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January 14, 2025 70 mins

Oprah Winfrey has been responsible for introducing several of the most toxic monsters of our era to society. But is she a bastard? Robert sits down with Bridgett Todd and Andrew Ti to investigate.

(Six Part Series)

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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
I watched a man vomiting a casino pit last night.
Was beautiful. Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast
that's this week hosted from sunny Las Vegas, Nevada. We've
got a real special one for you this week. We've
got an episode about somebody who embodies everything that is

(00:28):
meaningful about like where we are in America today, like
both our complete divorce as a culture from any sort
of shared truth, our acceptance of all sorts of like weird,
unhinged metaphysical realities. The guy who's probably going to be
running Medicaid in the near future. We all owe them
to our topic this week. Our subject this week someone

(00:51):
you all have heard of, Oprah Winfrey. And because Oprah
is such a big topic and honestly kind of a
scary person to go after, this might be the most
powerful bastard we've talked about. I brought in some very
special guests. First off, let's say a warm welcome to
the great Bridget Todd Bridget, Welcome to the show.

Speaker 3 (01:12):
I want to say it like Oprah Dove, thank you
for having me. I actually has that thing.

Speaker 1 (01:18):
I just knew, I just knew you were the right
person for this job.

Speaker 3 (01:23):
I don't even know Bridget I do.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
I was gonna say, Bridget is the host of There
Are No Girls on the Internet, and that's right, and
also just one of my favorite people in the entire world.

Speaker 4 (01:34):
That's right. That's right.

Speaker 5 (01:35):
She is here.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
And we are so lucky. Who is our second guest today?
Because we couldn't have just one for.

Speaker 2 (01:41):
Oh no, no, for Oprah. You got to bring out that.
You got to have a double barrel, you know, if
you're going if you're going for a grizzly bear. And
our second round of buckshot this week is.

Speaker 3 (01:51):
Andrew t.

Speaker 1 (01:55):
Thanks for being carry Andrew. Andrew is the host.

Speaker 3 (01:57):
Of you is this racist?

Speaker 4 (02:00):
That's right? How's it going?

Speaker 2 (02:01):
We're gonna need to ask that a lot in these episodes.

Speaker 3 (02:04):
The answer is always gonna.

Speaker 4 (02:05):
Be, yeah, boy, it is.

Speaker 2 (02:08):
There's a lot of stuff to discuss there, Robert.

Speaker 1 (02:10):
Robert and I have been talking about doing the Oprah
episodes for what feels like a year and the subject
of like who do we have on for this? Like
how like guess who do we have on?

Speaker 4 (02:21):
What do we do?

Speaker 1 (02:22):
Because like no matter what, like I mean, I I
read Oprah's bio in like middle school and like she
yeah comes off with her like origin story as like heroic.

Speaker 2 (02:36):
She's deeply sympathetic in many ways, and these first two
episodes are going you're gonna be sympathetic to her more
often than not because we are covering a lot of
her childhood in these The things that she does that
are awful, and the reason why she deserves to be
on the show is not because she's personally odious right
in like her personal interactions usually like I've run into

(02:57):
a bunch of like reddits where people who worked on
the show talking more often than not, people who worked
on the Oprah Winfrey shows say like, we were paid well,
it was a reasonably good gig. You know. You can
certainly find people being like a she was a dick
to me when I was like a barista or whatever.
There's stories like that, but I wouldn't hang an episode
on it. It's more her level of influence is so

(03:18):
titanic and the things that she has chosen, she's chosen
to push a number of people who are We have
done two part episodes on in the past, Doctor Oz
Doctor Phil both owed their careers and the intense amounts
of damage that they've done to society, to Oprah Winfrey.
Neither of those guys are in anyone's radar if it's
not for Oprah Winfrey. John of God, that Brazilian mystic

(03:41):
who raped and molested thousands of people, owes a huge
amount of her career in prominence to Oprah Winfrey. There's
a number of cases like that. She's tied in massively
with a satanic panic. She's tied in massively with a
number of different like myths like we're going to talk about,
like rainbow parties and the like. So we've got a
lot of fun stuff today. I do want to start

(04:03):
by asking Bridget Andrew, what are y'all's histories with Oprah.

Speaker 1 (04:08):
Oh, that's a good question.

Speaker 6 (04:09):
Oh.

Speaker 3 (04:09):
I mean, I have to say, I'm really glad that
you framed the Oprah conversation the way that you did,
because I almost have like a love hate with Oprah. Yeah,
you can't. First of all, you can't be a black
woman and not have some deep admiration for Oprah. And
I would say it's only been recently that I have
really had to have my come to Jesus moment of

(04:30):
some of the bad actors. Charlatan's hucksters and just like
bastards that she has made famous and now we're sort
of stuck with. So it's sort of a love hate Oprah.
Like I did a report on her when I was
in fifth grade where I had to dress like her.

Speaker 2 (04:45):
Yeah, you're, weirdly enough, not the only friend of mine
who did a report on Oprah for when they were
in school.

Speaker 7 (04:53):
Yeah. Well yeah, I think there's like an element of
like it's a little bit like Obama.

Speaker 4 (05:00):
You're like, it's good that there's a.

Speaker 7 (05:03):
Different type of like like a like a black person
being able to achieve the highest ranks of whatever.

Speaker 2 (05:11):
The wealthiest. She's the wealthiest person in media period, like
wealthiest purely media star, two billion, something like that.

Speaker 7 (05:19):
But there's also like some version of like having to
so you're like kind of grading on a curve. It's
like for a billionaire, she's probably pretty good, you know,
relatively speaking, I mean, but she has you know, she
has all the trap. It's the same with Obama, where
you're like, every president has committed crimes against humanity.

Speaker 4 (05:40):
That's just the job.

Speaker 7 (05:42):
But like so for a while, you're like it's sort
of nice that he's like, you know, he is who
he is. But then you're like, just she weren't doing
all these terrible things.

Speaker 2 (05:52):
As we'll talk about one of the complicated things about Oprah.
There's a bunch of stuff that really is very sinister
about her impact. And then when you whenever you're reading
the books and stuff, the critical bios of her, the
things they choose to go after her for are always like, well, actually,
I don't think she did anything wrong. There, Like, there's
a lot of very weird she's she has she has

(06:13):
also had to You can't talk about the things she's
done bad without also defending her because she has come
under fire for so many insanely unreasonable things as well.

Speaker 5 (06:23):
I also did an Oprah book report, probably in the
fifth grade, And you know, she was on my television
for my mom watched a lot of Oprah.

Speaker 1 (06:34):
There was a lot of Oprah in my household growing up.
And then like a few years ago, I was working
on a project with Jamie Loftus and we went back
and we were looking for like a specific Oprah episode
to reference in something, and just the show episode titles
were so triggering. Oh yeah, and then it's and then

(06:54):
Robert and Bridget you were both at you were both
of the DNC and Chicago, but I don't think you
guys were both there for Oprah speech?

Speaker 7 (07:00):
Were you.

Speaker 4 (07:03):
Speech?

Speaker 3 (07:03):
I was in the audience. I remember it very well.

Speaker 6 (07:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (07:05):
I was there for that, and it was like the
most like like detached I felt from an audience in
my life. I was like, I was like, oh, no.

Speaker 3 (07:16):
Sophy, do you remember. I feel like she got I
completely agree with you about the tenor and the vibe
of the speech. However, maybe it was just my section.
I feel like people were losing their fucking minds when
she came out and started talking like yeah, I was like,
are we hearing the same speech?

Speaker 1 (07:34):
Like it truly I had what I'm saying. That's why.
That's why I was like I was. I was like,
I was like, really, we're still, We're still. And then
again with there were several people that I was like, Oh,
these are known horrible humans and people are going Pharaoh
for them as well. But yeah, Oprah Oprah.

Speaker 2 (07:49):
Cheers were It's hard to get across because there's really
no one on earth like this, how cross at least
first certain kind of for a certain like category of person,
particularly like middle aged moms from the nineties through the
through the aughts. It's amazing the degree to which Oprah
completely cut across like political and cultural boundaries. You know,

(08:12):
Like my mom was a very conservative white lady in
Texas loved Oprah. Oprah was always on and like that
was the case with every mom that I knew as
a kid, Like Oprah was just like an institution, you know,
like it's it's it's really And I don't think she's
even quite like that today, just because like things have
gotten considerably more fragmented in the media ecosystem, and so

(08:36):
one of the things that's interesting about her is like
when we talk about her influence, there probably won't ever
be a single person that influential again in the same way.

Speaker 1 (08:44):
Yeah, Bridget at the DNC, when she came out, were
you sitting or standing?

Speaker 4 (08:50):
Ugh?

Speaker 3 (08:50):
I wish I could say that I like turned my back,
you know, I gave her a standing ovation even from
my like big talk.

Speaker 1 (08:57):
But you were you in the standing section.

Speaker 3 (08:59):
Or this ex I was in the seated section. I was.

Speaker 4 (09:01):
So here's my question.

Speaker 1 (09:02):
When she came out, did you immediately look under your chair?

Speaker 3 (09:05):
Like, yeah, like Oprah, did you leave me?

Speaker 2 (09:09):
You get a car?

Speaker 3 (09:09):
I wish Oprah.

Speaker 1 (09:11):
Came out at an instinctly was like, is there a gift?
There was, There was not.

Speaker 3 (09:16):
Honestly though, if anybody could arrange that, it would be
Oprah exactly.

Speaker 2 (09:20):
I should let you know. I've bought you both cars.
They're not They're not they're geoprisms. They are not like
these are really like burdens for both of you.

Speaker 4 (09:33):
Robert's books. It's really just like a.

Speaker 2 (09:37):
Used to offload I'm underwater on a deal. In the
spring of twenty twenty four, Oprah Winfrey participated in a
three hour special sponsored by weight Watchers called Making the Shift,
alongside several other celebrity panelists. She talked about the failures

(09:59):
and shortcomings of America's toxic diet culture and took some
degree of ownership for her role in perpetuating it, calling
herself a major contributor and saying I've been a major
contributor to it. I cannot tell you how many weight
loss shows and makeovers I've done, and they have been
a staple since I've been working in television. And even
this statement, which is fairly unequivocal, underplays the reality of

(10:21):
the situation, because it's probably accurate to say that no
one human being alive has had more of an impact
on how Americans talk about dieting and weight loss than
Oprah Winfrey. For the entirety of the time that everyone
on this call has been alive, she has been the
most public face of diet culture, and tens of thousands
of Americans followed along as she gained and lost weight
in the public eye. One of the biggest regrets of

(10:44):
her career came in nineteen ninety eight as a result
of this, and I'm talking about the famous wagon of
Fat incident, which was precisely what it sounds like. Winfrey
launched a new season of her hit daytime talk show
by pulling out a red wagon filled with sixty seven
pounds a fat, which is how much she'd lost on
her most recent diet. And because this is kind of
what Oprah says is in her view, the lowest moment

(11:06):
of her career, I do want to start with playing
a clip from this because it represents the intersection of
a couple of very complicated things we're going to have
to dissect in these episodes.

Speaker 3 (11:18):
Oh my god, Now let me tell you.

Speaker 1 (11:25):
I lost.

Speaker 6 (11:27):
I have lost as of this morning. As of this morning,
sixty seven pounds since July seventh, sixty seven pounds and
thirty inches from my bust, my waist Emma hoops seven
twelve eleven. I think it is. And this let me
tell you those of you who are starting dieting or

(11:48):
dining a little bit, this is what sixty seven pounds
of fat looks like. I can't I can't lift it.
Now when you talk about Jimmy, is this gross or what.

Speaker 4 (12:00):
Okay to me?

Speaker 3 (12:01):
That I can't lift it?

Speaker 6 (12:02):
But I used to carry it around.

Speaker 3 (12:04):
She's definitely lifting.

Speaker 4 (12:07):
The radio flyer people. Do you think they were like
that in there?

Speaker 3 (12:13):
Oh god, I remember that clip like it was yesterday
when you as soon as you set it up, I
closed my eyes and I can like I remember it
crystal clear, Like what a moment in culture.

Speaker 2 (12:25):
Yeah, and she does look great in that video. No
one can deny that. And it's interesting to me first
off that this is this is such like a especially
in like the critical reading on Oprah. This is such
like an apocal moment, right, like how how toxic this was?
What a bad you know moment this was in terms
of like cause like inculcating toxic attitudes and American you

(12:47):
know culture visa v weight loss and how like tame
It seems honestly in a lot of ways considering like
where we are now just in general with like the TV,
how much like worse ship there is every single day.
But it's also interesting because like this is an easy
moment to hang on as toxic. I actually don't I

(13:08):
have trouble blaming Oprah the for this, even though she's
definitely contributing to some really ugly aspects of diet culture.
As we'll talk about, the way she gets attacked and
like focused on in the media over her weight is
probably unique. Like I don't know that anyone else has
been kind of anyone else's personal weight has been obsessed

(13:30):
over to the same degree that Oprah's has. It certainly
was in the late nineties. So yeah, as we'll talk about,
I don't see this as like a low point for her,
but this is probably what she would name as like
the absolute worst thing in her career.

Speaker 7 (13:45):
Wait, and maybe I'm missing something, so and she would
say that, or she has said that because it's just
like a crass stunt.

Speaker 2 (13:53):
It's and she has started to talk about the degree
to which she thinks that diet culture and the are
obsession with that and weight loss is unhealthy, and that
she was a big part of that, right like she
started talking about it now, she started talking about that
in participation with weight watchers. So I don't know, I
don't know how much credit you want to give her,
right like clearly done in good faith. Yeah, maybe not

(14:16):
totally done in good maybe more of just a pivot.

Speaker 7 (14:19):
But I will just say, as someone who is like
a little more outside of the Oprah sphere, I think,
compared to everyone else here, I feel like I didn't
particularly perceive, like I hear what you're saying about, like
she was like one of the faces of it, was
so pervasive everywhere. Not to like completely let her off

(14:39):
the hook, but it is a little just like that's
what you did when you were like especially marketing to
middle aged women.

Speaker 2 (14:47):
But it's partly what you did because Oprah was so
successful at it, Like she likes it's a road that
was there because she bush whacked it, you know, right, right.

Speaker 3 (14:58):
Yeah, I actually have a a similar take. I think
that why she regrets this is not because of like
participating in this harmful, toxic diet culture YadA YadA, YadA,
which she was. I think it was sort of throwing
red meat to the people Robert that you were just
describing who obsessed about her weight Personally, I think that, Yeah,
it's probably a low point because she was engaging in

(15:20):
this like highly personal public conversation about her weight and
like playing into that. I don't I would probably I
don't know that she was would say like, oh, I
shouldn't have been participating in diet culture written large.

Speaker 2 (15:33):
Yeah right, yeah, yeah, I think that that's that that
might be a fair critique, but we'll talk about it.
But first, for these for these couple of episodes, we're
going to really be getting into like the parts of
Oprah's crew that are mostly or life that are mostly
like a lot more empathetic, although you know, there's there's
there's some darkness there too, mainly in like the way

(15:53):
in which she has kind of lied and judged up
some aspects of her background because it makes a better story. Yeah,
this will all be interesting to talk about. So in
twenty twenty one, one of my sources for this is
a book that Oprah released about trauma, much of which
she discussed through the lens of her own childhood trauma.
She co authored What Happened to You with doctor Bruce Perry,

(16:17):
an American psychiatrist who specializes in child trauma, and from
what I can tell, is like one of the less
toxic doctors that Oprah is famous for launching to start them,
although again that doesn't necessarily mean a whole lot. In
an interview about that book for today dot Com, Oprah
posited that her childihood trauma was responsible for her low

(16:39):
moments like the wagon a fat incident. I think that
certainly all of the feelings of not fitting in of
my disease to please, or feeling like if I don't
do what everyone wants me to do, I'm going to
be rejected somehow what I was afraid of in every instance,
I'm going to get a whipping. I'm afraid I'm going
to get that whipping. Thankfully, She adds, the decades of
time she spent processing her pain has given her sort

(17:00):
of what she calls post traumatic wisdom that she thinks
makes her a good spokesperson for every kind of suffering
in a mirror or for a lot many kinds of
suffering in American society today, right like because of my trauma,
That's why I've done some of the things that I regret.
It's my disease to please. It's like my fear of
not fitting in. But because I have that trauma, I'm

(17:21):
also a perfect spokesperson for many of these kinds of
like traumas in American society. And the fact that she
thinks that way is a really important prism to understand
what she does, because Oprah in a lot of ways,
if you look at especially the first ten or fifteen
years of her show, it's a mirror in some ways
of like the Jerry Springer Show. Like they're literally doing
some of the same episodes, bringing like clansmen out, you know,

(17:42):
to have like big arguments and fights on stage. There's
a lot of like, you know, bringing out people in
relationships who are having conflicts. It is that kind of
like trash teed TV. And then in the late nineties
she starts to pivot, and largely the thing that she
pivots around is her taking her own childhood trauma, her
own experiences of like physical and sexual abuse and whatnot,

(18:07):
and using that as sort of a lens through which
to explore those things in American society. And there's both
a degree to which there are some really important issues
that started getting attention because Oprah used herself as a
lens to kind of like highlight them. And also there's
this sense of like almost profiteering from the same things,

(18:31):
which which makes this very complicated to discuss it.

Speaker 7 (18:36):
I feel like it's so weird too, because it's like
at the time, as you're describing it, I probably wouldn't
have perceived it as such, but like we're also in
an era where like influencer and just like you like
that is the product that everyone, you know, the children
today are very casually selling. Yeah, it's almost like the
concept of like selling out for like between the nineties

(18:59):
and the two of it. It's like, you know, it's
not something that you would bad any at everything you're
describing right now.

Speaker 2 (19:06):
No, no, no, But it was really unique at the time, right.

Speaker 3 (19:11):
Yes, it does seem like she was like very ahead
of the game on this, like oh yes, I think
it's like the influencer bread and butter today, But back then,
I mean I do think that it set her apart
from like your Jerry Springer's, your Jenny Jones is to
really put these kind of trauma like it was like
authenticity before that was a thing we expected from TV
show hosts.

Speaker 2 (19:32):
Yep, that's exactly I think that's exactly it, Bridgid. And
what's kind of undeniable is that she was able to
kind of get access to a lot of stories of
people's hurting by from her own background of suffering. Her
old executive producer Diane Hudson once told people profiles quote,
vulnerability is the key to Oprah's success. People appreciate when

(19:54):
you can be honest. It lets them feel more comfortable
about themselves. She's got this special kind of connective ability.
I see happen over and over again. Everyone who meets
her feels like, oh, now I know her. And that's
what you're talking about, that kind of authenticity being the
buzzword that it is today. It all really starts with Oprah,
and yeah, it is one. It's both. I think there

(20:15):
is a lot of vulnerability that she's been willing to
put out there. But at the same time, Oprah's not
like Oprah is a conscious crafter of her own image
and her own story.

Speaker 4 (20:26):
Right.

Speaker 2 (20:26):
She knows what she's doing. She's not like a naive
in this kind of situation, in this kind of scenario,
and that muddles the waters too, because some of this
authenticity is very carefully sculpted rather than something that's kind
of come out purely just as a natural reaction, you know.

(20:48):
And that's going to make talking about some of this
very hard because we do have, like especially when we
talk about the traumas of her childhood, you have different
sources who disagree and who disagree with like some of
the things Oprah says about what happens to her. And
as a spoiler, like, we're not going to know, like
who's actually right here because I certainly wasn't there when
Oprah was a little kid. I'm gonna guess neither of

(21:09):
you were either. Two of the biggest sources for this
episode are first that book that Oprah wrote with a
doctor about her own trauma, and then there's two biographies.
One was written kind of early on in Oprah's time
is a world famous talk show host nineteen ninety Nine's
Oprah Winfrey, written by Meryl Noden for People Profiles, and

(21:32):
if you want, even like, you know, that's kind of
actually a surprisingly good for being a pop biography, look
at Oprah's backstory and kind of the different takes on
what happened to her as a kid. A more recent
biography is Kitty Kelly's Oprah, which is another major source
for this episode. Now I'm going to warn you Kitty's

(21:53):
twenty ten book is a mean biography, and she is kind,
It's the best kind. Is like she is recognized as
a lover of gossip and like, you know, there's a
tabloid feel to this. She's also someone who does put
in the work to dig up dirt on her subjects,
but it tends to be like real dirt, you know.
But this is a mean book, you know, Like, don't

(22:16):
mistake this for a work of like objective biography. Like so,
like all great media figures, including you know me, Oprah's
hometown was a destitute, little slice of hell in the
middle of nowhere. This is something I really identify with
her with. Right. She comes up in Kuseiusko kus Usko, Mississippi,
which is seventy or so miles above Jackson. She once

(22:38):
said of her hometown that place is so small you
can spit and be out of town before your spit
hits the ground, which I both I get that feeling,
right that like this isn't even there's nothing here right, Like,
this isn't even a town, which I like empathize with.
That's that's how I felt as a kid about fucking
Ida Belle. It's a little bit of an exaggeration. And

(23:00):
there were about sixty seven hundred people in town when
she grew up, which like isn't huge, but it's not
quite that tiny now. She was born in the home
of her maternal grandparents, Hattie May and Earlist Lee, who
was known as Earless by the family because he was
super old and also deaf as hell. The town has

(23:20):
that weird Polish name because it's named after a Polish
Revolutionary War general who was also an ardent abolitionist, and
as a result, it had a fairly law or not
as a result, but like that it having that name
is a result of the fact that it had a
very large black population. It was extremely segregated and extremely poor.

(23:40):
So yeah, that's the town that she grows up in,
and it's one of those places that had largely been
built around a cotton mill which went bust in nineteen
forty eight, and that's kind of when things start to
fall apart in her hometown because people start fleeing for
northern cities that might still have work. You know, this
is what's happening in kris Usko is kind of a

(24:01):
microcosm of like a much larger national trend at the time.
Right like this, this is a thing that's happening elsewhere
to a lot of places. Meryl Noden writes, quote. Oprah's
parents were among those who left military service had already
given twenty year old Vernon Winfrey a ticket out. He
was at home on a furlough from Fort Rucker, Alabama,
on the springs day he met Vernita Lee, an eighteen

(24:23):
year old high school student and part time domestic worker.
The two barely knew each other when they had what
their daughter has described as a one day fling under
an oak tree. The encounter seems to have been a
source of shame for the ambitious young man who would
go on to become a deacon in his church. In
a Nashville City councilman, I'm not proud of what happened
with Oprah's mother and me, Winfrey has said. I tell
people today that if something like that happens, the boy

(24:44):
should help take care of the child. So that's the Pham, Yeah,
it's not his. He's not told until she's born, right, Yeah,
And he does like send financial aid as soon as
he's told, but like they don't, they don't really let
him know until there's already a kid. And as another spoiler,
he might not actually be her biological father. I don't

(25:07):
know that that doesn't really make a huge deal in
this story because they all think he is during this
period of time, and he's like going to be very
much a responsible dad to the extent that he is
like allowed to be. But it is kind of like
a little unclear as to what actually, like who her
actual like biological dad is. I don't think that there's

(25:29):
like a solid answer on that. Every biography will give
you a little bit of a different answer. But Vernon
is the one that they think is the biological father,
you know, for most of this period of time. And
Oprah Gail Winfrey is born on January twenty ninth, nineteen
fifty four, And the story behind her name is a
fun one. So does anyone know what Oprah's original name

(25:50):
was supposed to be?

Speaker 7 (25:52):
This is the one thing I think I know, Oh yeah,
isn't it Wasn't it supposed to be Orpa?

Speaker 2 (25:57):
It was supposed to be Orpa, Yeah, which was it's
a biblical name. Ruth's like if you know, I think
Ruth was like Moses's sister, or because she pretty, she
was like tight with Moses if I remember the Bible right,
and Orpo was one of her friends. And this is like,
it really says a lot about like the people here

(26:17):
Orpa is a Bible deep cut. This is the This
is the Biblical equivalent of like a Star Wars fan
who names his kid after Kitster Banai, who's one of
Anakin Skywalker's little little friends from Tattooine. So he's gonna
pull up a picture of Kitster here, not for any
real reason. I don't know why I thought this joke
deserved to be presented.

Speaker 3 (26:35):
Because there he is.

Speaker 2 (26:41):
There's kits there looking at him.

Speaker 3 (26:44):
Like something.

Speaker 2 (26:46):
L I'm sure he has, like I'm sure someone out
there has, like the has like the original model from
when the Phantom Menace came out of this little child.

Speaker 1 (26:57):
I love, I love I love that haircut, built in bangs.

Speaker 2 (27:01):
Yeah, yeah, I know he's looking great. He's looking great.

Speaker 3 (27:04):
Anyway.

Speaker 2 (27:04):
I'm no more a Bible scholar than I am a
fan of the Phantom Menace. I did have to look
up that kid's name, although I remembered his face. It's
one of those things that's burnt into.

Speaker 4 (27:13):
My head from my childhood.

Speaker 2 (27:16):
I gotta say, though, from what I can read, and
maybe I'm missing something here, not being a Bible scholar,
it feels like her aunt picking Orpa as a name
might have been her throwing shade at the baby. Because
in the Book of Ruth Orpa, the person Orpa has
a chance to go with Ruth and someone named Naomi,

(27:37):
who are like going down this more godly path, or
return to her old pagan gods and like her, you know,
her villager and whatever, and Orpa turns back and goes
back to like being a pagan right and rabbinic literature.
According to Wikipedia, so again I'm I'm not a rabbinic
literature ever. Orpa is identified with Harappa, the mother of Goliath,

(27:59):
and three other Philistine giants. Also, Harappa had a lively
social life, by which I mean like got around right.
The Babylonian Talmud describes her as being threshed by as
many men as a man would thresh wheat.

Speaker 3 (28:14):
Not threshed thresh.

Speaker 4 (28:16):
That's in the fucking Bible.

Speaker 3 (28:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (28:18):
The Bible. The Bible loves doing like we got threshed.
How much her body.

Speaker 3 (28:24):
Count was crazy.

Speaker 4 (28:27):
Yeah, I'm saying threshed from now on.

Speaker 2 (28:29):
I'm saying threshed too. Uh so all till Yeah, it
seems like they're kind of shit talking this baby by
naming it Orpa. I don't know why else you would
go with Orpa, Like, it's not a it's not a
super nice name to give a little kid, just based
on how the Bible talks about this person. Maybe she
just thought it sounded pretty in anyways.

Speaker 7 (28:48):
Just as someone else in the congregation just named a
kid Neba Canezer and you just had to like want
to that's a name.

Speaker 4 (28:54):
That's a name.

Speaker 2 (28:54):
And it's also a size of wine bottle that's now
legal in Florida. Wow, that just happened. It's massive. Sofa
can pull up a picture of a Nebukenzer of wine.

Speaker 6 (29:07):
I do.

Speaker 1 (29:08):
I'm not just imagine a really big bottle of wine.

Speaker 2 (29:11):
It's very big. It's like most of your height of wine.
So this is the first time where Oprah gets really lucky.
Obviously she's born, you know, into a difficult situation, but
she gets an early solid in the fact that somebody
fucks up on her birth certificate and the name. The
midwife misspells her name as Oprah, and everyone just kind

(29:32):
of decides good enough, right, And this little error might
be one of the luckiest breaks that Oprah ever received.
Because I have trouble imagining Orpa working as well as
a star's name.

Speaker 3 (29:43):
The Ripo Winfrey Show, the Orba Winfrey Show, I just
have trouble imagining it.

Speaker 2 (29:48):
You know, Oprah just seems to flow a lot better.
I don't know, Maybe I'm wrong, Maybe we would all
be saying that if she had been named Orpa and
they'd been like, we almost called her Operah. God, can
you imagine? I don't know, but yeah, anyway, you know
what doesn't have a name is the nameless horror I

(30:08):
feel when I think about you all missing out on
these ads. Wow, and we're back. So we're talking Oprah,
who has now come into the world. So once she
is born, the job of caring for this new baby
is almost immediately made the work of Hattie May Presley,

(30:31):
her grandmother, and that Presley there is going to be
the reason why Oprah will, for years, for big chunk
of her life, claim that she is related to Elvis.
This does not seem to be the case. I don't
think anyone in her family ever believed that. But she
will make statements like that for quite some time, and
it's one of the things that members of her family

(30:51):
will be like, I don't know why she does that.
We're not related to Elvis in any way. Does she
still do that today?

Speaker 3 (30:56):
You think?

Speaker 2 (30:57):
I don't think she still does it, But maybe I'm
wrong about that. All of the times I found, like
all the quotes of her claiming that I found her
from earlier in her career, that's.

Speaker 3 (31:07):
Truly a wild thing to claim.

Speaker 2 (31:10):
Like true, Yeah, I could see it if it was
like a widespread family myth that we have, you know,
Elvis's kin, but like, it doesn't seem to be because
it's always in these books. It's always your family being like, yeah,
we got nothing to do with Elvis.

Speaker 7 (31:23):
I don't know what she's doing that without being too
wildly cynical, the value of being related to Elvis has
also diminished greatly in the last probably twenty years, So yeah,
it's like no reason to keep it up.

Speaker 2 (31:36):
Yeah, yeah, it's certainly like there's less Yeah, you get
less credit from being related to Elvis.

Speaker 3 (31:41):
Oh cool, like just having the same last, the same
common last It's like me saying, like, my last name
is Todd. It's like me saying, oh, Chuck Todd and
I are related. It's like, y'all have a very common
last name, and what cachet would you be trying to
get from that?

Speaker 2 (31:56):
Yeah, Or it's like me bringing about my relationship to
Rick Santorum.

Speaker 7 (32:03):
I mean, but also, like, without getting too gross about
American history, the obvious thing is when a black person
and a white person have the same last name, the
ante seated tends to be a different thing than direct
well or.

Speaker 4 (32:16):
Whatever I mean, right, lots of awful ways.

Speaker 2 (32:18):
But yeah, I mean one way. But in this case,
there doesn't seem to be any like evidence of that, right,
Like that it's because like Presley's not an uncommon last name, right,
there's a shitload of fucking Presley's out there. So Hattie
May was the granddaughter of slaves, So that is like
how kind of you know, we're talking about like the

(32:38):
fifties here, right, And she worked as the cook for
the sheriff of KOs Usko and managed the household of
a rich white family, the Leonards, and at this point,
we've got two pretty different We start to get two
very different stories of Oprah's first six years alive. She
once told reporters, quote, I never had a store bought
dress or a pair of shoes, and I was six

(33:00):
years old. The only toy I had was a corn
cob doll with toothpicks. This is like pretty consistent in
terms of how Oprah talks about her life. Kitty Kelly writes, quote,
she recalled her early years as lonely, with no one
to play with except the pigs that she rode bareback
around her grandmother's yard. I only had barnyard animals to
talk to. I read them Bible stories. She regaled her

(33:22):
audiences with stories of having to carry water from the well,
milk cows and empty the slop jar. A childhood of
cinders and ashes that was the stuff of fairy tales.
Oprah morphed into Operella as she spun her tales about
the switch wielding grandmother and cane thumping grandfather who raised
her until she was six years old. Oh the whoopings
I got, she said. And the degree to which this

(33:43):
is mythmaking is up for debate. It is worth noting
that a lot of a number of her family members
and friends of the family who knew Oprah during this
period very much don't agree with this take on her childhood.
And I want to read a quote from that People
Profiles biography here. Among Oprah's many assets, maybe a gift
for self dramatization. As Vernita once put it, Oprah toots

(34:06):
it up a little. In one tale Oprah has often told,
she has cast herself as a lonely child whose main
comfort was talking to the farm animals. The nearest neighborhood
was a blind neighbor was a blind man up the road.
She once said, There weren't other kids, no playmates, no
toys except for one corn cob doll. I played with
the animals, and I made speeches to the cows. Esther's

(34:26):
which is who her aunt, has a different explanation for
the loneliness Oprah remembers. Right across the road were Oprah's cousins,
the Presley twins, who were her age. They played together
when Oprah was allowed to come outside because Aunt hat
was very protective of her. And it seems that there's
at least a good amount of evidence that the real
Oprah's story at least the story of her childhood that

(34:47):
the majority of the people who were there for at
Tell is not that she was like locked, you know,
is that she was isolated because this was some like
middle of the nowhere dirt farm. It's because she had
a grandmother who was something of a hell copter parent, right,
And while the family certainly wasn't rich, they weren't dirt poor.
And in fact, everyone seems to agree that Oprah had

(35:08):
a lot of toys. The whole I only had a
corn cob doll thing is definitely not true. But the
reason she had a lot of nice toys is that
they were all hand me downs from their rich white
family that Haddie may worked for, which is a complicated thing,
right when you're thinking about, like, why would somebody kind
of exaggerate the lack of stuff that they had as

(35:29):
a kid when it's like, well, but also the stuff
that you have comes to you as a result of
this relationship that's kind of very fundamentally unequal and that
you were probably somewhat aware of at the time. And
Oprah in fact talks a lot about how she was
aware of the fact that like, white girls were treated
very differently in her town and wanted to be white
as a little kid, So like this is all very messy.

Speaker 3 (35:52):
Yeah, it goes back to what you were saying, Robert,
about how a lot of her early story is quite
sympathetic and it's very easy. Like it's on the one hand,
it's easy to say, oh, well she was doing some
myth making and saying she didn't have any toys, But
it's also like more complicated and sort of truer to
be like, well, she had toys, but they came from
the white kids, and that she didn't maybe maybe was

(36:14):
aware of the dynamic there. Like it's less satisfying and
more complex, but it doesn't make it any less true.

Speaker 2 (36:23):
Right, right, And it's also one of those things where
like she talks a lot about being whipped and switched
in how like she didn't feel like the same thing
happened to the white kids. Now does that mean, like,
I'm white kids in Alabama. I'm sure plenty of them
got beat by their parents too, But what kind of
matters more there is her feeling on it, right, that

(36:43):
there were these kids that my grandma's job is to serve,
and they clearly get these much nicer things than I am,
and it's not surprising to me that that would color
her her concept of her childhood much more than like
what her older aunts would have picked up on, which
is like, well she always had the nice things, right, yeah,
Like neither of them can be lying and there can

(37:06):
still be a discrepancy between what they remember, if that
makes sense.

Speaker 7 (37:11):
But it feels like myth making is sort of a
fair way to say it, like this is just kind
of part of it. The exact shorthand especially in a
like entertainment capacity, like.

Speaker 2 (37:22):
The whole I only had the cows to talk to
thing is definitely a bit of myth making because like
everyone doesn't really No, she had more family around her
than that. Yeah, that's that's a little that's a little
bit playing it up right.

Speaker 3 (37:33):
That's like straight out of the movie Pearl, Like yeah, yeah,
the pigs, so yeah, Oprah.

Speaker 2 (37:43):
One of the stories she tells that tells is that
she was like forced to make friends with cockroaches, which
is actually like a reoccurrent bit of hers in her
early years. Quote, we were so poor we couldn't afford
a catter a dog, so I made pat pets out
of two cockroaches. I put him in a jar and
named them Melinda and sand and Oprah's sister Patricia Lloyd,
does not entirely agree with this take. Oprah exaggerated how

(38:06):
bad we had it, I guess to get sympathy from
her viewers and widen her audience. She never had cockroaches
for pets. She always had a dog. She also had
a white cat an eel and an aquarium and a
parakeet called bo Peep that she tried to teach to talk,
and she.

Speaker 6 (38:21):
Had a.

Speaker 7 (38:23):
Hard you really blasted past the eyel point.

Speaker 2 (38:30):
Well, here's the thing, though, because, like Patricia Lloyd is
telling the truth, I think I'm sure that Oprah had
those pets. But Patricia is younger than Oprah and doesn't
meet Oprah until Oprah is not living with her grandmother anymore.
Patricia and Oprah never get along. And a big chunk
of this is I'm not going to throw out stories
like this from family members who were like, yeah, it

(38:50):
wasn't as bad as she says it was, because there's
definitely a good amount of myth making going on here.
But also there's a lot of people who are angry
that Oprah got rich in that they didn't get as
much of that money as they wanted to get, and
so that's also a factor in some of these like
like Patricia doesn't know what was going on in that
farmhouse because she wasn't alive then.

Speaker 3 (39:08):
And she's probably just a hater she that's not.

Speaker 2 (39:12):
Zero percent of why she's saying this, right. Yeah, Now
that said, there's also some evidence that like Oprah really
pushes aside how doting her family was to her, because
that's not kind of the conception she She always has
this sort of like I've always been alone attitude, and
maybe that's how she felt. But her maternal aunt Susie
said this to Kitty Kelly. We all just adored her.

(39:34):
We just worshiped her in everything. My mother Hattie gave
Oprah everything she wanted her to have and everything Oprah wanted,
and so we were poor people, but we got it
for her. She claimed she had no dolls, but she
had lots of dolls, all kinds of dolls. And I,
you know, I don't think that's lying either. I don't
think it's uncommon for a kid to be like, well,
I felt alone, and for the people around that coid

(39:57):
to be like but you weren't, you know, and again,
neither of those people are necessarily lying. That just gets
down to people taking very different things, and like childhood,
you're not aware of the stuff that maybe adults see,
Yeah how old how old is she in this time period?

(40:18):
One to six?

Speaker 4 (40:19):
Oh my god?

Speaker 2 (40:20):
Yeah, or birth to six? I should say, right, I.

Speaker 7 (40:24):
Feel like that that's exactly the type of disagreement that
you always have with you You don't really remember how
nice everyone was to you when you were six.

Speaker 2 (40:33):
Yeah, because I have a lot of like complaints about
my own childhood like one to seven or eight, And
I'm sure my mom would say like, well, we were
all working our asses off to take care of you,
and it's like, well, yeah, but also you weren't around
a lot of the time, you know, like that's just
a nobody is wrong there. As the parent, you're like,
but you understand that what I was doing was trying
to take care of you, And as the kid, you're like, yeah,

(40:54):
but I was still really unhappy, you know, like that's
just childhood, you know.

Speaker 4 (40:59):
Yeah, yuh.

Speaker 2 (41:01):
Anyway, Kitty makes an interesting note here, pulling from a
two thousand and nine interview Oprah did with Barbara Streisand
in which Barbara, who grew up in poverty, talked about
the fact that her only doll was a hot water bottle. Oprah,
who had previously claimed to only have a doll she
made from a corn cob, replied, Wow, you were poorer
than I was. So again myth making is going on here.

(41:22):
She's not ever totally consistent. You know, how poor she
was depends on who she's talking to. When she's talking
to someone who was like really growing up also very poor,
Oprah maybe like, you know, eases up on the throttle
a little bit.

Speaker 4 (41:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (41:39):
I remember that Barbara Walters Oprah crossover very well because
it ends with a very good performance where yeah, painted
from Jesus microphone white because she was Barbara Streithean painted
her microphone's white because her thing is like, wait, are
you talking about streisand or Walters.

Speaker 2 (41:57):
I think I'm talking about Streisand let me double check
in the US, so I don't have fussed this up.

Speaker 3 (42:03):
If it's Straithan. That was like a very big moment
in Oprah lore.

Speaker 2 (42:08):
Yeah, I think it's I'm pretty sure it's Streisand it's
just that she also talked, she talked to everyone. There's
because we just talked about Barbara Walters in here, who
she mentioned like wishing that she had been white as
a little girl to Barbara Walters, Barbara Streisand I think
is the interview about how poor they were.

Speaker 3 (42:24):
Yeah, yeah, all the Barbara's.

Speaker 2 (42:26):
All the barber's. Too many barbers in this story. If
they were famous in the nineties or early two thousands,
Oprah had a tearful conversation with them. So yeah. Kitty
Kelly quotes from a Life article in nineteen ninety seven
which includes this line, Oprah was the least powerful of
girls born poor and illegitimate on the segregated south on
a town in Kouzusko, Mississippi. She spent her first six

(42:48):
years there abandoned to her maternal grandmother. And so you
can see that like this spin on the story, which
is parts of it I'm sure are emotionally true. Some
of it is certainly literally true, but also the idea
that she was abandoned, I think it's more. I think
that doesn't quite get at the truth, which is that
her grandmother took her over because her mother was not

(43:10):
a reliable parent, and this was she benefited a lot
from the fact that she had her grandmother during this
very similar actually to Clarence Thomas's story, right where you
had this kid who was growing up in a very
impoverished background but wound up being taken care of their
grandparent who was the absolute most responsible person to raise

(43:31):
them in that period of time. And so it is
this situation where that's both I'm sure very difficult for
the child who's not being raised by their parents, but
it's also not this situation of like like, this is
an example of there being a strong safety net in
her childhood that a number of a lot of other
kids in the same situation wouldn't necessarily benefited from. And

(43:51):
both of those things are i think critical to talk about,
whether we're talking about Thomas or we're talking about Winfrey.
And this is where you get kind of a lot
of the discrepancies because the Winfrey family historian Catherine Esters,
who is i think technically a cousin but one of
those cousins who Oprah grew up seeing as an aunt,
has really taken a lot of issues with Oprah's description

(44:11):
of her childhood. And she told Kitty Kelly this, all
things considered, those years with Hattie May were the best
thing that could have happened to a baby girl born
to poor kin. Oprah grew up as an only child
with the full and undivided attention of every one of us,
her grandparents, her aunt's, uncles, and cousins, as well as
her mother, who Oprah never mentions was with her every
day for the first four and a half years of
Oprah's life until she went north to Milwaukee to find

(44:34):
a better job. And when I read this, I was
very surprised because all of the other things I'd read
about her childhood said that her mom had left immediately,
but Esther's claims like, no, her mom was there for
four and a half years and then just bounced for
like eighteen months to try and set up a life
and does eventually bring her up to Milwaukee, which is
a different version of her story, right, Like, again, there's

(44:54):
a lot there's less abandonment here than at least certain
versions of the story. And obviously I was isn't there
so who was lying or not?

Speaker 7 (45:02):
But yeah, I don't know, just that feels like exactly
like perception though, like between zero and four if your
mom leaves, how would you materially know the difference between
four and one?

Speaker 4 (45:17):
You know, really you're barely there, right, kid, Right?

Speaker 2 (45:21):
And that is kind of the difficulty of how formative
that period is and then how like shitty our memory
is of it, because like I always would like, especially
when I do stuff like this and I read about like, well,
if I were to write my own recollection of like
my early childhood out and then talk to my relatives
about it, how many of them would be like, no,
that's not what happened. No, right, yeah, you're a small child.

(45:45):
So again, I don't even know how much of this
is myth making, and just that was her she felt abandoned,
and so maybe then it is like, is that even
more accurate than the truth that her mom was actually
there most of the time, if that's what she took
out of that period of time.

Speaker 3 (46:01):
I don't know if you know the answer to this,
But no, are the family members that are speaking on
this sort of correcting the record. Are they alleging that
Oprah is sort of outright falsifying? Oh yet her childhood was.

Speaker 2 (46:14):
Like Aunt Catherine definitely is she she is very much.
She's talking a lot of shade about Oprah. I think
she takes it very personally because she was one of
the people helping to raise her, that she talks about
her childhood this way. And there's always the question of,
like how much does money and people being unhappy about

(46:37):
money play into some of this. I can't answer that.
There's been allegations of that too. You know, nobody's like
coming into this without an angle, but Aunt Catherine is
definitely alleging Oprah lies a lot about her childhood. That
is her is precisely how she frames it. Is that
like she's she's telling a lot of tall tales, you know, yeah, complicated.

Speaker 7 (47:03):
So it's just like when the successful person in your
family is the most like the richest person in media.
That's that's what it becomes. A thing that's sounds so
standard to any sit talking family.

Speaker 3 (47:15):
I have to say, right, I would be such a
hater if my sibling became Oprah famous.

Speaker 2 (47:21):
Any billion dollars.

Speaker 3 (47:22):
Put a microphone on my face and I'll say whatever.
I would be such a hater.

Speaker 2 (47:27):
No, just just buy me a vineyard and I'll shut up.
You'll never hear from me again. Go date Steadman. We're good.

Speaker 3 (47:36):
So there's also.

Speaker 2 (47:38):
Another aspect of this that that didn't really come out
until more recently. I'll be Oprah was open a lot
about physical abuse that she endured. Although I should say
when I say physical abuse, it is accurate to cold abuse.
It is also totally normal corporal punishment for the time, right,
Like the stuff she is talking about, My grandma would
make me go get a switch and then would beat
me if I did things that were bad. That is

(48:00):
extremely normal for this place in.

Speaker 4 (48:02):
Time, right.

Speaker 3 (48:03):
I have to say, like, that is how I was raised.
I grew up in the South. That's I mean, that's
just like I know a lot of people same, like
I know a lot of people today for whom that
is like a normal vibe.

Speaker 2 (48:16):
Even though it is abuse, and it's one of those
things people will critique her for like and be like, ah,
she wasn't relieved, she wasn't beat more than anybody else
that Like, you know, Hattie was not particularly violent for
a parent in that era. But also, I don't think
Oprah's wrong for being like, this is really fucked up,
and you shouldn't hit kids with switches. So I think
I give that point to Oprah on the whole.

Speaker 3 (48:36):
Yeah, and especially making the kid go out and get
their own switch if you want to do that, that's
like a special kind of psychological torture.

Speaker 2 (48:46):
A lot of it does sound very familiar. Yeah, just
growing up in the South, Like I got smacked, you know,
I don't think more than my fair share. And it's
the kind of thing where like there's a part of
me that wants to be if I were to hear
someone else complaining about the kind of stuff that was
done to me as a kid, I'd be like, oh, man,
that she was just growing up as a kid in
rural Oklahoma in the nineties. But it's also bad you

(49:06):
should do that to kids, So maybe I'll just shut
up about that.

Speaker 6 (49:10):
You know.

Speaker 2 (49:10):
It's that kind of like it's that attitude where like
if you went through something and you never really thought
of it as that bad, then you get kind of
offended when other people speak up, even if they should be.
You know, it's that's probably just a thing we have
to get over as people.

Speaker 7 (49:26):
Yeah, well, see I went through it, I paid off
my student loans, I did at it, and it's like, well, yeah,
why should have.

Speaker 2 (49:35):
Been hitting me as a kid? I guess. Earlier I
mentioned that twenty twenty one book with doctor Bruce Perry, who,
by Oprah's standards, is a pretty good doctor, but also
seems to think ADHD isn't real, So again, by Oprah standards,
does a lot of heavy lifting there. Like I was
reading through this guy's by and I was like, Okay,
he seems like a real Oh he doesn't think ADHD

(49:56):
is a thing. Huh Okay. We got some RFK vibes
coming off of this fella. In that book, What Happened
to You? Conversations on trauma, resilience, and healing. Each chapter
opens up with a brief vignette or essay by either
Oprah or doctor Perry, and the rest of each chapter
is literally just like a conversation transcript between the two,

(50:19):
written out in Q and A format. It is a
very lazy book in my opinion. Right, this is the
easiest way to write a fucking book. Everyone does like
ten pages of essays and then you just fucking record
a conversation. Man, how do I get that job? Right? Like,
that's beautiful grift, beautiful grift. That said, there's also some
like pretty poignant vignettes from Oprah here, which I think

(50:41):
maybe fills it out a little bit more. That includes
some stark claims from her childhood. Now we should remember
this book came out just a couple of years ago.
So this is a senior citizen reflecting half a century
later on things that would have happened when she was
six at the oldest. So the best case scenario here,
there's no way, you know, even if we discount like
some myth making, you're never going to be perfectly accurate

(51:02):
in your recollections of stuff that happened in this time.
But here's how Oprah writes about the way in which
discipline was done when she was a child. At the time,
it was accepted practice for caregivers to use corporal punishment
to discipline a child. My grandmother Hadi may embraced it,
but even at three years old, I knew what I
was experiencing was wrong. One of the worst beatings I
can recall happened on a Sunday morning going to church

(51:24):
played a major role in our lives. Just before we
were to leave for service, I was sent to the
well behind our house to pump water. The farmhouse where
I lived with my grandparents did not have indoor plumbing.
From the window, my grandmother caught a glimpse of me
twirling my fingers in the water and became enraged. Though
I was only daydreaming innocently as any child might. She
was angry because this was our drinking water and I
had put my fingers in it. She then asked me

(51:45):
if I had been playing in the water, and I
said no. She bent me over and whipped me so
violently my flesh welted. Afterward, I managed to put on
my white Sunday best dress, blood began to seep through
and stain the crisp fabric a deep crimson. Livid at
the site, she chastised me for getting blood in my dress,
then sent me to Sunday school in the rural South.
This is how black children were raised. Yeah, and it's

(52:09):
one of those Esther's aunt Catherine takes a lot of
issue with this. She was like, Hattie made it not
beat Oprah every day of her life, And like, I'm
sure it wasn't every day, but I don't think Oprah's
probably that's a very specific story to have lied about.

Speaker 3 (52:24):
And it's like so visceral that you if that happened
to you while you were a little kid, no shit,
it's going to be memorable, No shit, it's going to
be something you can stick with you.

Speaker 2 (52:33):
Yeah, Yeah, of course, that would stick with you. Yeah,
And I think this might be again when we talk
about because it'd be very easy, especially since this is
a bastard's episode, to just lean on Esther's being like
she lied about this, She led about that, but like, well,
she was one of the people who was taking care
of Oprah when Oprah was getting smacked around as a kid,

(52:54):
and maybe did some of the smacking And maybe he
doesn't want to think about that as having been a problem, right,
cool stuff. I think Oprah does genuinely care about child abuse.
It's something she has devoted a lot of her life
to trying to fight, although ways in ways that have
been on perfect imperfect. There's like criticisms of some of

(53:16):
the stuff that she's tried to do for this, but
it is something that she's like put a lot of
time and effort into and that kind of does make
me think she's probably telling the truth all in all
about like what she experienced as a kid. Now, what's
interesting to me is that Oprah, while she's all you know,
been mostly seems to have negative things to say about
her grandma. She's also very clear that like Hattie May

(53:38):
is the first person who inculcated with her within her
the behavior that made her a success later on, quote,
I developed a keen sense of when trouble was brewing.
I recognized the shift in my grandmother's voice or the
look that meant I had displeased her. She was not
a mean person. I believe she cared for me and
wanted me to be a good girl. And I understood
that hushing my mouth or silence was the only way

(53:59):
to sure a quick end to punishment and pain. For
the next forty years, that pattern of condition compliance, the
result of deeply rooted trauma, would define every relationship, interaction,
and decision in my life. The long term impact of
being whooped then forced to sh hush and even smile
about it turned me into a world class people pleaser
for most of my life. And I think there's an

(54:20):
Oprah would suggest that like part of why she got
to be so good at what we call myth making,
at entertaining people, because what is entertainment but people pleasing,
is that she spends so much of her early childhood
trying to keep her grandmother happy.

Speaker 3 (54:37):
Right, yeah, I I mean, I not to be sympathizing
with our bastard, but I should. Yeah, I mean, like
that is that is my childhood, right, Like I think
that is like classic kid who grew up getting that
kind of punishment in a household where even as an
adult you become so perceptive to like the tiniest little

(54:57):
changes in someone's demeanor and kind of had to be
to survive in households like that, Like that is like
that rings to me.

Speaker 2 (55:06):
Yeah, my child I wouldn't say was as extreme as
what Oprah has related, but I definitely vibe with the
feeling of like there is someone in my house who
gets angry at me easily, and I'm going to get
very good at like people pleasing and it lying in
order to avoid pissing them off.

Speaker 3 (55:22):
And I have to ask Robert, like, as a podcast
to podcaster, do you kind of feel like this is
like why you are good at like storytelling and entertaining
and keeping people happy and laughing and smiling with you, right,
Like she's wrong.

Speaker 2 (55:36):
I don't think she's wrong at all, and like it's
it's all of that, and it's also why I've always
been really good at talking to the cops and like
lying to the cops and getting out of trouble with
the police. Is that I know when somebody I like
allegedly lying, Yeah, like you learned to protect.

Speaker 5 (55:56):
Allegedly allegedly allegedly.

Speaker 2 (55:59):
Yeah. A lot of successful entertainers have something like this
in their background. Right. I actually had this written out,
like you learn to please people, and that teaches you
how to please crowds.

Speaker 1 (56:08):
Right, speaking of please pleasing crowds.

Speaker 2 (56:12):
Fuck the crowds. Let's please our advertisers.

Speaker 4 (56:15):
The only crowd that matters.

Speaker 2 (56:17):
Yeah, So on the whole, you know, I think Oprah
lies a lot about the specific. I think there are
specifics that get exaggerated and just specifics that are misremembered
about her past. But I don't think that means her
We should discount what she says, right, And I think

(56:40):
particularly we should pay attention when she says, quote, the
most pervasive feeling I remember from my own childhood is loneliness.
And I can believe that at the same time as
I believe her Aunt Catherine when she tells Kitty Kelly quote,
Oprah makes her first six years sound like the worst
thing that ever befell, a child born to folks just
trying to survive. I was there for most of the time,
and I can tell you she was oiled and petted

(57:00):
and indulged better than any little girl in these parts.
Every parent knows that a child's first six years lays
the foundation for life, and those for six years down
here with Hetty, Meg gave Oprah the foundation for her
self confidence, her speaking ability, and her desire to succeed.
I don't actually think both of those things are in
conflict the way that they both think it does.

Speaker 4 (57:21):
Yeah, I think that's exactly.

Speaker 7 (57:24):
Like as as we've been saying, like, these are all
the skills you gain, I do feel it's worth saying
that though sometimes you gain these skills, also the majority
of the time people are crushed and hurt by this
type of.

Speaker 3 (57:38):
Uh it can be you can be crushed but also
a good entertainer.

Speaker 4 (57:43):
Yeah, you can be. I mean like a magic spell.

Speaker 8 (57:46):
No, no, I would not recommend entertainers, but in more cases,
like if you're an entertainer, like this story still ends
in a place like the fucking floor in front of
the viper room, as opposed to having two billion dollars.

Speaker 2 (58:01):
Rip River Phoenix. So there's another story Oprah tells in
this book, which again I don't like this book overall,
but this passage struck me and if it's if it
is accurate, I think it's something that may hint of
some darkness buried in the family history that it's historian
Aunt Catherine may not be willing to see quote. Growing

(58:23):
up in Mississippi, I always slept with my grandmother. My grandfather,
who had dementia, slept in a side room. One night,
I was suddenly awakened to see my grandfather standing over
the bed. Even before I opened my eyes, I could
sense my grandmother's fear. I could feel her heightened awareness
as she slowly repeated, earlist, get back to bed, earlist,
get back to bed. He wouldn't go. He was trying

(58:44):
to choke her, fighting to get his hands around her neck.
When she finally managed to push him off of her
and run to the door, she cried out for one
of our neighbors, called cousin Henry, who lived down the road.
Henry Henry. Henry Henry was blind, but without hesitation, he
came in the middle of the night to help my
grandmother put my grandfather back in his bedroom. My grandmother
then wedged a chair into the doorknob to her bedroom

(59:04):
door and found some cans to put around the door.
The next morning, she tied those cans together and hung
them from the door. And every night for the rest
of my days living with my grandmother, the cans were
on the door and the chair was up under the knob.
I would try to sleep while listening to make sure
that the cans didn't move.

Speaker 4 (59:21):
Fuck.

Speaker 2 (59:22):
Yeah, so that's so scary. Yeah, it's interesting. She tells
this anecdote in the book because it goes along with
another story she's telling, which is that she's talking about
like this school shooting right in nineteen eighty eight, when
a girl, a woman named Lori Dan entered a second
grade classroom classroom and Winetka and started shooting, killing an

(59:43):
eight year old and wounding five other kids. And Oprah
tells her own story because like, in the aftermath of
this shooting, there had been like a discussion about whether
or not to like chain and lock the school doors
and have them manned by security guards. And the principal
refused to implement these changes because he was like, if
there's a chain on the door, it sends a message
to the kids that they're unsafe, and kind of Oprah

(01:00:04):
brings up the story to be like, I really feel
that because of this, these cans hung from the door
that we're supposed to make us safer. That just reminded
me that there was this constant danger, you know, from
my grandfather. So yeah, anyway, interesting, I don't.

Speaker 7 (01:00:19):
Have children, but it is so fucked up to me
that it's like, I mean, we're not going to make
them safe, but we don't want to make them feel unsafe,
which they hire.

Speaker 2 (01:00:31):
Yeah, yeah, and it's you know, uh, Aunt Catherine, I
think would probably say again, would doubt that that had happened.
One of the statements she made to Kittie Kelly was
I've talked to her about this over the years. I've
confronted her and asked, why do you tell such lies?
Oprah told me that's what people want to hear. The

(01:00:52):
truth is boring, Aunt Catherine. People don't want to be bored.
They want stories with drama, and so it is like
you can't help think to a little bit like, well
did she did she make that up or add to
that in order to have something that was relevant to
the story of a shooting from her own life, which
is like a thing, you know, being able to like like,

(01:01:13):
And it's like you can't know it is. It is
kind of worth stating that, like a lot of the
people who will argue that about Oprah, and these are
arguments coming from members of her family, aunt Catherine ahead
of them, are also people who probably have a deep
emotional interest in remembering, you know, Grandma Hattie and her

(01:01:35):
husband as one kind of person and Oprah. The fact
that Oprah doesn't remember them that way is probably deeply
offensive to these people. And maybe, yeah, yeah, I don't know,
there's like no way to know what actually happened, right,
none of us were there, But the fact that this
conflict is present is as much a part of the
story as what actually happened, right.

Speaker 3 (01:01:56):
I would also say, just growing up in like a
southern black family, I do think there might be some
aspect of like, you're not meant to talk about whatever
happens in our house. Yeah, And so like her aunt
being offended that she would even be talking about anything
that went on, you know, behind closed doors in their house,
that I could really see that, And like, again, I

(01:02:18):
don't think it's all one or the other, that she's
just like callously making this up because people need a story.
Probably some of that, But that doesn't mean that her
family members would not be invested in these stories that
paint them in not so great light. You know, not
so great light be not something that's talked about on
a national stage.

Speaker 2 (01:02:36):
Right right, right, Yeah, And I think that's like that's
a pretty important part of it as well.

Speaker 7 (01:02:41):
I will say another thing that is kind of weird,
and partially because I am relatively not versed in Oprah
and the elements of her beast diardiness. You know, the
ones that I know about mostly seem to be about
elevating horrible men, right, which is almost sort of do
you know I could see paths to that anyway. I

(01:03:02):
guess what I mean is like none of these like trauma,
well not even not the traumas, but none of these
like lies or like questionable stories. It's like weird because
that doesn't seem like the dimension of which, like the
type of bad person that does those things tends to
be more of like just a general asshole or a
liar in some way. And it's just interesting that I'm like,

(01:03:25):
this doesn't seem to be the bad part.

Speaker 2 (01:03:27):
I guess, no, no, Well, also, she's six up to
this point in the story.

Speaker 7 (01:03:32):
Yeah, even in the retellings. Sorry, Like even if they
are exaggerations, Like it's so weird because it's like she
could do all that stuff and still not promote doctor
oz R.

Speaker 4 (01:03:44):
She could be a.

Speaker 7 (01:03:45):
Weird kind of like shady, you know, Hollywood person, which happens.

Speaker 2 (01:03:50):
Most people who lie about their childhoods don't also start
doctor Roz's career.

Speaker 4 (01:03:54):
Yes, I think that's that's like maybe what I'm saying.

Speaker 2 (01:03:57):
Yeah, so well, you know the attitude of her a
number of members of her family, including her mom Brenita,
and her aunt Katherine, is that And this is Aunt
Catherine again, she always wanted to have the spotlight. If
adults were talking and she couldn't get their attention, she'd
walk over and hit them to make them pay attention
to her. And I think that that's you know, that's

(01:04:19):
probably true because I have seen other kids do that.
You know, it's a thing you have to like stop
when a kid is doing that. But like that's not
an uncommon stage of development or like for kids to
scream and pout when they don't get attention, you know,
like they're small children. They are still learning these sorts
of things. That said, it's not inconsistent with what Oprah

(01:04:40):
says about being lonely or about wanting to be a
people please. This is also a kid that is obsessed
with having people pay attention to her, and as a result,
she is from a very early age a performer, which
is really interesting to me. She like every black church
in her hometown, she's given like speeches at, and like
read poems at and and whatnot. By the time she

(01:05:01):
is six or seven, which is a continuing thing in
her life. When she moves, you know, to the big city,
she'll be doing the same thing, going at every single
church she can find, and like doing these kind of
live performances. She's doing that from the age of like
four or five. And this appears to be something in
which she is entirely self motivated to do. Like she

(01:05:22):
is pushing for her family to take her to these
churches so that she can do like live performances, right, Like,
this is always a thing that she wants in her life,
which is you know, interesting to me and something that's
going to be a bigger thing in part two of
our episodes. But that concludes part one of the Oprah
Winfrey story.

Speaker 4 (01:05:45):
That's wild.

Speaker 7 (01:05:46):
I didn't realize that the church circuit was basically like
open mic night for being a top show host.

Speaker 2 (01:05:51):
Oh my god, it's a specific kind of open night,
Mike Knight, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:05:55):
It's yeah, it definitely is. I have seen the folks
who like, have you ever it makes sense, Yeah, like
people who speak at a certain kind of cadence. You're like, oh,
you're a church game, you were like raised given as
a church Wow.

Speaker 2 (01:06:08):
Yeah, yeah, and it makes it. It's really interesting to
me that like she has because like this does kind
of speak to some of the things her aunt was
saying about, Like, you know, we were all really focused
on her. There was so much attention that went her
way because well, yeah, I mean it would probably be
pretty hard for her to have gotten taken to all

(01:06:29):
of these different like places, right to all of these
different like churches and whatnot, if her family wasn't interested
in her and like focused on her success. That said
it also, that's exactly the kind of thing a kid
who was deeply lonely would really want to do, right,
Like that's because those are the kind of kids who
become entertainers and a lot of.

Speaker 4 (01:06:49):
It is a pretty unique thing. I can't imagine.

Speaker 7 (01:06:51):
I mean, I don't think I got comfortable speaking publicly
till I was like twenty eight, so like, yeah, six
year old was like, let me, I just need I
just need some stage time this Sunday morning.

Speaker 2 (01:07:06):
I loved it. I was a little church wasn't where
I did it, but like, yeah, I was an attention.

Speaker 7 (01:07:13):
I guess I was attention. But like, truly public speaking
is I think different?

Speaker 4 (01:07:19):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:07:20):
And what she's doing the fact that she is like
she is. She has the confidence in her speaking abilities
to want to get up at church, which is like
a big thing in a lot of way, especially to
a little kid, that's really interesting to me. Yeah, anyone
surprised about anything so far?

Speaker 1 (01:07:37):
I think it's surprising to see the like conflicting stories.

Speaker 4 (01:07:41):
M hmm.

Speaker 7 (01:07:42):
Yeah, yeah, I will say I don't think anyone's scrutiny
of any of the tales they tell about being six
or younger would hold up to anything that's been put
through this. No, So like every every knock against Oprah
in this capacity, I am wildly sympathetic too. I'm just like,

(01:08:04):
I don't know you're talking about when you're six and
you're doing it in front of presumably a bunch of
like white producers and network executives. Mostly so it's like,
gotta do what you gotta do.

Speaker 3 (01:08:15):
Sometimes I am surprised that I pretty much uncritically just
every thing that Oprah ever said about her childhood. I
believed I repeated it in my fifth grade report, Sophie.
I don't know if you did too, but that like that,
like the thing about the dolls and her first getting
her first pair of shoes at six, I specifically put
that in my report. And now I'm like, dang, should

(01:08:37):
a fact check that?

Speaker 1 (01:08:41):
Fifth grade US?

Speaker 4 (01:08:43):
I know, terrible journalists.

Speaker 2 (01:08:49):
Oh man, Yeah, it's uh. I'm always fascinated by like
the vagaries of memory, you know, like the past is
not just a foreign country. It's didn't happen. It's a fantasy.
It's a fiction dementia. Right, it's a fiction novel that
you've been writing your entire life without even knowing it. Anyway,
go sleep on that, everybody. We'll be back in a

(01:09:10):
couple of days. Oh wait, pluggables.

Speaker 4 (01:09:13):
Yep from us.

Speaker 2 (01:09:15):
Yeah, yes, yes, yes, plug I'll just go.

Speaker 4 (01:09:18):
Jos is racist. That's my podcast.

Speaker 7 (01:09:21):
We have the premium shows at Suboptimal pods dot com.
I'm trying to think mostly just been talking about this
amazing celery salad I had I made the other day.
I've had it three times since I made it. Well, Celery,
lemon shalat and dates. Okay, it's pretty. It's a crazy
ass salad. I put blue cheese in it too, but yeah,

(01:09:42):
and walnuts.

Speaker 4 (01:09:44):
All right now, I'm good. That's my plug.

Speaker 3 (01:09:45):
Bridgie definitely making that salad. Yeah. Listen to my podcast
There Are No Girls on the Internet, about the exploration
of the intersection of identity and social media and technology.
And listen to my podcast that I do with Mozilla
Foundation called ir. It explores who has the power in
AI and ethics in AI. New season coming soon. Check

(01:10:05):
it out.

Speaker 1 (01:10:07):
I want to plug at the end here just a
couple of organizations just because of the devastating fires in
Los Angeles. If you are able to help, just check
out water Drop LA and kton for All for reliable
resources ab how to help people with mutual Aid. Behind
the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media. For

(01:10:28):
more from cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia dot
com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple
Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the Bastards
is now available on YouTube. New episodes every Wednesday and Friday.
Subscribe to our channel YouTube dot com slash At Behind
the Bastards

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