Dear Oprah

Beginnings, 2009
Dear Oprah:

The last thing you may feel you need in these stressful days of your confession of the loss of control over your weight, might be a critique of the political implications of your actions. However you are both a public and a political figure, and you would be the first to agree that the personal is political and vice verse.
You present an array of complex difficulties which, sad to say, represent much of the American public.

Firstly your insistence on dwelling on your weight, has for years, been yet another distraction for a public that eats out of anxiety and that diets out of a compulsion for perfection. Real vulnerability has become a taboo, except within the newly sacred halls of rehab programs, and the openly publicized stays, at times recurring ones, of superstars. We have not yet tested out the impact of politicians in high office going into rehab while serving their term, only their significant others (Betty Ford being the most prominent that comes to mind).

You have become, for better and worse, an icon, someone to whom many look for advice, gossip and perhaps the feeding of national combinations of guilt, anxiety and the perennial quick fix. You have brought us guru after guru and the hunt is continuing. As such you bring us the cult of public humiliation in the form of psychologist or spiritual leader giving blithe, facile, and at times assaultive advice and always publically so.

We have become a nation of patriotic fervor in which defeat has become unthinkable, at least on a national level. Senator John McCain, who could well have won the recent Presidential election, maintained that in Iraq, our worst enemy would be defeat. In a society in which parents are constantly competing for the best behaved child who will make it into the neighborhood hall of fame and halls of superior university status, we lose sight of the dignity of human feeling. And in the fray of competition for best degree of acceptance comes conformity to whatever the guru of current priestly status (rabbis included).

The cloak of independence, freedom and individuality comes off quickly to reveal a sheep like readiness to sell one’s soul to the current fad. When you see an infant left crying for hours because it “works” we might consider asking some of the African women to whom we give financial aid to come here to help us know our own needs and those of our children.

This is not strictly a personal matter. When millions of people deny their inner feelings of vulnerability, empathy for ourselves is compromised as is empathy for anyone in our near vicinity. Yes, there are random acts of generosity, but they do not reflect the notion of “Love thy Neighbor as Thyself” in the sense that authentic dignity within us is constantly compromised and disowned.

We may be impulsive and indulgent but we do not take the time to chose interventions which reflect combinations of honesty and empathy, attention to what will work practically in the short run and practically in terms of the efficacy of human resilience.

World peace, world hunger, ecological emergencies cannot be solved without the establishment of what can be called--what I have chosen to call-- human ecology.
This would entail both a connectedness to all things and people on the planet, but in addition, a connection to all the varied parts within us. When we oversimplify ourselves, or oversimplify change, and when we publically or privately submit to the authority of those who have not been shown to know better than we, blindly, we give up our right to be respected based on our pace, and the details of our personal story.

Dear Oprah, you must know that you have done so very much with your life and overcome so many obstacles. But you are hearing rumblings from the world of your shadows, shadows we all have which are the parts of ourselves we tend to disown and deny and often project onto others. If you don’t get in touch with these, you will bow down to those who will play their games on and with you, as you show little respect for the privacy of your own dignity.

If the rest of us don’t find our own ways to seek care for the ailments within— which cannot be solved by pseudo-sage advice with the quickness of any sort of fix—our ode to freedom of choice, and our potential generosity towards our children and neighbors near or far, will remain dubious at best.

Take very good and gentle care, for your own worth and for those who wish you all the best....Please know that even for those of us who have felt you have too much power over literary and other tastes, I venture to say most of us appreciate your passions and the hurdles in your own existence.....All the best in the New Year.