Blog

Category: Television

TV: Stephen King Talks Horror

25 September 2011

This October, TCM ushers in a month of what it calls classic horror films with an all-new special, A Night at the Movies: The Horrors of Stephen King. The one-hour special features horror novelist Mr. King in solo appearance, talking by himself over stills, clips and scenes from various horror films. The TV special is interesting even if you’re not a horror fan, and I am not (as I wrote about in this book review of another thought-provoking product about horror movies, Shock Value). The program is scheduled to premiere on TCM, which I write about so often I’m giving it a special blog category, Monday, Oct. 3, at 8 pm (ET/PT).

In the program, Stephen King discloses that Walt Disney’s Bambi (1942) was the first movie that scared him, and he goes on to comment, very briefly in each case, on motion pictures that made an impression on him as a writer: Francis Ford Coppola’s Dementia 13, George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) among others. With Snatchers, which was remade in the 1970s and the 1990s, King notes that most intellectuals regard it as a warning against so-called McCarthyism while he believes the filmmaker intended it as a warning against fascism, specifically National Socialism. I think Stephen King, whose writings I do not consume, is right. Mr. King has other cogent and candid remarks on Blair Witch Project, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Wolf Man (not a horror movie, he says), Paranormal Activity, and The Amityville Horror. He points out that Rosemary’s Baby and The Omen are what he calls fundamentally religious movies and discusses seeing The Exorcist with his wife. He also notes that Nightmare on Elm Street blurs the distinction between the conscious and the subconscious and dramatizes that “reality is a nightmare.”

Don’t expect him to talk about the writing process, though he covers most of his own works, from Salem’s Lot, adapted for television by the vile Tobe Hooper (Texas Chainsaw Massacre) to Cujo, Carrie, Misery and Dead Zone. Discussing Brian De Palma’s 1976 version of his novel Carrie, King says he wasn’t even invited to attend a screening and, when he did see it, it was a double feature with Norman, Is That You?, a black-themed film, and he was surprised that the predominantly black audience responded to Carrie. On what sounds like his favorite novel-based performance, King says: “The only actor or actress that won a major award for anything that was based on my work was Kathy Bates for Misery, and she certainly richly deserved that Oscar. But Dee Wallace probably deserved to be nominated for Cujo as much if not more than Kathy Bates. It’s a performance that grows in my eye every time that I see it. It was an absolutely terrific job.” He has nothing positive to say about director Stanley Kubrick (2001: A Space Odyssey) who decimated King’s novel, The Shining, in a 1980 picture with Jack Nicholson that bombed. King acknowledges the horror movie genre’s misogyny and decries what he calls torture porn, though the special ignores or glosses over truly repulsive, anti-man pictures such as I Spit on Your Grave and the Saw movies, and others, such as The Last House on the Left.

His most thoughtful comments are on the psychology of horror as a genre for fiction and film.

“I think that the shelf life of horror films is limited in terms of the emotional response of the viewer,” he says. “The first time that you see Night of the Living Dead, you’re absolutely riveted. The second time, you’re scared. The third time, the film has lost something essential that it had the first time. Now people continue to go back and see Night of the Living Dead, but what they’re experiencing isn’t horror at that point. It’s the memory of the horror that they felt the first time they saw it or the second time they saw it.” Admitting that the genre is fundamentally based on the emotion of fear, he compares the desire to watch horror with the inclination to look at a grisly car crash on the side of the road; you slow down and look, he says, because you’re reinforcing the fact that you’re OK, by confirming that the victims are not. Stephen King, whose writings include The Dark Half, Pet Sematary, It, and other horror classics, concludes that horror appeals to the worst, not the best, within us, and he observes that the more worried and fear-driven the culture, the more horror movies show up.

Permalink | Posted in Books, Movies, Television, Turner Classic Movies (TCM)

TV: Glee, Season 2

21 September 2011

With ratings for the third season’s opener good but down, and Hollywood insiders blaming the second season’s stories, I thought I’d take a look at the second season of Fox’s Glee on DVD. It’s uneven, though I do recommend the season and the DVD. Read my review of the first season of Fox’s Glee to know how much I liked it.

First, the negatives: songs lack an emotional, organic connection to characters and plots, key characters are lost in unfocused, agenda-driven episodes, and there’s absolutely no energy, enthusiasm or suspense for the vocal choir competition that powers the Lima, Ohio, William McKinley High School glee club’s sense of purpose. Staying with the episodes takes effort, unlike the first season when you couldn’t wait to see the next one. The positives are pretty positive: a few serious issues (atheism, bullying, sexual orientation) are explored with thought-provoking themes, humor and perfectly (if sporadically) suited tunes, and a few performances are outstanding. Among Glee‘s second season highlights: Kurt (Chris Colfer) singing the Beatles’ “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” as a non-romantic ballad about his father (Mike O’Malley) in the season’s best performance, a “mashup” of “C’mon Get Happy” and “Happy Days Are Here Again”, “Bridge Over Troubled Water”, and gay kid Kurt singing the duet “Baby It’s Cold Outside” with his romantic interest, preparatory schoolmate Blaine (Darren Criss). The New Directions choir sings Fleetwood Mac songs in an episode that works, a Rocky Horror tribute which makes no sense, and guest stars, especially Gwyneth Paltrow, detract from the core cast.

Directing and writing is off-key, with characters such as cheerleader Quinn (Dianna Agron) behaving as if their story arcs never happened, and Glee is at its best when the song advances the story, the story is moved by characters we care about, and characters are consistent. Cast additions are fine, though they don’t add much. Mannish Sue (Jane Lynch) is positively psychotic, veering from warm and friendly at Christmas to sociopath in back to back episodes, and glee club teacher Will (Matthew Morrison) is dumbed down and lost in the din of convoluted plots. Neurotic Emma (Jayma Mays) is dumbed down and she’s hardly in the show this season. There’s too much Brittany (Heather Morris), not enough Principal Figgins (Iqbal Theba) and Kurt and his dad are the most involving subplot, while others are variously too cruel, precocious, and callous. But when Glee is on, it’s right on, with music, glamor, and the spirit of youth in song.

Permalink | Posted in Home Entertainment, Music, Television

TV: Hot in Cleveland

12 September 2011

Primarily because it features actresses from some of my favorite TV sitcoms, I decided to check out the first season of TV Land’s first scripted situation comedy, Hot in Cleveland, on DVD. I don’t find much on TV (other than Turner Classic Movies) to like, so this original half-hour cable series, already approved for a third season, is a pleasant surprise.

When three working women friends from Los Angeles crash land in Cleveland, Ohio, during a trip to Paris, they end up in a bar where men find them attractive and people seem less affected and pretentious than they do in L.A. So, they decide to stay. The culture clash continues to fuel the comedy thereafter in this entertaining new show created and produced by those who made NBC’s classic 1990s’ sitcom, Frasier, which is the last comedy I watched regularly on TV.

Here, we have Hot in Cleveland‘s moral center, Melanie, Mel for short, played perfectly as usual by all-American Valerie Bertinelli (Barbara Cooper on One Day at a Time), a divorced writer who leads the trio towards a post-40s fresh start in the Midwest, Joy (Jane Leeves, Daphne Moon on Frasier) a Beverly Hills eyebrow stylist, Victoria (Wendie Malick, Nina Van Horn on Just Shoot Me!), a five-time divorcee soap opera actress, and their rental property’s caretaker, Elka (Betty White, Rose on The Golden Girls). Elka gets the best lines, digging at acerbic Joy, and Malick basically plays the same narcissist she did on Just Shoot Me! But Bertinelli pulls everything together as a benevolent but bold mid-lifer who makes an effort to listen, be a good friend, and remake herself in Cleveland. Renewal is the theme for fall, making Hot in Cleveland, which, contrary to some reviews, is more like Frasier in its goodness than it is like Golden Girls in cattiness, a good pick for home entertainment. Coming soon: a review of the second season of Glee, due on DVD tomorrow.

Permalink | Posted in Home Entertainment, Television

Three 9/11 DVDs: PBS, National Geographic, HBO

26 August 2011

For the fifth year marking the 9/11 attack, I watched three documentary productions from HBO, PBS (Frontline) and National Geographic. Overall, these are the best I’ve seen. Read the entire article, which contains chilling details and facts about the attack which are not widely known, here.

The Frontline DVD series encompasses seven hours of various programs that aired on PBS (some before the attack) and, though they use sources with heavy liberal biases to discuss events, the package is generally factual and informative. Al Qaeda Files: Frontline fails to explore, let alone explain, the role of faith and religion in the act of mass murder and certain terrorist dictatorships, such as Iran, are conspicuously left unexamined. But the Frontline programs, contained on several discs, offer evidence of the spread of Islamic terrorism and the West’s appeasement.

Both the Clinton administration’s refusal to exterminate a known jihadist with hostile intent and the Bush administration’s ignorance and evasion are evident in National Geographic: Inside 9/11, a briskly paced chronology on two-discs, “War on America” and “Zero Hour.” The discs are packed with crucial—and relatively unknown—facts.

HBO’s In Memoriam: New York City 9/11/01 is basically former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s tribute to America’s beloved city, the Twin Towers and those who were brutally murdered. Whatever one’s political philosophy, Giuliani is respectful and so is this 60-minute production by Home Box Office. The program’s chronological approach to the attack returns at certain intervals to the pre-attack World Trade Center, two grand skyscrapers featured here in one lingering shot, with the sunrise-smacked towers looking like two white gold bars reaching into the morning sky—beacons in a city of prime movers. Read the full review of all three DVDs here.

Permalink | Posted in History, Home Entertainment, Television, War

Three 9/11 DVDs: Discovery, CNN, Independent

26 August 2011

In 2005, I reviewed three documentaries (all now available on DVD), including Cable News Network’s comprehensive first anniversary tribute, America Remembers: The Events of September 11 and America’s Response. CNN’s 2002 DVD includes footage of memorial services and President George W. Bush’s address to a joint session of Congress following the attack.

In one segment, a CNN producer reveals that, after the first plane, hijacked by Islamic fundamentalists, was crashed into the World Trade Center, as people in the newsroom watched the live feeds, looking at the huge hole in the side of the building, someone said: “That’s no accident.” I wrote that the DVD is worth watching for several reasons, not the least of which is the remarkable photography, now as much a part of our history as the Japanese planes bombing our ships at Pearl Harbor. CNN includes rare video captures of the first plane screaming into New York City and a close-up of the first plane’s gaping hole. The producers feature shots you probably haven’t seen.

Also reviewed are the independent Remember September 11, 2001 and The Flight That Fought Back, the Discovery Channel’s 90-minute chronological recreation of United Air Lines Flight 93—on which passengers resisted the Moslem hijackers—narrated by 24‘s Keifer Sutherland, which is the most compelling. Each of the three programs minimize the role of ideas, i.e., fundamentalist Islam, in the enemy attack. The Flight That Fought Back reconstructs the day’s events using actors and brief simulations. Read the complete 2005 article here.

Permalink | Posted in History, Home Entertainment, News, Television, War

Jihadists Target U.S. Comedian

18 August 2011

Comedian and CBS Late Show television host David Letterman has been named by the enemy for assassination—and the United States government essentially has nothing to say, let alone do, about it.

This week, a private intelligence organization that monitors jihadist activity online identified Mr. Letterman, an American who has been outspoken in denouncing Islamic attacks on America, as an enemy target. An Associated Press (AP) report indicated that the threat was made on a popular Internet destination for jihadist Moslems by a jihadist reacting to what he said Letterman did after the U.S. military announced in June that a strike in Pakistan had killed an Al Qaeda terrorist leader. The jihadist reportedly urged an Islamic terrorist to cut Mr. Letterman’s tongue “and shut it forever[.]” The private firm, part of the Site Intelligence Group, told AP that the forum is frequently used by Al Qaeda.

The Obama administration is silent on the threat. Only the New York office of the FBI issued a statement and it minimized the threat against Mr. Letterman, stating that all threats are taken seriously. This response is a disgrace to the nation. The U.S. administration should vow to wipe out any person, group, and sponsors that plot to kill the comedian, who is among the first renowned, non-military U.S. citizens to be named by jihadists for extermination. Given the Obama administration’s weak, appeasing response, Mr. Letterman, an Indianapolis, Indiana, native and protege of the late Johnny Carson, is not likely to be the last, and the effect is devastating: anyone who mocks or denounces jihadism may be threatened by the enemy and the American government will say or do nothing about it. On the contrary, throughout Obama’s presidency, he has sought to appease Islamic terrorists and their sponsors, celebrating Moslem rituals in the White House and having his administration target and denounce a Florida preacher who planned to burn the Koran—an outrageous and unprecedented act of censorship and vicious assault by the state on an individual’s right to free speech.

Obama has a predecessor in his administration’s turning of the other cheek to a jihadist death threat. As Leonard Peikoff observed years ago, President George H.W. Bush all but ignored Iran’s call to murder British author Salman Rushdie and his U.S. publishers on the grounds of blasphemy for Mr. Rushdie’s book The Satanic Verses, a total abdication of the President’s moral duty as commander-in-chief to defend U.S. citizens and businesses. Last year, jihadists threatened the creators of South Park for a depiction of the Islamic prophet Mohammed and writer and filmmaker Theo van Gogh was murdered in Amsterdam in 2004 by a Dutch Moslem angered by his film Submission, a story of abused Islamic women, so, the death threat against David Letterman is a significant escalation of the jihadists’ war against America and the West. The Obama administration’s passive response to the threat is a serious dereliction of its duty to defend America and Americans.

The FBI investigates crimes. But Al Qaeda’s threat is not merely a crime; it is also an avowed act of war. As Dr. Peikoff—the lone voice of reason in America on the fatwa against Salman Rushdie—wrote in 1989: “Force is the only language intelligible to those who live by force.” President Obama should declare that the U.S. government will actively protect and defend David Letterman and retaliate with military action against any states connected, through harboring, training, or sponsorship, to an assassination plot. The Obama administration has done more to protect the Koran than it has to protect an American threatened with death by Al Qaeda. It is time for Obama to put defending an American life above appeasing jihadist Islam.

Permalink | Posted in News, Television, War

Conservatives and the Tea Party

6 August 2011

Fact: the Tea Party was founded by trader, financial executive and TV reporter Rick Santelli, a grandson of Italian immigrants, on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade. Watch his original burst of moral outrage in this YouTube clip here.

Mr. Santelli did not invoke faith, God, religion, prayer or fasting. During his Tea Party comments, he did not advocate appeasing those who seek to mix religion and government. He did not denounce gays, stem cell research and the right to an abortion. He did not propose that Americans rally behind TARP, bailouts, stimulus, ObamaCare or debt limit increases. He invoked Ayn Rand and held up a copy of her 1957 novel, Atlas Shrugged, calling for Americans to rally for free market capitalism. Making references to specific laws that destroy one’s ability to create, Mr. Santelli, a member of the mainstream media, it must be noted, urged Americans to oppose government control of the economy and fight for individual rights.

So, to hell with Palin, Perry and other conservatives that graft themselves on to the essentially secular, pro-capitalist, pro-individual rights Tea Party movement. Conservatives in government, including every major conservative today, have aided and abetted the rise of the omnipotent state by enacting every major new government control for the past 40 years.

Conservatives who betray the principles of both the original Tea Party in Boston and today’s movement don’t belong in the Tea Party and those self-identified conservatives who don’t betray America’s founding ideals are not conservatives. They’re what Ayn Rand called radicals for capitalism. So, on this day of a faith-based Texas governor praying and fasting and failing to remember the Alamo, let the radicals be heard. Let’s flush out conservatives, pledge to save the republic from totalitarianism, and turn the Tea Party on.

Permalink | Posted in Culture, Politics, Television

MSNBC Gets Ayn Rand Wrong

21 July 2011

Microsoft’s media venture with NBC Universal’s NBC News, MSNBC, is at it again, propagandizing for the Obama administration and distorting the news, which it does nearly full-time with its roster of former Democratic Party operatives (Chris Matthews, Lawrence O’Donnell), most favored former government spouses (Mrs. Alan Greenspan, Andrea Mitchell, who never discloses that fact), and lying Christian preachers such as its new host, the Reverend Al Sharpton. Now, they’re lying about Ayn Rand.

In yesterday’s broadcast of the cable news channel’s Rachel Maddow program, the hostess, who had railed against Tea Party Republicans for refusing to compromise with the Obama administration, calling the nation’s imminent so-called default an “apocalyptic deadline”, interviewed an old Washington Post journalist named E.J. Dionne and promptly missed her cue by mispronouncing the name Ayn Rand. The pompous hostess makes a habit of snorting and sniffing her way through all sorts of other people’s mistakes, so one would think she would be more careful. It’s Ayn, pronounced like the word mine, not Ann as she stated. Then Ms. Maddow proceeded to let her guest completely misrepresent Rand and her famous novel, The Fountainhead. In the video segment, linked here in its entirety with the errors contained at approximately 14:00, Dionne falsely stated that the 1943 novel by Ayn Rand is her first. The Fountainhead is not her first novel. That was We the Living.

Dionne, in a set-up segment which was clearly discussed if not rehearsed in advance, proceeded to falsely assert that, in The Fountainhead, when the main character doesn’t get his way, he “blows up a building”. Wrong, E.J. Dionne. Not only is the insinuation that the novel’s protagonist, architect Howard Roark, cavalierly acts on a whim when he doesn’t get what he wants, a total misrepresentation of the novel; to state that Roark “blows up a building” is to distort the plot and theme of Rand’s literary masterpiece, a bestseller still in print which has sold millions of copies and is taught in schools across the country. What E.J. Dionne (and Ms. Maddow and MSNBC by refusing to correct these errors) fail to grasp is that it’s his building, in every sense, and that’s the point of the novel. Roark created the building, contracted for its exact design and construction on simple, narrowly defined terms and one basic condition, and it is essentially his to destroy.

Expecting the lowest standards of journalism from this corrupt media outlet, which I have defended, even praised, in the past, is too much. Errors and distortions are routine in MSNBC programming (Dionne’s error originates in his commentary in the similarly slanted Washington Post), though welfare state and status quo advocate Dionne’s failure to grasp the concept of property ownership comes with the territory. It took eight months for Newsweek to correct MSNBC pundit Howard Fineman’s smear against Ayn Rand following my blog post about his mistake. With any luck and the help of an MSNBC or Post intern or executive with integrity and a mind of his or her own, Maddow’s and Dionne’s attempt to disparage Ayn Rand and the Tea Party movement won’t stand uncorrected that long. Don’t count on it and get used to the lies and distortions. The rich and powerful intellectual fusion of the press and the state, best exemplified by MSNBC, more than state-sponsored NPR and PBS, knows that they’re fighting the philosophy of Ayn Rand. The contest is just getting started.

[7/24/2011 Update: No response to my request for a correction from E.J. Dionne at the Washington Post]

[12/08/2011 Update: Still no response to my request for a correction from E.J. Dionne at the Washington Post]

Permalink | Posted in Ayn Rand, Books, Journalism, Literature, News, Politics, Television

The Oscars for 2010

28 February 2011

oscar Add James Franco and Anne Hathaway to the names of failed Oscar hosts, practically everyone since comedian Billy Crystal, who paid tribute to an outstanding Oscar host, comedian Bob Hope. Bob Hope, frequent host Johnny Carson, and Billy Crystal were the best masters of ceremonies for the same reason Sunday night’s pair was awful: they had respect for ability, genuine skill in performing on stage, and an intelligent, cheerful sense of humor.

What Hollywood gave us the other night was more of the same sneering, accompanied by an almost snoring sensibility, that dominates the culture, from droning deadbeat Jon Stewart, who leads the charge toward nihilism, to MTV’s soon-to-be-resurrected Beavis and Butthead. Oscar 2010, dropping the F bomb and flipping off the world on behalf of an industry that delivers such sniveling pap as Pulp Fiction, The Departed, and No Country for Old Men, was a bust. Don’t blame it all on James Franco (127 Hours, Milk), who is studying at Yale University, looking tired, and who seemed under-rehearsed, uninterested and vaguely contemptuous of the need to show up. He represents the worst of all youthful stereotypes; that they are utterly bored with existence and simply wish to text, play videogames, and blank out, which he did.

But there was also Anne Hathaway (Alice in Wonderland), who was like an audio file that keeps playing and you can’t turn off. She reminds me of every theater major and showy actress rolled into one, hogging the moment, trying too hard, and sucking the air out of the entire amphitheater. Insulting Hugh Jackman, for real or for fake, high-fiving choir children after a rendition of “Over the Rainbow” from The Wizard of Oz in an odd attempt at a 1939 theme, and changing outfits, Hathaway just came off as vain and obnoxious, exacerbating Franco’s deficiencies.

The show was an atrocity, from insinuating lesbianism in Toy Story 3 to some vulgar woman’s use of profanity when she won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar. The songs were abbreviated, with poor Alan Menken‘s “I See the Light” from Tangled being beautifully rendered and horribly cut off, and chaotic clips, pacing and jokes. Add the pompous President Obama, who is incapable of expressing a personal preference without lecturing the nation like a doddering old man, the pretentious Oprah, doing an impression of British-accented Madonna in the biggest false eyelashes this side of Tammy Faye Bakker, and, with the passing of legendary motion picture artists such as Patricia Neal, among others with more stature, only Lena Horne, hardly a great movie actress, received singular recognition among those we lost in 2010. As for glamor, the ladies looked lovely and the gents were generally in fine form, too, though the smug, generic suits from the smug, generic The Social Network and Cate Blanchett (Robin Hood), looking like some sort of alien queen or Lady Gaga wannabe, matched the mood of the evening.

Leave it to the Academy voters to restore a golden touch to Oscar, choosing the year’s best movie, The King’s Speech, as Best Picture over a crowd of also-rans. Director Tom Hooper, actor Colin Firth, and writer David Seidler were nearly as magnanimous and magnificent as the Weinstein Company’s movie, elevating a disgraceful affair into at least a partial recognition of ability, humor, and strength. Much like the characters in the movie they made, a picture which earned its reputation as a finely drawn study of friendship and inspiration, these gentlemen showed how to summon one’s best during difficult circumstances in the worst of times.

Permalink | Posted in Culture, Movies, Television

25 Years of Oprah

9 February 2011

Oprah logo Media savvy, self-involved to the point of narcissism, and both shrewd and skilled in making money from popular culture, talk show hostess and billionaire Oprah Winfrey is wrapping up 25 years of her signature television show while launching her new cable TV network. Completing the official transition from TV star to network mogul, she recently made an appearance on CNN’s Larry King Live replacement, Piers Morgan Tonight (a wreck by any standard) and spoke for herself about herself. It’s what Oprah does best, really.

I first caught her on A.M. Chicago in the 1980s, when she overtook the talk TV ratings lead from fellow Chicagoan Phil Donahue on Donahue and she gradually moved and marked a shift of topic from ideas to personality. Where Donahue discussed hot topics with top thinkers, Oprah did not. She was always all about Oprah, from the early forays into movies and multimedia, encouraged by sleazy Chicago Sun-Times movie critic Roger Ebert, to the latest empty episode of a final, vapid season of the Oprah Winfrey Show. To her credit, she brings a simple, American sensibility to the cultural issues she airs, and Oprah has brought forth many media figures such as Suze Orman, who at her best respects the making of money, and Dr. Phil McGraw, who at his best advances the idea that self matters. And she’s an example of capitalism, creating an empire based on her appeal and making billions of dollars from offering what she does as a value in trade.

Intentionally or not, 25 years of Oprah represents the dumbing down of America, a slide from Donahue’s head-scratching, searching inquiries about what matters in everyday life to celebrity couch-jumping and pitiful snatches of Oprah hair, Oprah weight, Oprah selection; the topic is always tethered to the hostess. You turned off Donahue and sat and thought about what was said. You turn off Oprah and wonder where the time went. Today’s episode featured reunited soap stars, one of whom (Michael E. Knight) came on for something like 15 seconds before he was mauled by Oprah referencing Oprah and accepting accolades from others for being 25 years of Oprah. The graying, middle-aged actor sort of sat there struggling not to suffocate, like sitting next to an over-perfumed Aunt Harriet, clocking his time and waiting for the moment to end.

Oprah’s moment goes on, with books, magazines, movies and programming of dubious value, and it usually comes back to her, the opposite of Donahue, a left-wing intellectual who sought seriously to mine and explore ideas by stimulating a thoughtful examination or at least introduction to the crucial topics of our times. When one of the most egotistical (not egoistic) celebrities of the 20th century finally had the spotlight all to herself, as she did during her appearance with Piers Morgan, an amateur in self-involvement compared to Oprah, there was frankly not much to like after all. Her most indelible comments during the CNN exchange came when she knocked down the rumor that she’s a lesbian, stumbling uncomfortably upon the very word. In another exchange, abuse victim Oprah boasted, and that is the word, that she has never been in mental health therapy, as if there’s something decidedly and inherently wrong with it, and she tried to bully the pathetic British interviewer by demanding to know if he had been in therapy. They looked like a couple of puffed up dilettantes caught mocking their audiences by snorting that they’d never do what they’ve been urging the little people to do. In Oprah’s case, for over 25 years.

Permalink | Posted in Culture, Television

« Previous Posts

Newer Posts »