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Monday, November 12, 2007

Stanley Crouch admires Oprah's integrity



As much as I like Stanley Crouch's no holds barred analysis on newsworthy and cultural issues, I may not be in total agreement on his latest take relating to Oprah Winfrey and her academy's molestation fall out. Here's an excerpt from Crouch latest piece, courtesy of today's NY Daily News:

If irresponsibility is a disease, Oprah may have the cure

I know an exceedingly intelligent woman who has spent much of her adult life trying to conquer the feeling of betrayal and resentment she directs at her mother for having denied the hard fact that her own brother was sexually abusing his niece. She is still somewhat bitter in her mind - because she, rightly, believes that one of the fundamental responsibilities of motherhood is facing whatever threatens your children, whether inside or outside of the family. For many years, she has fought to remove the anger from her consciousness.

That is why she called me and said how impressed she was by Oprah Winfrey during the press conference the world-famous talk show host gave to address child abuse allegations at the academy she started for girls in South Africa. I agreed with her that what was most important about the conference was that Winfrey did not try to pass the buck and, after describing her own depression in the face of colossal disappointment, stood up for the children who had been abused and moved to right every possible problem at her academy.

I thought how different Winfrey is from those irresponsible men at the top of the Catholic Church who almost brought down the institution here in America because they preferred to subject more and more boys to abuse by priests than subject the church to the bramble bushes of embarrassment and jeering.

It is not hard to believe that those august and holy men may have experienced the sandpaper night of the soul when the information was brought before them. They may have been torn between their loyalty to the reputation of the church and the compassion that would have provoked profoundly horrible thoughts of how each abused boy must have felt. In her case, Winfrey said that the shock and disappointment was "one of the most devastating, if not the most devastating, experience of my life."


As much as I may admire Winfrey for being a beacon of light in a maelstrom of neo-minstrelsy, she still represents the over-celebrification of our culture-her philanthropic efforts notwithstanding. I, like many others were taken aback by Oprah's intention to build a school in South Africa when children of color in the U.S. could have also been the recipients of such an act of kindness. Her explanation that children in the U.S. would not have been as appreciative of such an endeavor opting for materialism over education did possess a ring of truth but I still wasn't sure if her anecdotal assertions were completely valid. Now it's been less than a year since the Oprah Academy opened it's doors and claims of cruelty and molestation have surfaced. Also some have claimed that due to Oprah's own personal bouts with past molestation at the hands of a male family member has served as the impetus for the oftentimes anti-male sentiment displayed on her show. However the culprit alleged to have enacted the assault on the children was a woman. The gender of this person is not the main premise of my argument but perhaps putting your name on an institution half a world away bemoans of product placement gone awry-accept the product is child and not a can of soup. I will flesh this out during tonight's Afronerd Radio broadcast, if time permits. Meanwhile, for more of the Crouch article click on the link below:


If irresponsibility is a disease, Oprah may have the cure

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