So that nutjob Iyanla Vanzant was on Oprah yesterday.
Does anyone really remember Iyanla Vanzant ? The self-styled New Thought, New Age, whatever-the-heck guru who used to show up on Oprah years ago and act all inspirationally insane and get certain types of stupid women all riled up with baseless hopes? That wise-crackin’ wanna-be Nubian princess who wrote a bunch of crap spirituality books with titles like “One Day My Soul Just Opened Up” and “The Value in the Valley” that appeal to these aforementioned stupid women?
Yeah, I guess you could say I’ve never been a fan.
But she was on Oprah yesterday to discuss their “falling out” and I just had to watch even though I rarely watch Oprah because — unlike a lot of women, I guess — I don’t much like Oprah, either.
Here’s the nutshell of their conflict from Pop2it:
The former Oprah expert, (ed: expert on what? Oprah?) who was banished from the program in 1999 after she revealed she was negotiating her own series with Barbara Walters and Buena Vista Television, finally gave her side of the story to her former boss. And it all boils down to misunderstandings and uninformed decisions.
Oprah admits she was grooming Iyanla for her own series, like the ones she’s since handed to Dr. Oz and Dr. Phil, but when Iyanla got the offer from Walters, she decided not to wait for Oprah to counter.
“You said that you’d been fasting,” Oprah recalls from their confrontation, “that you had prayed, that God had spoken to you and that God told you that ‘this is the anointed time, not the appointed time.'”
Okay. Weird stuff, huh?
So that’s the backstory to yesterday’s show, but I want to talk about the first few moments of the show itself.
Right off the bat, Iyanla apologized profusely. She apologized. Oprah, with her fingers tented together in that gesture of magnanimous superiority I so despise, said, “I accept your apology. You’re forgiven. You were forgiven long ago or you wouldn’t be here.”
Great. Apology offered. Forgiveness extended.
And apart from the 45-minute argument that Oprah immediately started over the minutiae of their falling out, it would have been really touching.
You know, an apology offered. Forgiveness (allegedly) extended.
This is why I don’t like Oprah.
There’s a steel rod of self-righteousness running through her, covered by her ample frame and her pseudo-soothing facility with words. But, seriously, that chick needs to be right. She needs it. Now because of the nature of most of her shows, this need doesn’t rear its head all that often, but sometimes, like with author James Frey and now Iyanla, she seizes a moment to rake someone publicly over the coals, all while somehow simultaneously convincing people she’s being magnanimous.
I don’t quite know how she manages to pull this off except that perhaps she’s a narcissist so sure of her mesmerizing effect on the audience that she believes most people won’t question her methods. Most won’t, I guess, and that’s part of the cult of Oprah.
Oprah did question Iyanla on what she — or “God” — meant by “this is the anointed time, not the appointed time,” which I thought was a valid question because, uhm, seriously, what the hell does that mean?
Iyanla, for the most part, answered vaguely, as most New Age people are wont to do. And when she wasn’t being vague and airy, she was being cackling crazy. And when she wasn’t being cackling crazy, she was essentially grovelling to Oprah.
The whole thing made me sad for Iyanla and angry at Oprah.
I mean, come on. The woman offered an apology. Accept it or don’t accept it, but don’t begin to publicly rehash all the details of your conflict in the vapor trail of the woman’s sincere apology.
That Oprah.
She needs to be right. She NEEDS it.
There were a few times when I thought Iyanla was genuinely funny, self-deprecating about herself, and not simply crazy. Oprah, by contrast, doesn’t have this same ability. She’s not funny and I’ve come to the conclusion that she has zero sense of humor about herself. She’s too self-important to be self-deprecating.
As for the particulars of their conflict, I could see some of Oprah’s points. I could see fewer of Iyanla’s points, but my point with all of this is not regarding those particulars but only this: Iyanla apologized right off the bat, Oprah gave the appearance of accepting it, and then essentially started a televised fight.
To me, this photo perfectly encapsulates the whole event:
Again.
Apologies are either accepted or not, when they’re offered. Genuine forgiveness doesn’t include raking a person over the coals for her wrong all while proclaiming your forgiveness.
And this is why I don’t like Oprah.
(Oh, there’s apparently part 2 of their interview today where Oprah strips Iyanla to the waist and publicly flagellates her. I mean, one assumes.)
Yeah, I’m not much of an Oprah fan, myself. Self-righteousness isn’t all that entertaining. And anyone who would foist Dr. Phill on an unsuspecting public deserves what she gets.
Besides, it seems all this Ivanlya (?) woman did was dare to try to forward her career without Oprah’s approved patronage. Why is she apologizing in the first place?
roo — /And anyone who would foist Dr. Phill on an unsuspecting public deserves what she gets./
Hahahahahahah! So true.
I think the deal was — although it was convuluted, roo, because of all the fuzzy language — that Iyanla used that offer from Barbara Walters as leverage against Oprah. Or at least Oprah felt that way. She felt like IV (Iyanla Vanzant) was trying to play hardball with her or something. I’m not sure why this is a no-no. Isn’t that pretty standard operating procedure in a lot of businesses?
I think the only reason IV is subjecting herself to this public scolding is because she has a book coming out.
Maybe she’s being smart then. Based on Oprah’s ability to make an author’s book sales go through the roof, maybe an hour or two of discomfort is worth it in the long run.
AMEN!! Preach it sister! When I watched it (well semi-watched as I was supposed to be working while my wife watched it). It reminded me of James Frey’s SECOND appearance when he had to prostrate himself before “The Queen” and was mercilessly beaten for a good 40 minutes for faking his life story in “A Million Little Pieces”.
Like IV, I have no love lost for James Frey. He lied and he should have been, and was, held to account to the public and his publisher. But, THAT was not enough for Oprah. He embarrassed the queen and her book club and therefore had to go through her own admonishment and punishment.
Frey kept saying he was sorry, but that wasn’t good enough for Oprah (which in my memory, unlike IV, never forgave him in that hour).
JFH — Yeah. The Frey thing showed Oprah’s true colors to me. Well, not that I had really liked her before and was suddenly shocked and disappointed. It was more like she presented another face — in both of these scenarios — that I REALLY disliked.
These episodes remind me of my debacle with The Worst Person I’ve Ever Known and that post I did a few months ago about our “meeting” where I kept apologizing and apologizing over and over until I finally said, “I don’t know how many more times I can apologize and still mean it.” It was true. I was actually getting MAD. I was actually AWARE, somewhere in my brain, that he was making me grovel and I was starting to rebel.
But It’s that same dynamic. Some people are so secretly power hungry and I think it can be especially true of certain pastors or “life coach”-type people like Oprah. They put on this benign, magnanimous facade but if you bump up against them wrong, RAAWWWWR, the beast behind suddenly comes lunging forward and there is hell to pay.
You sound like you remember the Frey thing a little better than I do. I didn’t remember that she never forgave him, despite repeat apologies, but it definitely sounds plausible to me. Ugh.
I won’t miss her when she’s gone. And I’m glad I don’t have cable so I’m not exposed to the Oprah Winfrey Network. (Although if she runs for national political office ……. well, let’s hope not.)
Unless she stands up in front of the entire nation, screaming, “YOU GET A CAR!!! AND YOU GET A CAR!!! AND YOOOU GET A CAR!! AND YOU DO TOO!! YOU’RE ALL GETTING CARRRRS!!”
THEN I might vote for her.
This whole thing is such a power trip! “ahh, the glory to go publicly apologize to Oprah!”
Yeah, she felt duped by Frey.
I felt duped by his publishers, because the writing was so awful. Fiction or non, his prose is terrible.
I don’t have any feelings about Oprah one way or the other (have you heard Kathy Griffith’s story about being on the show – hilarious) but I will have a small bit of gratitude towards her forever because it was on HER couch that Tom Crooze felt safe enough to leap – and it was that very leap (along with the South Park episode around that time) that began the very public cracking of the cult-edifice that I have despised and written about for so long.
Critics have been attacking that group for years, but ther’es nothing like having the biggest movie star in the world jump up and down on a couch and basically attack Oprah to show how heterosexual he is to make normal people across the nation think, “What the heck is goin’ on with that guy?”
Also – anointed/appointed?
Just because the words rhyme doesn’t mean they are somehow related or that you are deep for putting them in the same sentence.
grrrrrrr
And yes, Dr. Phil is unforgivable.
Oh, that’s awful–and right in line with the clips that “The Soup” aired tonight about her need to proclaim that a “big idea” was HERS. Repeatedly. Ugh.
Also: my friend who is a licensed therapist calls Dr. Phil a “thug.”
Sheila, that South Park episode is one of my all-time favorites. Incredibly, smartly written.
Ah, the wagging finger of accusation. Just the first step to a good public flogging! So many narcissists get that finger going and just can’t stop it. You see it practically daily on the news from the upper echelons right down to the lowest, crawling terrorist.
I stopped watching Oprah long, long ago. The penchant for windy, flowery, meaningless, “spiritual crap” (love your term!)in our society today is something I just don’t understand. Tracey, I love your no-nonsense, naked-truth, take-down kinda way!
sheila — //Just because the words rhyme doesn’t mean they are somehow related or that you are deep for putting them in the same sentence. //
Hahahahahaha.
Kate P — He does seem thuggish.
Deryn — Thanks! She brings out the crankypants in me.
That picture sends ice through my veins.
Sheila, what Kathy Griffin story?
Cara – she is just very very funny about Oprah. I bet if go to Youtube and click in both their names, you can see some of the clips from Kathy’s stand-up about being on oprah’s show, but then also about Oprah in general.
Honestly, I don’t get how somebody gets as rich as her for doing what she does. My only guilty connection to Oprah was reading “The Poisonwood Bible” when it was one of her book club selections. Other than that most of what I know of her show comes from clips on The Soup.
Oh! I so totally agree. I’m not a fan of Oprah myself.
My disillusionment (although I’ve never been too thrilled with her) was capped by the Eckart Tolle series, which I just couldn’t finish watching after about the 2-3 installments.
In my eyes, she handled the man, the topic, the series, like a buffoon. I think she was trying her best to “interpret” it for her audience who she apparently thought needed her help understanding his message. But she just came off as crass, insensitive and arrogant.
I felt very sorry for Tolle having to put up with this behaviour.
So yeah, count me in as a non believer… And don’t get me started on Dr. Phil. 😉