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January 21, 2025 73 mins

Oprah's career is on the move now, and Robert tells the gang about her coke filled early years in local TV, her rise to stardom and how she helped spark the Satanic Panic.

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Speaker 1 (00:01):
As Media.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Welcome back to Behind the Bastard's We're.

Speaker 3 (00:06):
On page eighteen fifty two.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
I know a podcast where Robert Evans accidentally wrote twenty
almost twenty four thousand words about Oprah for this these episodes.
The normal length of a book is fifty thousand words,
so half of a book about fucking Oprah, And like
I was having panic attacks at the end of this
of like, oh my god, I'm leaving so much out.
I'm leaving so much from like this, this this really good

(00:32):
book age of Oprah out because like I just don't
even know how to like fit everything in. But I
have to start this episode with our wonderful guests, the
inimitable bridget Todd and the glorious Sainted. I don't know,
Andrew t I'm trying to think of new new adjectives to.

Speaker 4 (00:54):
Continua becomes what did you do to become a saint?

Speaker 2 (00:57):
What's a saying I actually have to die? No you don't, No,
you don't. I think you don't have to die. I'm
probably okay.

Speaker 4 (01:03):
Just let me know I'm down.

Speaker 2 (01:05):
Bridgie, you could also be a saint, but I'm not.
I just don't get major Catholic vibes from you.

Speaker 3 (01:09):
Oh, I actually did go to Catholic school.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
Oh you did, well, Okay, I'm gonna I'm going to
redirect the habit that I've got headed for Andrew, and
it's going to go to you, Andrew. Sorry, I'm not
saying anything.

Speaker 5 (01:22):
You have to uh, you know, live virtuously.

Speaker 2 (01:25):
You have to die for the faith, so like you have.

Speaker 5 (01:28):
To martyr h perform miracles.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
He's performed a miracle.

Speaker 3 (01:33):
I don't know.

Speaker 5 (01:34):
I don't know if all of these are required at once.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
And I think there's every everyone who's made it on
time for Behind the Bastards recording, since that sat through
a whole episode as a guest has performed a miracle.

Speaker 3 (01:44):
I said, it has been a martyr.

Speaker 6 (01:46):
But yeah, my most miraculous thing is since we're doing
video is I'm holding up my favorite coffee cup.

Speaker 2 (01:52):
Wow, I love that.

Speaker 3 (01:55):
By chance to buy that in Maryland? Did you? That's
giving me big Maryland vibes?

Speaker 4 (01:59):
I'm sure from Maryland? Maine.

Speaker 3 (02:03):
Oh, they have they do crabs out there too?

Speaker 1 (02:05):
No?

Speaker 4 (02:06):
Not good?

Speaker 3 (02:07):
Oh?

Speaker 4 (02:07):
Could they?

Speaker 7 (02:08):
I can't imagine mastations. It's so hardcore lobster territory. I
don't know if lobsters and crabs fight. Sorry for we're
already over.

Speaker 6 (02:19):
We're The whole discussion has been how long this is
going to be? And I've just trying to figure out
if there's crabs in Maine.

Speaker 2 (02:26):
Yeah, there's there's. There's for sure crabs in Maine. They've
got lobster at McDonald's.

Speaker 4 (02:31):
In part part But that's my whole point.

Speaker 3 (02:34):
Part three seems normal.

Speaker 2 (02:35):
Part four is I there's there's there's no logic to
the number of parts. This might may wind up more
episodes than we thought. I have to start with something,
which is a mea culpa. I made some mistakes in
the last episodes. Guys, tell us I'm so sorry. I'm
so so sorry. So here's the thing. When you're doing
a podcast like this, like it's a mix of you
do a bunch of research and you write a bunch

(02:57):
of things to get a bunch of facts out that
you are as accurate as you can, but you're also
having a conversation, so you do stuff like, oh, I'm
bringing up the biblical story of Ruth. I don't know
much about Ruth. I only included it in the episode
to make a bad joke about Star Wars. The Phantom Menace,
and so I made a comment about it. I don't know,
I think she's got something to do with Moses. She
does not, And all of the Bible people got onto

(03:20):
me for that one, and I'm sorry.

Speaker 7 (03:24):
How big a part of your audience is the Bible people.

Speaker 2 (03:28):
A shockingly large number of Well, I think it's because
we have a lot of like ex vangelicals in the audience,
like a lot of people who were raised evangelical and
then got better.

Speaker 6 (03:40):
I'm just gonna throw this out there. That wasn't an error.
That was a fucking dork trap, and they all fell
into it.

Speaker 2 (03:46):
They felt the same cannot be said for my heinous
and unforgivable comments about the March of Dimes because I
made a comment that like, I don't know, I guess
it's probably a cancer charity, and then a bunch of
people popped in and be like, no, it's for this,
and then other people were like, actually, when Oprah was
a kid, it didn't do that. It was for a
completely different thing. So we're all wrong, although again it

(04:09):
had nothing to do with cancer. So I was wrongest,
but like you guys were wrong too. Most of you
who criticized me because it wasn't about that then, so
fuck you. I love you. I'm sorry.

Speaker 3 (04:18):
What is it for?

Speaker 2 (04:20):
It's it's right now. I think it's for like 's's
let's look up the march at times, let's let's get
it right. Babies, Yeah, immature babies. But it was like
about polio before that and.

Speaker 5 (04:31):
Trying to correct Robert.

Speaker 3 (04:32):
That is my mother.

Speaker 2 (04:33):
Improved the health of mothers and babies, right, Robert.

Speaker 3 (04:38):
Robert is never wrong, He's perfect.

Speaker 2 (04:40):
Yeah, I never like say stuff during Like one of
the things you learn about yourself during doing this is
like how often in daily conversation and we all do this,
you just like say things that are a part of
your understanding of the world that are not right, because
that's like life. We all pick up a bunch of bullshit,
like the number of time.

Speaker 3 (05:00):
I just don't think you should have to apologize.

Speaker 5 (05:02):
Right now, I take that burden from you.

Speaker 3 (05:05):
I'm sorry saying Robert, but he's innocent.

Speaker 2 (05:08):
All I'm saying is record everything you've ever you ever
say in a single day of conversations with people, and
then run them by a fact checker, and you will
be amazed at how much of like the load bearing
fat pillars of your reality are things you absolutely believe
without thinking that are not true. It's amazing.

Speaker 8 (05:26):
It's the worst part of being a podcaster is like
having a public record of stupid shit that you thought,
or if you're me, shit that you thought was pronounced
one way and it's put another way.

Speaker 2 (05:36):
The pronunciation like, So for this episode, I spent almost
three hours looking at Oprah's uh one of her charity's
tax returns. None of that made it end of the
episode turned out not to be interesting. But you know
what I didn't remember to do was look up whether
or not Ruth had anything to fucking do with Moses, Like,
I just don't.

Speaker 5 (05:57):
I think you just you're you're doing great, Pal.

Speaker 4 (05:59):
I've fail to see how this is a problem.

Speaker 3 (06:02):
I think.

Speaker 6 (06:02):
Also, I just wanted to jump in March of Dimes
previous Polio charity.

Speaker 4 (06:09):
The way things are going, they might need to go back.
I know.

Speaker 2 (06:12):
That's that's again. I love Polio. And I feel like
because we got a lot of my favorite writers, Robert,
I think.

Speaker 5 (06:19):
We're fifty two pages.

Speaker 2 (06:21):
Okay, well let's get into this. So when we last
left off, Oprah had gotten her first radio gig with
a radio DJ who was surprisingly not problematic John Heidelberg.
People online have been pointing out other stuff about him apparently, fine,

(06:41):
So congratulations John Heidelberg. When we're talking about DJs being problematic,
I'm talking about old timey radio DJs, because if you
look into the history of like very famous old timey
radio DJs, not a lot of them were great people.
But apparently John was so good for you, John Heidelberg,
you went our behind the Bastard's Award for being a
sex best as a DJ in the nineteen seventies. You're

(07:05):
the only person who's won that award, by the way.

Speaker 3 (07:07):
Yeah, that's got to be a club of one.

Speaker 2 (07:08):
Yeah, that is a club of You are the loneliest
man in history. So the next several years of Oprah's
life involved a pretty boring time in college. We're not
going to get into it, but she starts doing beauty contests,
and she's very good at beauty contests. One of the
biggest moments in her early life is she wins the
miss Fire Prevention contest. Now, I know what you're all saying,

(07:33):
what the fuck is miss fire prevention? And to understand this,
you have to know that back in the nineteen seventies,
everything was flammable. People only wore petroleum products, Every couch
was made out of petroleum products, and everyone fell asleep
with a lit cigarette in their mouth, so everything and
everyone was constantly on fire. Yeah, so this was a

(07:59):
real problem. Also, everyone was on binzos, so you would
it was like every week in your neighborhood either a
drunk day labor like either either the husband would come
home from like his work in a fucking law factory
and pass out drunk with a cigarette in his mouth
and wipe out the entire family, or the housewife would
take too many benzos and pass out with a lit

(08:20):
cigarette in her mouth and wipe out the whole family.
But either whatever was happening, fire was killing absolutely everyone,
and so we were like, we have to find the
hottest person in order to represent not burning your family
to death because you fell asleep with a lit cigarette
in your mouth, and Oprah was that person. Isn't that nice.

Speaker 3 (08:38):
Fun fact about that.

Speaker 8 (08:39):
That's why we have like flame retardant couches now, because
the cigarette industry was like, we can't keep getting popped for.

Speaker 3 (08:44):
That were possibility.

Speaker 2 (08:46):
We're fine with killing people so many other ways, but
all these house fires are really cutting into our business.

Speaker 6 (08:53):
Please tell me the first fire retarded couches were just
made of asbestos.

Speaker 2 (08:57):
It probably will. God, I'll have to go for a
nice asbestus couch to know that I'm both like sitting
down on the couch to watch horrible news happen and
also shortening my time on this earth. Beautiful. Oprah was
the first black woman to win the Miss Fire Prevention contest,
and that's great. During questioning by a panel of judges,
she said that she wanted to be a journalist like

(09:17):
Barbara Walters. She was asked what she would do if
she was given a million dollars, and everyone else in
the contest expressed kind of like, I'll help the poor,
I'll help my family, whereas Oprah just admitted I would spend, spend, spend,
I'd just be a spending fool.

Speaker 3 (09:33):
Awesome, Actually love that.

Speaker 2 (09:35):
You better respect that. Look, I grew up poor as shit.
I would spend it.

Speaker 3 (09:42):
Now.

Speaker 2 (09:42):
This was definitely a legitimate win Miss Fire Prevention. However,
her next big contest win, the Miss Black Nashville contest,
was a little bit shadier. Everyone involved about it seems
to agree that another girl, Maud had been a better contestant,
but Oprah shocked everyone by winning, and the motor of
the event would later claim that several people complained to him,

(10:03):
and so he did a recount of the votes and
found out that Maud had in fact been the rightful winner,
but her name had gotten switched with Oprah's by somebody
for unknown reasons. Now we don't know what happened. Some
people have theorized Oprah set the whole thing up somehow.
I think there's at least an equally good probability based
on just like the vibes. I get that the promoter

(10:26):
of the event kind of had a weird thing for Oprah.
His name was Gordon El Greco Brown, and I don't
trust that name. I just don't trust that name like
that that is the name of like a used car
dealer from fucking Encina who also happens to be a
neo Nazi. I'm not saying that's Gordon Ell Greco Brown.

(10:47):
I'm just saying that's the name Gordon O. That's what
that conjures, Gordon El like the Greco Brown Elco.

Speaker 4 (10:54):
So he's Gordon Gecko L Brown.

Speaker 2 (10:56):
Yeah, Yeah, that that man has so many different opinions
on the various coke dealers in his area that he
has to keep track of them in a notebook. Anyway,
when Oprah was notified, I'm not saying that about the literal.
I'm not slandering the actual man. I'm just saying that's
how his name sounds. Anyway. Oprah gets notified of this
error that Maud really won, and she says like, well,

(11:17):
fuck it, you guys gave me the award. I'm not
giving it back. In Kitty Kelly's kind of mean biography,
a lot is made about the fact that Oprah like
doesn't give this up and I don't know, I don't
really care, like you handed her the award, so she's
not wrong to be like, fuck you, guys. Oprah goes
to Tennessee State University, or TSU, which is a black college,

(11:40):
but she doesn't go to the more prestigious in nearby
Fisk University, known locally as the Black Harvard. I think
this is just a matter of expense. Oprah seems to
be insecure about this. Later, she spends her social time
hanging out at FISK. Her dad is like, look, you
know I could afford to send her to TSU. And
so I did. I will say, because Kitty Kelly makes

(12:01):
a lot about like, yeah, Oprah couldn't get into the
good school, she couldn't hack it. I've read like from
the anecdotes we get about TSU, it doesn't sound great.
There's a good one from one of her professors, doctor W. D. Cox,
that and this, this is what this guy, doctor Cox,
this actual professor says later about teaching Oprah. And I

(12:27):
think he thinks this makes him sound funny. During our
stay in the city, a girl was reported raped on
the second floor. I told a lie on Oprah. If
Oprah had known about the rape, she'd have shouted you
who I'm up here. Oprah didn't take too kindly to
that joke. She was quite provoked. Do you guys catch that?
He says a girl got raped? And I said, hey, Oprah,

(12:48):
you would like that. That's the talking about this decades later,
being like, can you believe she didn't find it funny?
That's nuts, that's insane.

Speaker 5 (13:02):
Somebody laughed at him though, and he that like charged
that shit.

Speaker 2 (13:06):
Maybe or the whole like, I don't know what things
you're like in the seventies.

Speaker 5 (13:10):
Laugh at men's jokes that aren't funny.

Speaker 2 (13:11):
Just you should get fired, period.

Speaker 4 (13:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (13:16):
The whole joke is I bet you'd like get it
like that's yeah, wild stuff.

Speaker 8 (13:22):
You want to me that he like even in retelling
that he's like and she didn't even find it funny.

Speaker 3 (13:27):
She wasn't. Can you believe it?

Speaker 2 (13:29):
He describes it as enjoying a little foolishness at Oprah's expense.
He's still going, that's not what that is, a little
foolish should be like, you know, talking about I don't
know the fact that she's obviously wants to be a star,
making a little bit of joke about how she likes attention,
not like that.

Speaker 6 (13:45):
This is not yeah, like and this this dude has
been holding onto that joke.

Speaker 2 (13:50):
For Kitty Kelly in twenty ten ten Jesus Christ, Oh
you just know, like just I'm guessing based on his
age that like she goes to see him in an
old folks home and like his fucking kids come in,
They're like, oh no, get her out of here. We
can't let dad be talking to a journalist like, oh

(14:12):
my god, so Oprah. The big standout detail from her
college years is she plays Coretta Scott King in a
local production of the Tragedy of Martin Luther King Junior.
And the main reason this is relevant is that a
reviewer for the school paper reviews this play by saying,
Martin Luther King murdered twice? I do love how bit

(14:34):
you that is?

Speaker 9 (14:35):
That's good?

Speaker 2 (14:37):
Like shit? Imagine because he had to have sat with
that review title just being like, I can't say this,
can I?

Speaker 3 (14:48):
I'm so glad for.

Speaker 2 (14:50):
I'm doing it. Near the end of nineteen seventy two,
oh forgets her first TV gig when her boss at
WVOL called a local TV station WTVFTV and told them
that he had a girl who was interested in broadcasting.
This was during a period where the FCC had just
introduced diversity requirements for on air talent, and Oprah was

(15:12):
hired quickly. She generally describes this as an affirmative action.
Hire Again, the guy you hires her is like, no,
she was the best qualified candidate, you know, I don't
know either way. It doesn't really matter because this proves
to be a very good hiring decision. The truth Oprah
was a skilled performer and had experienced both on the
radio and as a pageant winner. That said, she was

(15:32):
hired to be a journalist, which she had no experience doing,
and she winds up reporting on city Hall, she cheerfully admitted.
As soon as she starts the job, she tells all
her coworkers, I lied during my interview. I don't know
how to do this job. Like her first day, she
tells the crew, I don't know what I'm doing. Please
help me because, like I told the director, I understood

(15:53):
how to do this job. And it's a remark. It's
a mark of her charisma that everyone on the crew's like, well, okay,
that's kind of nice.

Speaker 6 (16:05):
Damn yeah, Like what a it's not even a hail Mary,
But what do you like? Like high variants, play the Hey,
by the way, what's up?

Speaker 4 (16:17):
How do you do this job?

Speaker 2 (16:19):
I mean that is how like entertainment works, right, Like
everyone I know in this industry has a story of like, yeah,
I talked myself into a room that I probably didn't
have the right to be in and then it worked hard.

Speaker 4 (16:31):
Yes, the b side of admitting yeah, I would say
a lot.

Speaker 2 (16:35):
Less yeah, I one of the Again, we're about to
get into all of the horrible things Oprah has been
involved in. But one thing that I do consistently admire
about her is that she doesn't dress up this aspect
of her life. She's like, yeah, man, I lied, sheeated
and stolen until I could be on TV. You know,
is everyone who gets famous on DV right, Like, yeah, I.

Speaker 8 (16:57):
Got my first podcast job lying about knowing final cut
pro and then I had to like go on learn
how to use pro.

Speaker 2 (17:04):
Yes, that's how. Look, kids, if you're looking at getting
entertained into entertainment, get good at lying, because that's the
job Oprah experienced. A This is an uncomfortable transition, but
there are a lot of racism on the job. A
large part of it was like she's the first black
on air talent that they have.

Speaker 10 (17:24):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (17:25):
She winds up interviewing a lot of people who like
they see a black journalist and just start calling her
slurs to her face. She won awards though she's very ambitious.
Her colleagues. That's the primary thing her colleagues from this
period remember about her is that Oprah is a climber.
She is somebody who is like crawling up to the top.

Speaker 9 (17:44):
Right.

Speaker 2 (17:46):
At one point, she takes over for a producer who,
like she gets on set, he clearly doesn't know what
he's doing for this Black History Week presentation, and she
directs the entire segment herself. She is also, by everyone's admission,
doing Hella drugs during this period, although everyone at the
TV station is doing Hella drugs, this is a local

(18:07):
TV station in the seventies. I want to read a
paragraph from the book Oprah, a biography based on a
conversation with her former colleague Patty Outlaw. It was just
nuts working at that station. Drugs, drugs, drugs all the time,
drugs all over the place. They were even selling window
panes of LSD in the hall. Drugs were so prevalent
that the new staff gave Vic Mason, Oprah's co anchor,

(18:28):
a coke spoon as a gift. Chris and I look
the other way, said Jimmy Norton, who confirmed that station
management removed a vending machine once they discovered it had
been rigged to dispense marijuana. That sounds pretty cool.

Speaker 4 (18:41):
Oh my god, in Chicago, where was this?

Speaker 2 (18:46):
Yeah? No, no, No, they're not even in I think
they're Yeah, they're in Nashville, Stone, Nashville. Yeah, they're in Nashville. Still,
she does move up to the big leagues pretty quickly,
but she doesn't go straight to Chicago. After a few
years in Nashville, she gets a job in Baltimore. She's
not really happy there, even though this is a big
step up Baltimore obviously being a bigger city, because she

(19:07):
feels like she's on a ticking timer right but like
by the time, her attitude is like, by the time
I'm twenty four, I have to be where I want
to be because then I'm like too old and washed up,
which you know, that's the way a lot of people,
that's the way TV is for a lot of women aligently,
but like it's certainly not going to be that way
for Oprah. Baltimore turns out to be a disaster though.

(19:27):
The longtime anchorman for the station, who she has made
to be like the co anchor, hates her and she's
not really experienced enough, like he's been doing it for decades.
She doesn't really know what she's doing yet, so she
very quickly gets demoted, but she's still on contract. So
it's one of those things where she's getting a lot
of money, but she's basically not doing the job that

(19:49):
she got hired to do. She's instead getting all these
terrible little human interest stories that she considers beneath her.
So this is a frustrating period, but her saving grace
is always her ambition. Denied itansmen at the station, she
starts performing at churches, schools in different black community spaces,
building a fan base locally the hard way. She also
has a series of interracial relationships while she is working

(20:12):
at the station, which is noteworthy because that is not
a common thing at the time, and the fact that
she is dating white guys in her personal life becomes
public news. A bunch of local white radio DJs make
it like a reoccurring thing that they talk about on
the air, like Oprah is dating. I don't just bring

(20:32):
that up to be like wow, and like it's like no, no, no,
this is like she has to deal with this being
part of like local news.

Speaker 8 (20:38):
Can I say something because I do think it highlights
how unequal the playing fields are for black women in media.
I mean black women across the spectrum of any profession,
but like like local radio DJs, so people who ostensibly
are also colleagues are also in media, making it a
joke segment about who she is dating romantically privately like

(21:00):
that having to contend with that on top of having
to do your job with all these eyes on you.
I mean like it's completely ridiculous.

Speaker 2 (21:08):
Yeah, yeah, like it's nuts and like, for an example
of how fucking insane it is, one of these local
radio DJs described she's dating like a Jewish reporter right
who works at a competing station. One of these guys
on the radio describes their relationship as Omar Sharif is
dating aunt Jemima Jesus Jesus Christ. Oh boy, you should

(21:32):
just explode when you say something like that.

Speaker 4 (21:34):
God.

Speaker 2 (21:36):
So, she had always been something of a binge eater,
largely as a response to stress, and as is probably
not surprising, the stress of like being in the public
eye and having all of this shit about you be
public discussion causes that to be even more of a problem.
In nineteen seventy seven, she starts paying a diet doctor
to help her drop weight for the first time, and

(21:56):
she starts attending overreaders anonymous courses. Sure of stress and
starving herself causes her hair to fall out, or at
least that's one story. Oprah later is going to insist
that she lost her hair because executives at the station
demanded that she go to New York for a French
hairdresser to quote make me a Puerto Rican by bleaching
her skin and changing her hair. I don't know. Yeah, Like,

(22:20):
because you get these two different versions of how she
loses her hair, it's very hard to say what the
truth is. The news producer is like the company didn't
have the budget to send her to New York. She
also claims that the former news director tries to get
her to change her name to Susie. He denies this.
I don't know, it's all a little muddled. It doesn't

(22:40):
I don't know how much like where the truth lies
here super matters, Right, There's definitely some stuff that she's
like exaggerating, but she's also literally people are talking about
her relationships on the air in a very racist way.
So like, I don't know, I feel like you get
the general gist, which is that she is in an
incredibly stressful and unfair situation here at work.

Speaker 6 (23:02):
Yeah yeah, Like the public record is like even if
she's straight up lying about literally is yeah like here
say like who cares?

Speaker 2 (23:11):
Like yeah, right right, Like that's kind of where I
land on this. That said, I will say this station
allows her to work her way like that she is
not like locked out of moving back up, and she
works her way back up to reporting the news over
the next couple of years in Baltimore, and in fact,
she rebuilds her reputation with her bosses well enough that

(23:32):
nineteen seventy seven, the new station manager, William Baker, gives
her the big break that is going to lead her
to the position of kind of impossible wealth and cultural
power that she's going to attain. He had been brought
on to the station after creating in another station a
morning talk show called Morning Exchange, and his job was
to do the same thing for Baltimore. Right, morning shows

(23:54):
are a new concept, like this is this is the
guy playing a video game while ranting about politics on
a stream of nineteen seventy seven is like people waking
up in the morning to see one to two charming,
handsome people talk about bullshit while you like, get the
kid's breakfasts ready.

Speaker 1 (24:11):
Right.

Speaker 2 (24:11):
The hottest new thing in entertainment. Phil Donahue had kind
of helped to kick off the trend of like talk
shows in nineteen sixty eight, and his show, which was
just named Donahue, had become like the most popular thing
on television. Morning shows were a refinement of this idea. Right,
you generally have a male host and a female co host,

(24:32):
and this is how you lock in viewers who are
either getting ready for work or like stay at home
moms starting their day. Baker's wife, Jean Marie, was the
one who recommended Oprah to be the female co host
of this new morning show. Apparently at some sort of
like work event, she sees Winfrey and she like says
to her husband, that's your host. And Baker listens to
his wife, which proves to be a wise decision because

(24:54):
for whatever I mean, there's a number of reasons, but
tens of millions of American women feel the exact same
way that the first time they see Oprah, like, oh yeah,
this is somebody I want to watch every morning. Right,
So Jean Marie was definitely keyed into something there. Oprah
does not like that she's been picked for this job.
She's horrified at first, actually, because in her attitude, she

(25:16):
sees this as another demotion. Right, she had been a
co anchor and then kicked down to doing these like
human interest kind of like, oh, you know there's a
new you know, it's the kind of stuff they make
fun of an anchorman, right, there's like a new puppy
parade or some bullshit, and she's like that, that's this,
This is like fluff. I want to be doing like
I think that the I want to be Barbara Walters.

(25:37):
I want to be doing something more hard nosed. Part
of what discussed her is that a big fit thing
on this morning show is dialing for dollars, which is
a way that new stations would keep people watching because
you don't want anyone to switch to another channel if
they get bored for a second. So you have this
thing where periodically throughout the day people submit their phone

(25:58):
numbers to the station and we randomly Oprah draws one
out of a bowl and the station will just send
money to that person. Yeah, that's how they and you
have to be watching constantly to know if your number
gets picked. Like that's literally how they They're like bribing people,
please keep watching the show.

Speaker 6 (26:13):
I mean, gambling has never not been the underlying driver
of everything.

Speaker 2 (26:17):
All of American society. Yes, yes, this whole country's one
big roulette wheel. And Oprah didn't want to be the creupier.
It's a croupier for Roulette, is that how you say it?

Speaker 8 (26:26):
It is about to get another people being like, actually,
you said it wrong, Robert.

Speaker 3 (26:30):
It's this.

Speaker 2 (26:31):
I'm sorry. All of the people who would correct me
on that will die if they spend more than eleven
seconds away from a slot machine. Those are life support
systems for a chunk of the populace.

Speaker 4 (26:44):
I think Roulette is also a croupier, but I don't know.

Speaker 2 (26:47):
I think I got it, I don't know. I don't care.
I like the word creupia, speaking of gambling, gamble on
whether or not these products actually do what they say
they are they do probably, And we're back. So Oprah's
got this job offer to host this morning show, and

(27:09):
she's like, this sounds like death right, This sounds like
the end of my career. Like you're trying to fob
me off on this thing, and I will be locked
into this, you know, doing something nobody respects for the
rest of my life. The thing that she tells Baker
is I'm a news person. I don't want to do
a talk show. Then she films her first episode and
her mind completely changed. The way she describes this is

(27:31):
as soon as she sits down and makes an episode
of the Morning Show. Her opinion on it changes on
a dime. And the reason why is because she gets
to hang out with famous people and she's like, oh
wait oh, and I'm going to read a quote now
from the People Profiles biography of Oprah. This she told
herself is heaven. She recalled, I interviewed Benny from All

(27:54):
My Children and the Carvel ice cream Man, and thought,
heaven because you get to say whatever you feel. You
truly get to be yourself. Within a year, people are talking,
which is the Morning Show was beating Donahue in Baltimore,
the only show in America to do so. Winfrey would
never read another headline. The minute that first show was over,
she told good Housekeeping, I thought, thank god, I found

(28:15):
what I was meant to do. It was like breathing
for me. And that's like very interesting to me because
it's hard to get across like Donahue is. He's like
the mister Beast of his era, if you'll forgive me
from trying to like make he is like the biggest
guy on on daytime TV, and Oprah is the like,

(28:37):
this is the only local show that beats Donahue anywhere
in the United States, and it's due to the fact
that Oprah is on it right and she has this
absolutely unique electric connection with her audience. This is recognized
by people with money and television, and things start to
move very fast for Oprah after this point, as Pel

(28:57):
scholar Amanda Colin writes in her thesis paper on it
was role in American culture. In nineteen eighty four, Oprah
moved to Chicago, Illinois to host wlstv's morning talk show
Am Chicago, which became the number one local talk show,
surpassing ratings for the most popular show at the time,
Donahue just one month after she began. The show where
national syndication in nineteen eighty six, becoming the highest rated

(29:19):
talk show in television history. In nineteen eighty eight, Oprah
established Harpo Oprah Backwards Studios, a production facility in Chicago,
making her the third woman in the American entertainment industry
after Mary Pickford and Lucille Ball, to own her own studio.
AM Chicago became the Oprah Winfrey Show and remained the
number one talk show for twenty consecutive seasons. So this

(29:42):
is like a very rapid explosion in popularity. She goes
from getting the show to it becoming number one, to
it being entirely reframed to being just around Oprah. And
she establishes a production company and gets like a significant
degree of ownership in her own show, which is like,
this is one of the things that's most interesting about
Oprah is, especially for somebody who was raised without any

(30:04):
access to money, the sheer degree of like business savvy
that she has the fact that she owns a large
piece of everything she's involved in and eventually owns all
of it, right, Like she is not like she she
kind of has this, probably because of how she got
fucked over with that first job. This understanding that like,
if I don't own it, it's not worth shit to me,

(30:25):
right anyway, Oprah.

Speaker 9 (30:28):
So I just.

Speaker 8 (30:30):
Realize something crazy, which is that Oprah, the character that
Oprah plays in The Color Purple, she's married to a
character named Harpo.

Speaker 3 (30:38):
Really, It's like, isn't that crazy?

Speaker 2 (30:41):
Because I started rewatching it, but I'm gonna be honest,
I didn't finish it, uh because I was tired. Harpo
is name.

Speaker 8 (30:49):
She's married to a character named Harpo in the movie.
That's why I doesn't realize that that. It's also the
name of her, it's also her name backward.

Speaker 2 (30:59):
Yeah, uh huh Yeavy. That's I wonder that has to
do a beit because she already had harpo the studio.
At that point, we're gonna talk a little bit about
the color purple, and Steven Spielberg comes in. I don't
know if he's a hero. Well, he's not a hero.
He's a weird kind of villain in this story. But
we'll get to that. And that's that. I can't wait
so for about a full generation after nineteen eighty four.

(31:21):
Oprah's fame is a rocket ship. It just keeps going
up and up and up. But what made her show
so special. Colan's argument is that she offered quote, despair
disguised as entertainment. In other words, she sensationalized and repackaged
human suffering for an audience. Quote. When Oprah came on
the scene, she mirrored this Donahue formula, but with a

(31:42):
unique twist of her own. She, unlike Donahue, revealed her
own personal struggles and stressed to self help mantra. The
audience loved it, and the Oprah Winfrey Show quickly surpassed
her predecessor's ratings. Commonly referred to as trash TV. Oprah
transformed the talk show genre by turning trash into treasure.
And that's kind of she starts out and she is

(32:03):
viewed as like trash. She's viewed as Jerry Springer right
for a while, because she's doing that stuff. She's bringing
on like I'm going to bring on a bunch of
single undred mothers who are fighting with their dads. I'm
gonna bring on like some clansmen to have an argument with,
like you know whoever on stage and like hope that
there's a fistfighter some shit. She's doing pieces of that,
But kind of what shifts the meaning of what she's

(32:23):
doing is that, unlike a Springer or a Donna Hue
kind of character, she's not standing back and being like,
look at this zoo I've brought to you. She's like
opening up her own difficult, troubled past, which kind of
adds this this like shot of vulnerability into the whole
mixture that makes it unique and that you can see

(32:43):
it immediate. That's why it stands out right, That's why
she rises above these other figures so quickly, right.

Speaker 6 (32:49):
The most Spring and Donaghue, you never got the impression.
Their point of view was like, look at this shit,
look at.

Speaker 2 (32:57):
This crazy shit.

Speaker 4 (32:58):
Yeah, yeah, like I have an opinion on this crazy shit.

Speaker 2 (33:03):
I have an opinion. And also like like you people,
like all you troubled people that I bring on the show,
I also have had my troubles and I'm not too
big to admit them, whereas like Cherry Springer would never
like break down and cry in front of his audience.

Speaker 8 (33:16):
Even's final thought, Oh god, yeah, I'm sure of course.

Speaker 2 (33:24):
The one thing I remember from that show is when
Haroldo got his nose broken by a chair. I think
that was on Jerry. Was that on Heraldo or Jerry?
I thought it was.

Speaker 3 (33:32):
I think it was that might have been Heraldo.

Speaker 2 (33:34):
Is that just on Herald? Whatever the is? Rivera got
his nose broken by a chair. Everybody never forget.

Speaker 8 (33:40):
But I think your point about like this setting Oprah apart,
I think it really is a testament to how her
troubled background really is something that she draws from and
is able to like like that's I think that is
the secret sauce of what made this connect in a
different way.

Speaker 2 (33:56):
Yeah, because it's like we're taught it's the same kind
of like quote unquote trash, but there's less of a
voyeuristic attitude because, like anytime it starts to lean too much,
Oprah will drop some sort of anecdote about her own
background and you're like, oh, okay, so she's really she's
on the same level as us, right, which she's not,
but that's how it feels to the viewer at least.

(34:18):
The most significant moment for her career in this period
came right after she moved to Chicago to start The
Oprah Winfrey Show. On Thursday, December fifth, nineteen eighty five,
at nine AM, Oprah started her morning show by bringing
on a young white abuse victim named LORII. She opened
up by reading some statistics about sexual abuse, namely that
one in three women in the United States had experienced it,

(34:39):
and then asked, Laurie, your father started out fondling you.
When did it lead to something other than fondling? She
pressed with more and more detailed questions, asking what did
he say to you, how did he tell you? What
did he tell you? And this is all very uncomfortable
to see on TV right, and even especially like reading
the transcript, it's there's an element of it that seems
a little bit exploitive, kind of constantly pushing for those

(35:02):
details in front of an audience that said it. Also,
this is kind of how interviews work. It's just usually
when journalists interview people about these kind of experiences, you
don't get the direct interview transcript. You get an article
where they've kind of taken out the details but also
kind of softened aspects of it so that it doesn't
feel that uncomfortable. Oprah's kind of giving you the raw feed,

(35:27):
and seeing something like this, which is normally a private
process rendered as public entertainment, is kind of a new thing.
And particularly what's new about it is that because of
the way Oprah does this, rather than people feeling like, oh,
she's kind of exploding this woman, people from the audience
start to join in spontaneously sharing their own stories of

(35:48):
sexual abuse as children. People in the audience start breaking
down into tears, and then Oprah starts talking about her
own sexual abuse, telling everyone the fact that I had
all these unfortunate experiences permeates my life and I'm gonna
quote from Kitty Kelly's book here. For the next few seconds,
Oprah appeared to be discovering for the first time that
what she had experienced as a nine year old child

(36:10):
was indeed rape, a defilement so unspeakable that she had
never been able to put it into words until that
very moment. Her audience felt as if they were watching
the fissures of a soul split open as she admitted
shameful secret. And nothing like this had ever happened on
daytime TV. There had certainly been like people talking about
sexual abuse, but the fact that an episode interviewing a

(36:33):
survivor would lead to both members of the audience breaking
down and sharing their own stories and then the host
doing it, that's a totally novel thing, right, Like that
has never happened before on television, and it creates a firestorm.
The fact that Oprah does this on air becomes national
and then international news, and it is people like the

(36:55):
people running the station are not happy, Like the actual
executive is the station are like this is supposed to
be a happy morning show. This is this is like
this is like for people to like watch what they're drinking?
What the what the hell is going on here?

Speaker 4 (37:07):
Right?

Speaker 5 (37:08):
Like?

Speaker 2 (37:08):
Why why are we having stories of child sexual abuse?
But the ratings are off the charts. It's one of
those things where she both gets in trouble with the
people running the station and also this makes her too
big to fail, Like this is this, this is It's
impossible to overstate what a massive moment this is for
both television as a medium and also for Oprah's career.

Speaker 4 (37:32):
Yeah it's I mean, it's there's also just that yeah,
like what a I guessed risk or like thank god,
it's a.

Speaker 2 (37:42):
Huge risk because like if the ratings had like her her,
the people running the station are not happy if the
ratings had not been there, like she could have gotten
fired for this. And it's also there's it's such a
complicated thing to parse out because one thing she's doing
is this is one of the very first times and
a public space with this much exposure, that you have

(38:03):
victims of rape talking about it, not in a way
that's mediated by psychiatrists or law enforcement or anything like that,
but is just like survivors talking about it.

Speaker 9 (38:15):
Right.

Speaker 2 (38:15):
And at the same time, Oprah very sees the reaction
to this, sees how well it does, and her immediate
takeaway is like sex cells, we need all of the
sex episodes, every kind of sex, not just like this
where people are talking about you know their trauma, but like,
whatever we can get that involves sex, that's what's going

(38:36):
to make this show keep it on top, right, So, like,
after this episode she starts Invite. She invites a bunch
of female porn stars on to talk about the penises
of her post stars of their co stars. That episode
gets a thirty percent share of the Chicago audience and
provokes even more news articles about Oprah because people are
now like, is this smut? Like how do we talk

(38:57):
about what she's doing? Nobody's done anything like this before,
and a lot of the coverage is super critical, super
like this is incredibly irresponsible. People shouldn't be doing this.
But it all just drives viewers right more. And the
more stuff that she puts out there that gets people
shocked and like angry or you know, titillated, the more

(39:21):
people watch her show. When reporters interviewer about this, Oprah
tells them, my mandate is to win, admitting that her
overriding purpose and bringing victims of sexual violence and sex
workers onto her show is to draw eyeballs. Kitty Kelly
quotes her former producer, Deborah de Meo, paraphrasing the way
Oprah pitched show ideas to her team. I'd love to

(39:43):
get a priest to talk about sex. I'd love to
get one to say, yes, I have a lover. I
worship Jesus and her Yes, I love her, and her
name is Carolyn.

Speaker 8 (39:53):
I love how Like that's a life like pretty twisted
over was like I want the like free, I want
some freaky d in here.

Speaker 2 (40:00):
Find me a priest who's fucking some lady named Carolyn
and get her on, get him on. Oh man. So yeah,
that's like I don't even you can, I guess moralize
that however you want. It's so fascinating that it goes
from I have like shared my own horrible experience and
people connected with that, to like, so we got to

(40:22):
get some priest who's fucking a lady on this show
right where that's where this guy has to continue going.

Speaker 4 (40:29):
You know. It is also weird to conclu not weird,
but like I mean, I guess like more media savvy
than I am to conclude from that first show that
sex cells rather than like vulnerability cells or authenticity cells
or whatever.

Speaker 2 (40:43):
But also all of them sell because her vulnerability and
authenticity keeps her piet. It's a huge part of her
ongoing popularity. But so is the sex, So is the
really sleazy stuff. They never stop doing that, right, I
guess the answer is all of it. And Oprah has
very good instincts, you know, wherever we want to land

(41:04):
morally on what she's doing here. This shit works now.
It is worth noting that she is depicted in the media.
This is very hard for like, I had trouble grasping
this because by the time I was aware of Oprah,
she had such a different like reputation in the eighties.
She in late seventies and eighties, She's Jerry Springer right.

(41:27):
She is not a respectable media figure to a lot
of people. That is not how she's talked about to
a lot of people around this time. An article in
McCall's magazine on the Oprah Winfrey Show described what it
did it best as quote get him in the gut
show topics, sexual disorders, battered wise, self mutilation, overweight people
and the people who hate them, you know, all that

(41:50):
kind of stuff. Oprah often would say, nothing is taboo,
and she meant it. Whinfrey's own struggles with weight loss
and gain quickly became a central part of the show,
as well, we open this series with the infamous wagon
of fat incident from nineteen eighty or ninety eight. That
was gross and bad, but it's also worth noting if
you want to put that into the context, like how

(42:11):
we could get to something that gross. It comes after
a decade of constant public obsession with every pound Oprah
lost or gained. And this is where we're gonna talk
about the color purple again. So as I've noted, Oprah
struggles with you know, binge eating, with her body self
image from adolescence on like a lot of us, like
maybe everybody, she has a habit of stress eating and

(42:33):
was noted by co workers to binge to really uncomfortable
levels during parties and the like. When she becomes this
TV star in the mid eighties, people start talking about this,
like it becomes both in gossip columns and shit like
the fucking you know, National Inquirer and stuff. There's like
articles about, you know, stories of Oprah and eating and whatnot.

(42:53):
And she kind of pivots on this to become radically
open to her audience about her dieting and her struggles
with weight gain. Now this helps drive her popularity, but
it's also it both is in part a reaction to
and also helps lead to ship like this nineteen eighty
five appearance on the Tonight Show with Joan Rivers, which

(43:14):
I'm gonna play for you now. This is one of
the most uncomfortable things I've seen on television.

Speaker 3 (43:18):
Oh my god, Joan was such a bit. I can't
wait to see. This is so bad. I mean, I
like Loki, love her, but like, let's be real.

Speaker 2 (43:25):
Oh yeah, yeah, this is this is not great. As
you went into beauty contest, they tell me your beauty
contest win us.

Speaker 1 (43:30):
Yeah, I'm those fifty pounds ago or so, yeah, but.

Speaker 2 (43:32):
So what'd you win?

Speaker 4 (43:33):
Well?

Speaker 1 (43:34):
I wont them as fire prevention contest?

Speaker 2 (43:35):
Was that a who?

Speaker 1 (43:36):
What fire prevention to?

Speaker 3 (43:37):
Has you gained the weight?

Speaker 1 (43:39):
I ate a lot because.

Speaker 3 (43:41):
No, no, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 2 (43:43):
No, you said fifty pounds.

Speaker 1 (43:44):
You shouldn't let that.

Speaker 9 (43:45):
Happen to you, very Jody.

Speaker 8 (43:46):
You know what, No, I don't want to hear let
me tell you that, pretty girl, are you single?

Speaker 3 (43:51):
You must lose the weight.

Speaker 1 (43:53):
I'm going to you know what we are now am Chicago.
In Chicago, we're starting a diet with Oprah Grace. Yes,
in conjunction with a tribute so that I have been
put under pressure to finally do it.

Speaker 10 (44:05):
I am trying to lose five pounds.

Speaker 1 (44:07):
Will you know how to laugh with me in March
when I'm back and you lose fifteen, I'll lose five.
But well, listen, that's you. I'll do I'll keep these
and I'm not.

Speaker 4 (44:17):
I'm fer I'll do it.

Speaker 3 (44:18):
If you do it, you will.

Speaker 1 (44:20):
Yeah, it's a deal.

Speaker 3 (44:21):
It's a deal. It's a deal.

Speaker 10 (44:23):
Five pounding it.

Speaker 1 (44:26):
Grace.

Speaker 3 (44:27):
Yes, that's great, that's great, that's great.

Speaker 1 (44:29):
I'm excited about it though, because I've gone up and
down and up, and I've been on every diet. If
you tried the banana, weeni and egg diet, you might
know a banana weening and egg? Where eat a banana,
a weeni and egg? And I've done the pickles and
peanut butter diet. I just eat cookies.

Speaker 9 (44:44):
But I only eat like eight hundred callies with the cookies.
I forget you do it that way?

Speaker 1 (44:47):
Oh yeah. I saw nel Carter on her last night
who'd lost Yes, but you couldn't tell. She's still very chubby.
She just lose more. You lose more, well, I think
wall people go oh I'm not people and help friends
that die truth to say, you are still a pig?

Speaker 2 (45:04):
Okay, well, why you are eating disorders so rampant? Is
it because these are our parents? Effectively?

Speaker 8 (45:11):
Oh I gotta say though, like that was not as
this is.

Speaker 3 (45:15):
That was not as bad as I thought it was
going to be.

Speaker 8 (45:17):
It's people talk to bigger people, Like people feel totally
comfortable saying shit like this two people's faces and they
don't even think twice about it.

Speaker 3 (45:26):
It says like totally how people talk.

Speaker 2 (45:29):
Part of what you're seeing there is like Oprah being
a professional, because when she describes this moment, she's like, yeah,
like I was not happy, like this was that, Like
the the laughing and stuff was all faked. I was
very unhappy that we were having this conversation, right like
obviously yeah, no, It's like I can't believe the kind
of shit that you'd saying there. It was made like

(45:52):
this whole situation was made worse at the time because like,
not long after this, while she is like doing this
very famous publicized diet, it gets announced on the Joan
Rivers Show. Like the first big thing she does after
this is she sent to Ethiopia to report on Chicago's
efforts to help the famine. So the story is simultaneously
Oprah trying to lose thirty pounds and Oprah reporting on

(46:13):
a famine and the Ethiopia not great vibes. One of
her colleagues asks like, hey, is this kind of gross?
And Oprah applies, You're right, it's sick, isn't it?

Speaker 3 (46:22):
It is sick.

Speaker 2 (46:23):
It is kind of sick.

Speaker 4 (46:26):
Now.

Speaker 2 (46:26):
One fair critique of these episodes is that we're not
going to go into super clinical detail about all of
the different fad diets and dangerous weight loss missinformation that
comes out of the Oprah Winfrey Show. Part of why
is because the podcast maintenance Face has done a ton
of that, so you can check all of that out.
I think part of it is just that, like you
get the idea here, right, It's both important to note that,
like Oprah like that that clip there, there's a lot

(46:48):
of pushing on everyone listening to that. Feel bad about
your body, be ashamed if you've gained weight, embrace dangerous
strategies to lose it. Oprah has a lot, and Oprah
will admit it today, a lot of guilt and spreading that.
But also she is in such a unique position where like,
I don't know if there's ever been a single person
that so many Americans have been so obsessed with their

(47:10):
body size. Like it's kind of hard not to not
for that to affect you in a bad way. Like
we really were insane about Oprah. Yeah, I don't know
what else to say about that. I will say in
order to kind of point out the way in which

(47:31):
people talked about her. One of the most prominent TV
critics of the day, Richard Blackwell, described Oprah as bumpy, frumpy,
and downright lumpy on the cover of TV Guide. Jesus So,
right around the time this is all happening, Oprah is
on the Tonight Show. Like right around when she's on
the Tonight Show, she is auditioning for a role in
the color Purple. After the episode, where again this is

(47:54):
not as friendly a situation as it appears on the air,
she's very unhappy about this. She's stress each she gave
more weight, and then she checks herself into a fat farm,
an emergency weight loss boot camp type program to lose
the weight. Steven Spielberg, who had directed the movie, finds
out and he calls Oprah and Spielberg says, I hear
you're at a fat farm, you lose a pound, you

(48:16):
could lose this part, she's like, she's fucked no matter what.

Speaker 8 (48:25):
I don't love anybody like micromanaging somebody else's weight.

Speaker 2 (48:29):
But yeah.

Speaker 8 (48:30):
The color Purple is based on a novel by Alice
Walker and the character she was portraying, like, I like,
I get it's not something I think he should have said,
but I get where he's coming from.

Speaker 2 (48:39):
It's it's yeah, I don't know, I don't know, I
don't know where I should. Yeah, yeah, it's uncomfortable.

Speaker 11 (48:51):
Does Oprah talk about like like not not like to well, yeah,
I mean, I guess what I'm about to say is
gonna sound victim. But I'm just caring because part of
the like this like like attention to her weight. She
even if it was like going to happen anyway, she
did profit from like it was like part of the

(49:12):
like editorial strategy of her show, right, Like, does she
talk about leaning in on that?

Speaker 2 (49:20):
She She hugely leans in right like she does? She does.
She in part she makes the specifics of like how
much she's gaining or how much she is losing and
what diet she is doing. Part of the show. A
lot of the money that comes in as a result
of diet advice. She has deals and gets millions and

(49:40):
millions from groups like weight Watchers, right pushing a lot
of different diets she gets paid and also just like
fills airtime and makes money that way. Putting on different
diet experts and diet books and a lot of that
stuff is extremely dangerous. It is both she is being
victimized by the whole media environment and also profiting on

(50:03):
that by pushing the same kind of poison on everyone else.
Right like that That's what's happening here, right like it
is a story of both victimization and profiting off of
putting some pretty toxic and oprah. You know, the thing
she's doing right now is at least copying to some
of that right now, copying to some of that while

(50:24):
also getting money from weight Watchers. So, I don't know,
I don't know where we want to put that out.

Speaker 6 (50:29):
The one thing I am curious about is when we
as a culture made the transition from saying weenies to
hot dogs.

Speaker 2 (50:37):
A hot dog based diet today which you should never
have had a hot dog based diet.

Speaker 4 (50:43):
Yeah, I guess I guess not.

Speaker 2 (50:47):
You would know. Yeah. Anyway, so she gives up after
or at least the way that Oprah tells the story.
After Spielberg's like, if you lose a pound, you could
lose this part, Oprah does like fuck it and gives
up on getting the role and keeps the role, and yeah,
she winds up doing very well. She gets like massively,

(51:09):
you know. Like one of the interesting things about Oprah
is she could have had just a whole career as
a major Hollywood star. Like she just decides to keep
being Oprah Winfrey because that turns out to be much
better for her than being like a movie star. But
she's very like has a very successful acting career starting out.

Speaker 8 (51:29):
Oh, I mean Color Purple is like it is a classic.
It's probably the movie I have seen the most times
in my life. Like it is like a like the
way that she was in that movie, it was a revelation,
like even thinking about it now, as good as like
Whoopi Goldberg is in that movie and Danny Glover is
in that movie. Danny is the standout character. Even so,

(51:50):
probably her big scene in the Color Purple is when
she gives the speech to Seeley all my life. I
had to fight. If you've heard that Kendrick Lamar song,
all right, that's the beginning of that song comes from.
Is Oprah's big scene in that movie? Like that movie,
the way it shifted the culture we like really cannot
be overstated.

Speaker 2 (52:07):
Yeah. Yeah, And it's so fascinating to me that like
that would be for most people, like, oh shit, I've
made it. I've like been in this highly praised Hollywood.
You know, that's the rest of my life. Is I'm
going to be in movies. Oprah's like, no, no, I
know a better way to get really famous. So while

(52:27):
this is going on, her movie career is starting, Oprah
is continuing to you know, be trash TV. Right, that's
really this era. And sex is not the only thing
that she finds out that sells racism gets people to
tune in. So during Black History Month in the eighties,
Oprah started booking KKK members to show up wearing sheets
and hoods. Intermittently, she would book guests with something important

(52:49):
to say too, like when she did the Women with
Sexual Disorders episode and talk to a woman who had
never orgasmed. Oprah brought in a sex surrogate to coach
her on air, which elicit a flood of complaints, as
Kitty Kelly documents, yesterday's show was gross, said one woman.
I don't know how else to describe it, absolutely degrading.
There are millions of women who never experienced sexual pleasures,

(53:10):
said Oprah. We had six hundred and sixty and thirty
three calls for women yesterday after the show on the computer.
We made lots of women feel there, not alone. And
this is what makes especially in this era, it's always
back and forth, right, because there's this mix of like, oh,
that's some of the grossest TV I've heard about, and like, oh,
you're really pushing out some very unhealthy attitudes towards dieting
into society. And also it's incredibly important for people to

(53:33):
know about stuff like sexual dysfunction and that there's like
coaching for that, and to not feel ashamed, like this
is a thing that we can talk about in public.
And Oprah's always so much of both of those things.
That said, when for every episode like this, you'd get
where it's like, yeah, I'm glad someone in the fucking
eighties was talking about like sexual dysfunction and the fact

(53:56):
that there are treatments available that you can and should
seek you. So right from that to Oprah being like, also,
the devil is coming for your children, and this is
going to get us onto one of my favorite subjects,
how Oprah Winfrey helped start the Satanic Panic? But first, ah, yes,
but first you know who else is the devil? But

(54:19):
like the sexy devil, Like the devil when he's played
by that guy who also played the President in the
Command and conquer Red Alert too. You know that guy.

Speaker 4 (54:28):
I'm just nodding. I'm just nodding.

Speaker 2 (54:30):
Everyone's just nodding. Nobody else remembers that guy. He played
the devil once. Look him up. We're back. Four people
are so happy I just made that reference. Everyone else
has stopped listening forever. So Satanic Panic. In nineteen eighty nine,

(54:51):
a Canadian psychiatrist and con man named Lawrence Pasder wrote
a book about his patient, who he later married, Michelle Smith,
claiming he recovered her memories of participating and elaborate impossible
Satanic rituals while being abused for the devil's gain. This book,
Michelle remembers, helped launch the Satanic Panic, a religious moral
panic that ruined hundreds of lives and laid much of

(55:13):
the groundwork for QAnon to take off today. We maybe
don't get the Trump presidency without the Satanic panic. That
was some necessary groundwork, right, You got to put in
those load bearing pillars, and this is where that's coming from.
And Oprah helps get it off the ground. She brings
Laurence and Michelle onto her show, along with several other

(55:35):
prominent If you are a Satanic panic con person, right
who is like I worship the Devil, I sacrificed babies,
Oprah will let you say whatever to At this point,
literally tens of millions of people are tuning into her show.
I want to start with a clip of a nineteen
eighty six episode which wasn't about the Satanic Panic, but
contained a sting for their upcoming episode on devil worshipers.

(55:59):
And I want to it's just because you know, we talk.
I throw to ads in a lot of you know,
different ways here, but I got a bow to the
master class here.

Speaker 1 (56:09):
All right, we'll come back and we're going to talk
about sex some more.

Speaker 3 (56:12):
Back in a moment, the Devil.

Speaker 2 (56:18):
The screen after she says that is just a picture
of the devil on a TV screen holding his own tail,
with the Thursday Victims of Satanic worship. I love that
iconic coming next to the devil.

Speaker 4 (56:33):
Oh my god.

Speaker 2 (56:34):
Also, we're gonna talk about sex and more. We should
have thrown to ads now, Sophie, Sorry, that would have
been the way.

Speaker 5 (56:40):
To do it.

Speaker 3 (56:41):
Uh, next time, Bud, you got to.

Speaker 2 (56:43):
Learn from the masters here. Now I'm gonna play or
I'm gonna have Sophie play another clip. I think from
closer to nineteen eighty nine or nineteen ninety. Most of
Oprah's early shows are not preserved in a convenient way,
So I did my best here.

Speaker 10 (56:58):
Our next guest was used also in word shipping. The
devil participated in human sacrifice, rituals, rituals, and cannibalism. She
says her family has been involved in rituals for generations.
She's currently an extensive therapy suffers from multiple personality disorder,
meaning she's blocked out many of the terrifying and painful
memories of her childhood. Rachel, who is also in disguise

(57:19):
to protect her identity, you come from generations of ritualistic abuse.

Speaker 9 (57:23):
Yes, my family is an extensive family tree, and they
keep track of who's don In thousand and.

Speaker 2 (57:29):
She's in disguise, good really yes, yeah, okay, okay, what's
the disguise?

Speaker 5 (57:37):
What's disgus like?

Speaker 2 (57:40):
Is this there?

Speaker 3 (57:42):
Isses?

Speaker 2 (57:46):
Okay? Okay, yeah, the clark can her?

Speaker 4 (57:48):
Yeah, she put on.

Speaker 2 (57:49):
When she takes those glasses off, her family's not going
to recognize the devil can't catch.

Speaker 5 (57:53):
Her, sorry, presuming just was very.

Speaker 2 (57:57):
Thrown off by them. That is funny, Okay.

Speaker 3 (58:00):
In disguise, it's impossible to tell on her.

Speaker 2 (58:04):
And I don't say this to shame her. I'm shaming
the nineties. You can't tell a bad wig from normal hair.

Speaker 4 (58:09):
In like nineteen you know you can't.

Speaker 2 (58:11):
There's no way to do it.

Speaker 3 (58:12):
But that brooch is long, that brooches something.

Speaker 9 (58:16):
Yes, thousand who hasn't been involved and it's gone back
who by seventeen hundred and so you were right. I
was going into a family that believes in this.

Speaker 10 (58:33):
And this is it. This is Does everyone else think
it's a nice Jewish family from the outside? You appear
to be a nice Jewish girl, definitely, and you all
are worshiping the devil inside the home?

Speaker 9 (58:43):
Right, there's other Jewish families across the country not just know.

Speaker 4 (58:48):
Really, so.

Speaker 2 (58:53):
I don't think I have to tell you why this
is dangerous. That's a real bad thing to have twenty
million people watching, like not great, Well, the Jews are
secretly worshiping the devil.

Speaker 6 (59:12):
Gee.

Speaker 8 (59:14):
They might appear as like wholesome, normal family, but the
hind closed doors.

Speaker 2 (59:20):
So yeah, Oprah is literally just doing the blood libel
on data TV, on the most popular talk show in
the country. And we're going to continue here because it
just gets I am shocked that this was allowed.

Speaker 10 (59:34):
What kind of things went on in the family.

Speaker 9 (59:38):
Well, there would be rituals in which babies would be sacrificed,
and you would have to you.

Speaker 10 (59:43):
Know babies, So are people who bread.

Speaker 9 (59:47):
Babies in our family, no one would know about it.
A lot of people were overweight, so you couldn't tell
if they were pregnant or not.

Speaker 4 (59:54):
Or they would.

Speaker 9 (59:54):
Supposedly go away for a while and then come back.
The other thing I want to point out, not all
Jewish the sacrifice babies.

Speaker 10 (01:00:01):
I mean, it's not kind. I heard of any Jewish
people sacrifice some babies.

Speaker 4 (01:00:08):
But anyway, so you.

Speaker 9 (01:00:10):
Witnessed the sacrifice right when I was very young, I
was forced to participate in that in which I had
a sacrifice an infant, and.

Speaker 10 (01:00:20):
The purpose of sacrifices to what is to bring you what?

Speaker 9 (01:00:23):
What are you sacrificing for?

Speaker 4 (01:00:24):
For power?

Speaker 2 (01:00:28):
Yeah, I have a lot of questions. First off, do
we think it makes it better for Oprah to offhandy
to be like I've never heard of Jewish people sacrificeing
babies before anyway, tell me about these Jewish baby sacrifices.
Oh god, I mean this does get closer to her

(01:00:48):
future crimes.

Speaker 4 (01:00:49):
Of like like clearly if even even if you want.

Speaker 6 (01:00:54):
To remove like the any sort of like willful malice
from Oprah, like a pretty shameful credulity is on display here, yes, Like.

Speaker 2 (01:01:05):
Yeah, Like Mike, as a middling journalist, my first question
would be, are you not worried you're gonna get arrested
because you just admitted to murdering a baby on television?

Speaker 4 (01:01:15):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:01:16):
You know that's a crime, right, But there's no statut
limitations on killing a baby.

Speaker 3 (01:01:24):
So I have a question.

Speaker 8 (01:01:25):
Like, like what is the production of this, like behind
the scenes, Like where do they find this?

Speaker 3 (01:01:31):
Lady? Did they are just like, oh, you've got.

Speaker 8 (01:01:33):
A story about killing babies and sacrifice, come on on
the air or tell us about it?

Speaker 2 (01:01:37):
You know, you get pieces of this. Nobody will directly
say like we just we're full of shit, right, we
just lied, you know, but but you can tell that
what's happening. You get this, Like that previous clip rope
was like I want a priest too, did this and
this and this right, because it'll it'll sell an episode.
She's like, I want someone talking about sacrificing babies. And
you know what is exists in the world, and you

(01:01:58):
don't have to coach people on this. If you let
enough people know, you can get on TV in front
of twenty million people, if you talk about sacrificing a baby,
there will be someone whose desperation for attention is so
high that they will come on television and claim to
have sacrificed a baby. That's the way people are.

Speaker 8 (01:02:16):
That's the person you should give a platform for sure.
That's a healthy person, well adjusted. Help them spread their message.

Speaker 2 (01:02:22):
Yes, we love Oprah Winfrey doing things that are Again,
as a guy who's read a lot of Nazi propaganda,
almost indistinguishable from Nazi propaganda like this is specifically one
of the major justifications of the Holocaust. Jews are abducting
Christian babies and sacrificing them to the devil, like that
is really bad to do. I really can't emphasize enough

(01:02:47):
how dangerous this thing is. And if you look at
shit like in QAnon right where there's a like a
third of the country believes that the Democratic Party are
literally eating babies to gain everlasting youth, which like just
look at Nancy Pelosi, Guys, she's not getting everlasting youth,
like her hip just broke. This is unequivocal bastardism, right, Like,

(01:03:08):
this is a bad thing to be doing.

Speaker 6 (01:03:12):
Yeah, and you know, I mean presumably the thing was
like wink, We're not going to ask you any hard questions, right,
let's just get the rating.

Speaker 2 (01:03:22):
Just tell me, give me some detention. And it's it's
so fucked up that, like, on one hand, when you're
doing this about like you are talking to someone about
their their difficulty. You know, I've never experienced an orgasm.
You're asking these kind of questions to get them to
say more. That is making other people with the problem
of whom there are many feel less alone. Same thing

(01:03:42):
with like sexual assault survivors. And then the fact that
you have your you have absolutely no compunction with like
I'll do the same thing for Lias about juice sacrificing babies. Yeah,
fascinating stuff.

Speaker 8 (01:03:56):
I'm curious if she because it sounds like at one
point in her her career she really thought of herself
as like a news person, a journalism person.

Speaker 3 (01:04:03):
What does she think about her career now?

Speaker 2 (01:04:06):
You know, here's the thing, because Oprah never really trained
in journalism very much. I don't know if she maybe
believes this, if she thinks these are the same, Like,
that's kind of the thing to me because but also
I want to be like, you are clearly brilliant. You
are a once in a lifetime genius at least it's

(01:04:28):
some things. But also, as we've all seen, we've all
become increasingly aware of people who are like, well, you're
clearly brilliant at one thing, and now your access to
Twitter has made us all aware that you don't understand
anything else.

Speaker 4 (01:04:41):
So, I mean, the evidence is seems to be that
people who are brilliant on one thing may actually.

Speaker 2 (01:04:46):
Be terrible in everything.

Speaker 4 (01:04:48):
Standard.

Speaker 2 (01:04:49):
Yeah, it may just be that Oprah is a once
in a lifetime mind when it comes to the business
of entertainment, and also honestly believed this woman sacrificing babies
with her family.

Speaker 3 (01:05:03):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:05:04):
Now that said, we have the fact that we have
quotes from her being like, hey, get me a priest
who said this makes me kind of lean more in
the direction of Norah Oprah new right. Some of this,
A lot of this is bullshit and it was just
trying to get eyeballs on the TV, don't I think
it's often a mix, Like, I don't know how much
she's able to parse it herself. I want to talk

(01:05:25):
about another incident that kind of really makes me go
back and forth, which is the McMartin preschool satanic abuse scandal.
Now we cover this in our episodes on the Satanic Panic,
but the gist of the case is that a bunch
of parents became convinced that their children, more than three
hundred of them at all, had been systematically abused by
a Satanic cult headed by the McMartin family, who ran

(01:05:46):
a private preschool. The initial allegations, which included claims that
one of the alleged molesters could fly, were made by
Judy Johnson, who suffered from schizophrenia and was a hardcore alcoholic.
From her allegations, a community hysteria developed, which was stoked
by an abuse therapy clinic run by Kee McFarlane, who
provided investigations that pushed children with leading questions towards generating allegations.

(01:06:11):
A whole lot of people had their lives ruined by this.
And despite the fact that the investigation literally dug up
the ground around the school to try to find secret
satanic torture tunnels, no one was ever convicted of molesting
any kids and people. I don't. I hate relitigating this
because people are always like WEO. But they did find tunnels, No,
they didn't. They found trash buried underneath the school because

(01:06:34):
a farm had been there and people bury trash. All
of the shit that was buried in there was stuffed
from the era at which there was a farm there
where people were burying trash, the dead animal bones. That's
just what happens in the ground, guys. That's just how
things are. It's not they weren't running tunnels to molest

(01:06:57):
toddlers for the devil.

Speaker 12 (01:06:59):
It's also just it's like the logistics of like running
a fucking satanic call, Like what the fuck are you
talking about again?

Speaker 2 (01:07:09):
It's one of those and like I'm not saying no
kid ever got molested at this or other preschools like that.
A lot of times the satanic abuse does come from
there's a real sexual abuse problem, and then it gets
turned into something that absolutely isn't happening, and again, shitloads
of innocent people get wrapped into it too. Yeah, I
don't think I'm not saying that was a happen at
Macmartin because again, nobody got convicted of anything.

Speaker 4 (01:07:32):
So it's not highly correlated with Satan. No, in fact,
it might be higher correlated with Satan's old friend.

Speaker 2 (01:07:41):
Yeah. And in fact, church leaders, Southern Baptist leaders, Catholic priests,
police officers, these are the people who are molesting kids.
And honestly, more than any of those their own parents
and relatives, that's who does it. That's who molests kids.

Speaker 8 (01:07:57):
But it's so much more satisfying to believe it's I'm
like big conspiracy, and Andrew to your point.

Speaker 2 (01:08:03):
Look at a cousin and uncle. Huh sorry what they
can fucking fly?

Speaker 4 (01:08:09):
What do they need tunnles for?

Speaker 2 (01:08:11):
Yeah? Yeah, what do they need?

Speaker 3 (01:08:12):
Why?

Speaker 2 (01:08:12):
Why are they doing.

Speaker 3 (01:08:13):
This in tunnels?

Speaker 1 (01:08:15):
Like?

Speaker 3 (01:08:15):
Why does that make more sense?

Speaker 2 (01:08:17):
Yeah? So as this in this case winds on for
like like a couple of years, Oprah, it is constantly
on the show, they are following. This is like the
OJ Simpson trial, you know, before the OJ Simpson trial
for Winfrey. And here like they are following every twist
and turn in this case breathlessly. And when these people
don't get convicted, Oprah and her audience are outraged. She

(01:08:38):
refuses to accept this. She brings a bunch of the
children and parents and even some of the jurors onto
the show to relitigate the case. And She's not the
only person doing this. She's part of a trendon daytime TV.
Heraldo Rivera does the same thing, so does Sally Jesse Raphael,
But as La Times columnist Howard Rosenberg noted, compared to them,

(01:09:00):
Raaldo was as judicious as the Supreme Court. In other words,
he's saying Heraldo's coverage of this was responsible next to Oprah's.
And Heraldo Rivera is not a responsible man. I don't
know how else to describe him. Again, when he got
hit in the nose with that share, it was the
best thing that ever happened to this country. Quote and
here's Rosenberg, the level of fairness here was typified by

(01:09:21):
Winfrey's admission that she would have made a poor macmartin
juror because I would say the children said it, all right,
you're right. The studio audience applauded. You see pieces this
too that like if the children say it, it's true,
If a mom says it, it's true, it's like, No,
you have to have an evidentiary standard when you are
accusing huge numbers of people of hideous crimes. You can't

(01:09:45):
just say we put a bunch of kids in a
room and wouldn't let them leave until they told stories
of satanic molestation tunnels and then lock people up forever.
That's a bad way to run a society. Yeah, I
don't know good stuff. So while she's doing this, she
like has all these people on. She tells like a

(01:10:06):
former mcmartin's student, like to tell the audience what she
told the jury, like over sixteen days of testimony. And
while this is happening, like you're getting these frequent shots
of the audience like shaking their heads and like listening
to these horrible stories. One of the moms tells Winfrey,
I'm outraged at this verdict, And yeah, it's it's just
it's very irresponsible. I don't know. I think it's probably

(01:10:30):
bad for there to be a case where all of
these people are rung through the mud on television, then
acquitted and then have a whole show where you're like,
but actually they were still guilty. These people molest these
innocent people molested. A shitload of kids are running us
like their lives are already ruined. Oprah, what are you doing?

Speaker 4 (01:10:50):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:10:51):
I don't like this. I don't like this.

Speaker 4 (01:10:52):
Has she ever spoken about any of that? No? No,
no, no no.

Speaker 8 (01:10:57):
And I'd have to imagine if she did, the answer
would be like, well, everybody was doing it, like this
is what people didn't but.

Speaker 2 (01:11:03):
You were the most popular of them, right right right?

Speaker 6 (01:11:07):
Yeah, he use this thing with I mean even the
most popular shows. Though, It's like you are still following trends,
like you may have a hand on the scale for sure,
but there is a point to where you know the yeah,
as we've seen multiple times, like the snowball gets out
of control and you are simply, regardless of your size,

(01:11:29):
you are along for the ride.

Speaker 2 (01:11:31):
Yep, Well how's everyone feeling so far?

Speaker 4 (01:11:36):
Finally got bad?

Speaker 2 (01:11:38):
It did it did?

Speaker 6 (01:11:39):
It was pretty bad before, but finally Oprah's doing some
evident bad.

Speaker 2 (01:11:43):
The worm has turned, you would say, Uh, anyway, plugs.

Speaker 3 (01:11:55):
Love that everybody's been bummed.

Speaker 7 (01:11:57):
Play to go.

Speaker 3 (01:11:58):
Yeah, I know that was like a like a tough
spot to end at.

Speaker 8 (01:12:02):
I guess, although I will say I'm still thinking about
that headline or that title of her of the review
MLK shot twice.

Speaker 3 (01:12:10):
That I'm gonna be thinking about that one for a
long time.

Speaker 4 (01:12:13):
That's that is a level of petty. That is very beautiful. Yeah,
very nice. I don't know. I got a podcast called
Jos Racist. It's fine.

Speaker 2 (01:12:25):
Check out?

Speaker 9 (01:12:26):
Yo?

Speaker 2 (01:12:26):
Is this racist? Check out? There are no girls on
the internet. Uh, and find our our hosts online and
let them know your favorite moment from the Oprah Winfrey Show.
Bombard us all on Blue Sky with your favorite Oprah clips.
Don't do that, oh do it to me?

Speaker 8 (01:12:44):
I mean I had to like bite my tongue as
I have so much to say. Go ahead and sumam
me on behind our on Blue Sky. I want to
hear your favorite Oprah takes. I will tell you mine.

Speaker 2 (01:12:53):
Don't bite your tongue.

Speaker 8 (01:12:55):
Oh it would just be me talking about and another
time on Oprah she did this and then another episode
she did that it would be so unfun to listen to.

Speaker 2 (01:13:02):
Well, part four, we're gonna we'll find out, We'll find out,
We're gonna supercharge Bridget. Just just let you loose until
next time. Folks, don't put people up in front of
the country and tell them that you sacrifice babies for
the devil.

Speaker 4 (01:13:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:13:23):
Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
For 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

(01:13:44):
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