broomcloset ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Church of Oprah I could just not get over the Oprah show today. "So why did you watch it?" you say? Numb incredulity. She was wrapping up a series of shows called "lifestyle make-overs," and this wrap-up show consisted of telling stories about women who were following this latest Oprah how-to-live-your-life program and joining lifestyle make-over support groups. Then to encourage the entire audience to continue with this program, Oprah bestows upon them endless amounts of products with which to keep up their new found passions for life: shoes, journals, pens, and spas-in-boxes for all. And then I realized it: Oprah is a huge quasi-guru icon leading millions of people on a personal secular spiritual path of her own creation. "Secular spiritual path" you say? Well, that's the best term I can come up with for what is the Oprah phenomenon: she stays just shy of spirituality as a category as well as a few steps back of religion, but she is mass marketing her personal vision to the consumers of the world and they are eating it up! And what gets me is the amount of stuff her path seems to require. Now, Wicca is not immune to the desire for magickalspecialshinythings to use in its practice. But the materials that Oprah endources and promotes to her followers, while beautiful, are extremely expensive uptown-chic-boutique stuff that a normal human being simply cannot afford. I don't know about you all, but I don't have $190 US for a spa-in-a-box. I could probably get all the things I need at the Shoppers Drugmart for about $30, and that's if I'm splurging! This is what scares me the most: Oprah is no longer a talk show host: she is a televangelist. How's that for creepy? *shiver* ___ Apologies for spelling errors - it is after my bedtime. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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