What Oprah chiefly did was establish herself as a good listener, and, through interviews with authors, quick-cure physicians, exercise gurus and nutritionists, she became a broker of other people’s problems.
.. Oprah could have risen to her stratospheric renown only in a therapeutic age—an age in which repression is illness, confession the cure, with impulse satisfaction, self-esteem and personal happiness the paramount goals. If the triumphant therapeutic culture has a national therapist, Oprah Winfrey, surely, is it.
.. at a time when actual qualifications no longer seem to count heavily in presidential politics, her possible candidacy doesn’t seem in the least fantastic.