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T
here are two Oprah Winfreys. One is the African-
American woman who struggled against incredible
odds in abject poverty to become the wealthiest,
most admired woman in America. No one has summarized
this Winfrey better than Ken Frazier in a letter to me that I
quote with permission:
She has done some enormous good, it seems to me. She has,
among other things, strongly empowered women, instilled a love
of reading books through her book club program, taken on a
number of very difficult issues with a seriousness and directness
not usually associated with daytime TV, funded and built schools
in South Africa, and otherwise served as a successful role model
for millions of women worldwide.
Oprah Winfrey:
Bright (but Gullible)
Billionaire
M A RT I N G A R D N E R
5 4 Vo l u m e 3 4 , I s s u e 2 SK EPTI C A L I N Q U I R ER
The other Oprah Winfrey is an attractive, intelligent woman with a heart of gold, but who has only a pale under- standing of modern science. On her daily television show (which, she announced in November to stunned viewers, will end after its twenty-fifth season, 2010–11) she promotes, as frequent guests, men and women who preach views and opin- ions that are medically worthless and in a few cases can even lead to death. This naïve Winfrey is the topic of this article. You may have noticed that in every photograph you see of Winfrey, either on the cover of her magazine O (and she’s on every cover) or elsewhere, she looks young and gorgeous. Not so on the cover of the June 8, 2009, issue of Newsweek. In large white letters across her hair are the words “Crazy Talk. Oprah, Wacky Cures & You.” The cover story by Weston Kosova and Pat Wingert is a bombshell. For the first time in a mass-circulation magazine, the Queen of Television is pummeled for her constant praise of dubious medical opinions and other forms of bogus science. But before covering Newsweek ’s hatchet job, let’s take a quick look at Winfrey’s amazing life. Oprah Gail Winfrey was born in Kos ciusko, Mississippi, in 1954 to two unmarried teenagers who separated soon after. Winfrey was raised by a grandmother in such poverty that her dresses were literally made of potato sacks. She was raped at age nine and molested by an uncle, a cousin, and a family friend. She became pregnant at fourteen and gave birth to a son, her only child, who died in infancy. Winfrey was an honor student at a Nashville high school, obtaining a scholarship to Tennessee State University. After two years of college, she began working in radio and television, which eventually led to a career on the highest rated daytime TV show in the world. Today Winfrey is said to be the most powerful woman in America. She is a billionaire two times over. Although her show is based in Chicago, her main home (she owns several here and there) is on a huge estate in Montecito, California. In addition to O (circulation two million), she publishes a magazine called O at Home. Winfrey also owns a corporation called Harpo (Oprah backwards), which handles a variety of products, and created Oprah’s Book Club, which can propel a book into an instant best seller. Her power even stretches to the political realm: her support of Barack Obama is said to have won him a million votes. Now for a look at the explosive Newsweek article. The piece opens with lurid accounts of actress Suzanne Sommers’s many appearances on Winfrey’s show. Every morning, Sommers rubs estrogen cream on one arm and injects estrogen into her vagina; two weeks a month, she smears progesterone on her other arm. She also swallows a bewildering variety of vitamin supplements, gives herself injections of growth hormones, and wears a nanotechnology patch to lose weight and promote sleep.
Sommers claims to use only “natural products” and criticizes all the big drug companies that make billions, she is convinced, by hawking dangerous products. Winfrey’s enthusiasm for Sommers’s wild medical opinions is boundless. She urges her viewers to buy the actress’s treat-your- self books. After following Sommers’s advice about taking estro- gen, Winfrey wrote in O , “I felt the veil lift. After three days the skies were bluer, my brain no longer fuzzy, my memory was sharper. I was literally singing and had a skip in my step.” Mainstream doctors hold contrary views. They scoff at the notion that Sommers needs all this medication. Excessive use of
hormones, they say, can increase the risk of heart attacks and strokes and even cause cancer. “It completely blew me away,” said Cynthia Parsons, execu- tive director of the nonprofit National Women’s Health Net- work, “that Oprah would go to [Sommers] for advice. I have to say it diminishes my respect [for her].” Another frequent guest on Winfrey’s show is Jenny McCarthy, actress and star of numerous films and TV shows. She first became famous for modeling in Playboy and later became better known for her outrageous humor. McCarthy is in the Newsweek article because of her vigorous efforts to convince the world that autism is caused by vaccina- tions. She has an autistic son, Evan, who she insists became autis- tic after he was vaccinated for measles and other diseases. In her book Louder Than Words: A Mother’s Journey in Healing , she
Martin Gardner is author of more than seventy books, most recently When You Were a Tadpole and I was a Fish , and Other Speculations About This and That , published by Hill and Wang in October 2009.
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