families, if she is going to use her family publication to aid the ill ones in the house, to go to disorder camps or to do free yoga on Netflix.
Isn’t it her responsibility? As a leader? Where are you going to lead the people to, Oprah?