Oprah Overload

Posted by Amber Nasrulla Apr 21, 2007

I love Oprah. She’s a high priestess of pop culture, philanthropy, and psychology. She takes the banal details of our lives and turns it into a scintillating talk show. But lately, I’m getting too much Oprah.

I just got the May issue of O magazine. And there she was, the glorious billionaire, with perfectly shaped eyebrows, lovely makeup, jewels and various baubles. And just a few tastefully positioned wrinkles. (Thank you Photoshop.)

Sigh. The thing is, as much as I love and admire her magazine, and her daily show, and the numerous charitable acts, the schools, the speeches, and now Oprah on XM Radio, I’m fatigued. Call me crazy but she’s taken celebrity branding into the stratosphere. And I’m feeling Oprah Overload.

For instance, would it be the end of the world to put another person’s face on the cover of her magazine? Would newsstand sales and subscriptions slide? Would we not believe the content of the articles if it was say, a headshot of, um, Richard Gere or Alec Baldwin or Mother Theresa or my Aunt Bessie.

OK, you got me. I don’t have an Aunt Bessie. But if I did I know she’d be a suitable cover subject. In my imagination she’s 89 years old and has been running nine public schools for street urchins in Karachi since the 1950s. She pays for textbooks and the children’s healthcare out of her own pocket. In the summer months she has to raise funds. The government doesn’t help.

Doesn’t she deserve a round of applause? (As you can tell Aunt Bessie is modeled after an elderly relative.)

I think Oprah has reached media overexposure. Maybe she did years ago and I’m just cottoning on to it now.

I’m sure I’ve committed some kind of unforgivable offence in the Oprah Universe and I know, I know she’s a self-help guru extraordinaire. But I think it would be nice if she went on hiatus and reminded us why we all fell in love with her in the first place. And if she stopped talking about herself so much. I think it's time for Oprah to make herself over.

Because right now, man of her shows feature conversations with stars like Diana Ross, Sidney Poitier, and Jamie Foxx and they detract from what made her so accessible in the first place. She was like a regular gal. Now she talks about her dream home in Hawai’i, her condo in Chicago, her private jet, the diamond-encrusted watch that Madonna gave her and so on.

And somehow I don’t want to listen to her anymore. Call it a case of Double Os.