I’ve never understood the appeal of Oprah Winfrey. She’s always struck me as a giant fraud, the kind of person who will smile and hug when the cameras are on but an absolute oblivious nightmare when the public is not looking. Note that I didn’t say mean; I don’t know if she’s mean, but she sure as hell seems to have zero self-awareness regarding her surroundings.
That’s how she could do a show, back when she did shows, about her “favorite things,” and it’d be full of things you’d have to mortgage your house to afford. Sure, it’s great that she could be the world’s most expensive whatever it is, but she seemed to notice no one, not her, could too.
It’s the ultimate “Let them eat cake” mentality.
Kamala Harris, on the other hand, is just the opposite. From all reports, she is an absolute nightmare to work for. As Vice President, her staff had more turnover than a Suzuki Samurai.
Oprah actually grew up poor, and Kamala grew up really well-off, no matter how many times she tried to claim she was “middle-class.” Do you know anyone whose family struggled with two parents who had Ph.D.s? Even after they divorced, high pay and job security were there waiting for both of them. Why she claims to have grown up in Oakland when she grew up in Berkeley and Montreal is a testament to her feeling the need to hide her privilege from Democratic Party voters. It’s why she claims to have worked at a McDonald's, when no single human being has ever claimed to remember her there or has any proof that it has ever happened.
When your boss is Joe Biden, you learn that you can lie about your biography with impunity because even when you’re caught, no one bothers reporting on it.
One thing Kamala Harris and Oprah Winfrey have in common is they are so insulated from the real world and even distant memories of when they weren’t part of the wealthy elite that they can’t be related to normal people. It’s probably been 50 or more years since Oprah has had to shower from work rather than for it. Unless you count how Kamala got her first political job from Willie Brown, she likely never has had to.
So, when the two of them got together to “help” Kamala’s presidential campaign, it made perfect sense that it would be a completely out-of-touch trainwreck.
A friend who works in crisis management once told me about the time a client, a long-dead singer who was in the midst of a career-destroying crisis, and an old, very famous actor (also now dead) decided they would address the singer’s scandal by doing a live television interview with each other. While it would have been an all-time spectacular mess, especially if you knew the names, the crisis management firm talked them out of it over several hours. It was the best money either of them had ever spent.
There was no firm to talk Kamala and Oprah out of what they did.
It was a 90-minute joke of a campaign event, filled with filthy rich celebrities and screened audience members (who were all donors, by the way) pretending they weren’t rehearsed. You could tell if it was fake by how the studio audience chosen to recite questions were wearing microphones that were run up under shirts, not handheld mics someone had randomly chosen would be given.
When not tossing word salads and not answering basic questions about things as simple as how she plans on bringing down costs she helped raise, the multimillionaire and the multibillionaire spent a lot of time talking to Hollywood celebrities. The collective net worth of Julia Roberts, Ben Stiller, Jennifer Lopez, Bryan Cranston, Chris Rock, Meryl Streep, and the rest likely rival Oprah’s. Kamala Harris interacts more with them than she does with the audience.
Why? Because she and Oprah think they can “celebrity” her way into office. Barack Obama did it; why not Kamala?
However, Obama, while he was a “celebrity candidate,” also spoke about policies. He lied about them – if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor, anyone? – but he at least offered them up. Kamala couldn’t give you a straight answer if you asked her what time it was; instead, she would lecture you about time zones and even conduct a brain-damaged exploration of the concept of time while mispronouncing basic words.
The Vice President has no idea how to communicate with real people because she hasn’t had to in decades. To win an election in California, you have to suck up to the wealthy donor class. Do that, and you’re most of the way to winning the Democratic Party’s nomination. Land that, and you’re in. You’ll run against another Democrat, usually, but if you can’t out-box-check them on the left-wing victimhood food pyramid, you’re as good as elected.
President is different – you have to appeal to real people, normal people. Kamala has never had to before and she has no idea how to do it. Oprah thinks she does because she’s been made rich by preaching to people on television. But just like the church Oprah belonged to for decades, then claimed to have not noticed the casual racism of (she was a member of Jeremiah Wright’s church with Barack and Michelle Obama, who also missed all the racism), the world she inhabits is unrelatable to most people. And thank God for that.
Weirdly, even though he’s been rich his whole life, Donald Trump actually can relate to normal people. The poll of Teamsters members shows just how connect they feel to him. There is no such corollary for Harris. The closest would be empty-nested, wealthy, white suburban women who have nothing to do all day except sip chardonnay and convince themselves they know best how everyone else should live. You know, Oprah’s old viewers.
Those two celebrities I referenced trying to hold a televised interview to save one of their careers had people they paid to tell them “no” when needed. Oprah Winfrey and Kamala Harris have no such people around them. And it showed in that “town hall.”
But what it really showed was how out-of-touch with normal people Kamala Harris truly is and how disinterested in even talking with them she is when Julia Roberts is available.
Life is about priorities, and you will learn everything you need to know about someone by watching what they do when they think they’re in safe company, which Harris even was. For that reason, I am grateful for Oprah Winfrey—but only for today.
Derek Hunter is the host of a free daily podcast (subscribe!) and author of the book Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses, and host of the weekly “Week in F*cking Review” podcast where the news is spoken about the way it deserves to be. Follow him on Twitter at @DerekAHunter.
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