While Oprah Winfrey lacks Trump’s malevolence she is no more qualified to be President than he is.
More significantly, Winfrey’s “avatar of optimism” persona, while popular with many, would be poison when it comes to creating a more egalitarian society; more specifically, she studiously avoids suggesting that we demand anything from the political system. She references inequity but she doesn’t confront it politically. She encourages us to make demands only of ourselves. She never addresses the need for collective action. While we must make demands of ourselves, we must also make demands of the system. Winfrey’s unwillingness to confront systemic inequity on a political level is a tell that she prioritizes social comfort over social justice.
Winfrey’s Golden Globe speech was empty rhetoric. Beyond no one ever having to say “Me too.” again, what will that “new day” look like when it finally dawns? Her words suggested no collective action or vision of what constitutes a better future. As Nicole Aschoff wrote in The Guardian a few years back: “Oprah’s stories, and others like them, are able to ‘manage our desires’ only because they appeal to deep fantasies about how we want to live our lives.” In contrast to the stories Winfrey passes off, a better politics requires that “new stories must feature collective demands that provide a critical perspective on the real limits to success in our society [as well as fostering] a vision of life that does fulfill the desire for self-actualization.” Winfrey is not up to that task.