Spiritual leadership
In 2000, she was awarded the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP.[160] In 2002, Christianity Today published an article called "The Church of O" in which they concluded that Winfrey had emerged as an influential spiritual leader. "Since 1994, when she abandoned traditional talk-show fare for more edifying content, and 1998, when she began 'Change Your Life TV', Oprah's most significant role has become that of a spiritual leader. To her audience of more than 22 million mostly female viewers, she has become a postmodern priestess—an icon of church-free spirituality."[133] The sentiment was echoed by Marcia Z. Nelson in her book The Gospel According to Oprah.[161] Since the mid-1990s, Winfrey's show has emphasized uplifting and inspirational topics and themes and some viewers say the show has motivated them to perform acts of altruism such as helping Congolese women and building an orphanage.[162] A scientific study by psychological scientists at the University of Cambridge, University of Plymouth, and University of California used an uplifting clip from The Oprah Winfrey Show in an experiment that discovered that watching the 'uplifting' clip caused subjects to become twice as helpful as subjects assigned to watch a British comedy or nature documentary.[163][164]
In 1998, Winfrey began an ongoing conversation with Gary Zukav, an American spiritual teacher, who appeared on her television show 35 times.[165] Winfrey has said she keeps a copy of Zukav's The Seat of the Soul at her bedside, a book that she says is one of her all-time favorites.[166]
On the season premier of Winfrey's 13th season, Roseanne Barr told Winfrey "you're the African Mother Goddess of us all" inspiring much enthusiasm from the studio audience. The animated series Futuramaalluded to her spiritual influence by suggesting that "Oprahism" is a mainstream religion in 3000 AD.[167] Twelve days after the September 11 attacks, New York mayor Rudy Giuliani asked Winfrey to serve as host of a Prayer for America service at New York City's Yankee Stadium, which was attended by former president Bill Clinton and New York senator Hillary Clinton.[168] Leading up to the U.S.-led 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, less than a month after the September 11 attacks, Winfrey aired a controversial show called "Islam 101" in which she portrayed Islam as a religion of peace, calling it "the most misunderstood of the three major religions".[169] In 2002, George W. Bush invited Winfrey to join a US delegation that included adviser Karen Hughes and Condoleezza Rice, planning to go to Afghanistan to celebrate the return of Afghan girls to school. The "Oprah strategy" was designed to portray the War on Terror in a positive light; however, when Winfrey refused to participate, the trip was postponed.[170]
Leading up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Winfrey's show received criticism for allegedly having an anti-war bias. Ben Shapiro of Townhall.com wrote: "Oprah Winfrey is the most powerful woman in America. She decides what makes The New York Times Best Seller lists. Her touchy-feely style sucks in audiences at the rate of 14 million viewers per day. But Oprah is far more than a cultural force, she's a dangerous political force as well, a woman with unpredictable and mercurial attitudes toward the major issues of the day."[171] In 2006, Winfrey recalled such controversies: "I once did a show titled Is War the Only Answer? In the history of my career, I've never received more hate mail – like 'Go back to Africa' hate mail. I was accused of being un-American for even raising the question."[172] Filmmaker Michael Moorecame to Winfrey's defense, praising her for showing antiwar footage no other media would show[173] and begging her to run for president.[174]
A February 2003 series, in which Winfrey showed clips from people all over the world asking America not to go to war, was interrupted in several East Coast markets by network broadcasts of a press conference in which President George W. Bush and Colin Powell summarized the case for war.[175][176]
In 2007, Winfrey began to endorse the self-help program The Secret. The Secret claims that people can change their lives through positive thoughts or 'vibrations', which will then cause them to attract more positive vibrations that result in good things happening to them. Peter Birkenhead of Salon magazine argued that this idea is pseudoscienceand psychologically damaging, as it trivializes important decisions and promotes a quick-fix material culture, and suggests Winfrey's promotion of it is irresponsible given her influence.[177] In 2007, skeptic and magician James Randi accused Winfrey of being deliberately deceptive and uncritical in how she handles paranormal claims on her show.[178] In 2008, Winfrey endorsed author and spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle and his book, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose, which sold several million extra copies after being selected for her book club. During a Webinar class, in which she promoted the book, Winfrey stated "God is a feeling experience and not a believing experience. If your religion is a believing experience [...] then that's not truly God."[179]Frank Pastore, a Christian radio talk show host on KKLA, was among the many Christian leaders who criticized Winfrey's views, saying "if she's a Christian, she's an ignorant one because Christianity is incompatible with New Age thought."[179]
Winfrey was named as the 2008 Person of the Year by animal-rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) for using her fame and listening audience to help the less fortunate, including animals. PETA praised Winfrey for using her talk show to uncover horrific cases of cruelty to animals in puppy mills and on factory farms, and Winfrey even used the show to highlight the cruelty-free vegan diet that she tried.[180] Winfrey also refuses to wear fur or feature it in her magazine.[181]
In 2009, Winfrey filmed a series of interviews in Denmark highlighting its citizens as the happiest people in the world. In 2010, Bill O'Reilly of Fox News criticized these shows for promoting a left-wing society.[182]Following the launch of the Super Soul Sunday and SuperSoul Sessionsprograms on Harpo Productions'SuperSoul TV, in 2016 Winfrey selected 100 people for the SuperSoul 100' list of "innovators and visionaries who are aligned on a mission to move humanity forward."[183][184]
On using the N-word, Winfrey said, "You cannot be my friend and use that word around me. ... I always think of the...people who heard that as their last word as they were hanging from a tree."[185]
