Bush and Gore on Oprah Winfrey, Or the “Oprah-Fication”1 of American Presidential Candidates by John Kares Smith, Ph.D

Bush and Gore on Oprah Winfrey, or the “Oprah-fication”1 of American Presidential Candidates by John Kares Smith, Ph.D. Professor of Communication Studies State University of New York Oswego, New York 13126 [email protected] “Let’s begin here,” Joshua Gamson begins his book, “talk shows are bad for you, so bad you could catch a cold. Turn them off, a women’s magazine suggested in 1995, and turn on Mother Teresa, since watching her ‘caring feelings’ radiate from the screen, according to psychologist Dr. David McClelland of Harvard, has been shown to raise the level of an antibody that fights colds. ‘It stands to reason,’ reasons a First magazine writer, ‘that viewing threatening, confrontational images could create an opposite reaction.’ In fact, given that talks shows ‘create feelings of frustration’ and fear, ‘shattering our trust and faith’ in our expectations of people’s behavior, and ‘give us a false perception of reality,’ it is perhaps best to watch game shows or soaps while nursing that cold. Watching daytime talk shows could conceivably send you into a decline into pathologies of all sorts: scared, angry, disgusted, convinced you are abnormal for not fitting in with the ‘cast of misfits and perverts,’ susceptible to both perversion and more colds [Gamson, p. 3]. There are many negative critics of talk shows. Gamson trots out the usual suspects: George Gerbner [“These shows are virtually destroying the goodness of America”], Harvard’s Alvin Pouissant [“It does not bode well for the future generations of young people growing up on a steady diet of this drivel”] TV Critic Tom Shales [“These shows are portraying Americans as shallow monsters”] [Gamson, 3].Gamson defends talkshows. For example, he suggests that talk shows make hidden but significant societal problems media-visible. _______________________________________________________ Presented at the Eastern Communication Association’s 2003 Convention, April 24 -27, 2003, Wyndham Washington, Washington, DC. 2 But talk shows are problematic. As a television genre, they can be classified only provisionally and problematically, according to Kevin Glynn, because media texts are always multi-textual and nondiscursive. That is, talk on television involves the use of films, cinematic re-enactments, or other “spots,” questions and responses from audience guests, audience members and the moderator, and in general, are participative and involve sharing. Glynn further argues that television talk reflects working class and lower middle class tastes. Whereas elite culture focuses on the detached and contemplative and “distanced aesthetic appreciation [Glynn, 5]” lower classes--those with the least cultural capital -- have a “’deep-rooted demand for participation,’” a “’desire to enter into the game, identifying with the characters’ joys and sufferings, worrying about their fate’”[ Glynn, 5; Glynn is quoting Pierre Bourdieu]. And while there are many critics disparage television talks shows, calling them “freak shows,” Glynn suggests that such a view is demeaning and dismissive of millions of Americans who live on the margins of society, “whose persecuting, deprivation, and social marginalization consign them to virtual invisibility in most commercial media programming besides talk shows [Glynn, 188].” However, in any case, the focus of this study is not to criticize the talk show as a rhetorical vehicle; rather, my purpose is to recognize and analyze the talk show as a contemporary forum for political discourse, particularly in a Presidential election year. Specifically, I want do discuss the appearances -- performances really --of Governor Bush and Vice-President Gore on the Oprah Winfrey show in the fall of 2000. The reasons for doing this kind of research are obvious. For example, in a seminar on the 2000 Election, conducted by Kathleen Hall Jamieson of the Annenberg School of Communication, Alex Castellanos, media consultant with National Media Incorporated and consultant to the Bush campaign, asked the question, “What do you associate with the president? ...your president is in a lot of ways Johnny Carson. He’s the head of the national political household. He comes into your home and tells you how things are doing. To a great degree, whoever can do that job is the guy America wants to elect. [Jamieson and Paul Waldman, 186].” And candidates show that they can do that job on Oprah. Oprah Winfrey is one of the top rated shows in America, with an estimated viewership of 14 million daily; three-quarters of that audience is women between the ages of 18 and 54. The importance of the program, Peck argues, make it one that cannot be ignored by politicians 2 [Peck, 89-126.] Where else can a presidential candidate, for example, get to address 14 million potential voters? Oprah Winfrey herself is a woman about whom there is much to admire. Probably the richest woman in America, she is founder and head of Harpo Productions [Harpo is Oprah spelled backwards], the first African-American woman to host a syndicated talk show and, in Peck’s view “one of the nation’s most visible black public figures” [Peck, 90]. 3 According to Wayne Munson, talk shows are becoming one of the most prominent media of political communication[ Munson, 2 ] For example, the October 15, 1992 Presidential Debate as a “talkshow” in Richmond, Virginia had an audience of 50% of the American people [Munson, 3]. “Talkshows,” Munson continues, are really two communication paradigms, like the name itself. “The ‘talkshow’ fuses and seems to reconcile two different, even contradictory, rhetorics. It links conversation, the interpersonal-- the premodern oral tradition -- with the mass-mediated spectacle born of modernity” [Munson, 6] . The talkshow combines what he calls the “mythic American past of the participatory town meeting and the interpersonal ‘handshake’ politics of speech and presence meet the imagined ‘present’ of technological simulations, reproductions and commodification” [Munson, 7]. The talkshow, Munson continues, “draws upon the broad historical rupture in Western discourse. It relies on modernist postures -- the host’s ego, subjectivity, expressionism, and apparent autonomy and authenticity-- while the host’s and program’s coherence is secondary to affect or attitude: that is, to the emotional investment in multiple meanings and lifestyles--a postmodern tendency”[Munson, 9]. Talk shows make societal problems media-visible. Talk shows reflect problems, often on the margins; they often set the social agenda. Oprah helps us talk about our problems and has made “personal intimacy her central selling point, making her own personal life public. She took the personal, emotional elements that [Phil] Donohue’s let’s-debate-the-issues style suppressed, brought them out, and turned up the volume on them” [Gamson, 53-54]. Oprah routinely talks about herself as abuse victim, as “substance abuser, black person, single working woman and girlfriend of Stedman” [Gamson, 54]. Thus, all areas of politics is personal, and “no space where the personal is exempt from politics” [Gamson, 54]. Thus, talkshows often provide what Gamson calls the “talking cure,” combining confession and therapy [Gamson, 54]. There are important characteristics of talkshows: [Munson, 17-18]. First of all, talk shows [1] emphasize intertextuality--guests, experts, audience members, bits of film, video, music, etc., all interweave on a talk show; [2] talk shows exist cyberspatially --via new electronic” commonplaces”unbounded, a “new neighborhood; [3] talk shows are transnational that is, what is talked about on a talk show in Chicago is discussed in Egypt that evening; [4] often, in a talk show, that which is normally considered private becomes public, repression becomes “expression” gender, race, sexual orientation, disability, lifestyles, personal problems; [5] finally, talk shows are intensely interpersonal [Munson, 49]. All of these characteristics conflated in the fall of 2000 when Vice President Vice- President Al Gore and Governor George W. Bush appeared on Oprah Winfrey. The Winfrey show title appears “signaturelike over the floating images, as if written by an invisible hand. Along with oral and interpersonal communication, a signature confers a sense of nonmediation – 4 a handwritten signature at the bottom of a note from a friend” [Munson, 75]. Harpo, her production company, is her name spelled backward. Winfrey herself assumes a number of roles and voices on her show. Her “paratextual position as modernist success story also becomes mixed with her New Age philosophies”; She is “someone who rose from humble, troubled beginnings to stunning material success --[she is one of the wealthiest woman in America]”[Munson, 83]. She often depicts herself through therapeutic themes of self-improvement, as one who has taken control of her own life, of being responsible for her success, of success through self-help. [Munson, 83].... [As an aside, it seems not accidental that Elizabeth Dole, at the 1996 Republican Convention which nominated her husband for the Presidency, introduced herself and her narrative Oprah--like on prime time.] Peck further argues that Oprah Winfrey’s appeal transcends racial lines; to white viewers, her blackness is irrelevant; to black viewers, her blackness is central to her success. Thus, Winfrey must be exceedingly perceptive to continue to appeal to black audience while not at the same time alienating white viewers. In fact, Winfrey has been described, in Peck’s terms, as “a comforting, nonthreatening bridge between black

Load more