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In reply to the discussion: Half of Dr. Oz’s medical advice is baseless or wrong, study says [View all]CrawlingChaos
(1,893 posts)It was that that self-help system she promoted where you visualize stuff and it somehow becomes real (some kind of bastardization of some concepts from quantum physics... I forget exactly). People were opting out of medical treatments in favor of believing really hard - such is the power of Oprah. It was an embarrassing episode for her.
My favorite thing from "The Secret" was the advice for people trying to lose weight, which was to not even look at fat people. Just don't look at them! Avert your gaze! As someone said at the time "how am I going to watch The Sopranos"?
As far at the book club goes, it was actually a good thing that she was trying to get people to read, but then it turned into a disturbing mass control exercise where people would only read what Oprah told them to read, and she wielded this frightening power over the publishing industry. But we did get some amusing incidents out of it -- the guy who wrote "The Corrections" who didn't want to be in the book club because he didn't think any *men* would read his book. And my favorite, the debacle over "A Million Little Pieces" and the unforgettable spectacle of Oprah eviscerating the author on television. I'll never forget her fury that he had DARED to commit the MORTAL SIN of making the mighty Oprah look bad (of course she never takes any responsibility for her own dumb-ass choices).
Which reminds me, I keep waiting for her to publicly weigh in on Bill Cosby. Let us not forget, he was her dear, dear friend and partner in tag-team pontificating for so many years. She obviously knew (the accusations have been out there for a long-ass time) but never even asked him about it in the many interviews she did with him. They had plenty of criticism for other people, but never for themselves.