one nation under oprah

That is the way in which Oprah models the [neoliberal] attitude we should have toward the world. We can be personally generous with others when we find people who are the deservingly needy but we don’t ask questions about the way our society is organized and the way resources are distributed.

Dr. Janice Peck, University of Colorado professor and author of The Age of Oprah, Cultural Icon For the Neoliberal Era, interviewed in The Dissident Voice: A Radical Newsletter in Struggle for Peace and Social Justice.

Dr. Peck argues that Oprah as a phenomenon took root during the push toward privatization that characterized the Reagan and Clinton administrations, and is its own brand of privatization:

Neoliberalism emphasizes a kind of minimal government, a stripped down, hollowed out government and maximum personal responsibility. I think this term personal responsibility will probably ring familiar with your listeners. We hear it all the time, we hear it from politicians and also we hear it from Oprah. If we have problems, if our lives are not going well if, we don’t have the things we want in our lives, then what we need to do is take personal responsibility, put our minds to it, have the right attitude and so on. That is the key to bringing about positive change. To give you an example of this, where Oprah very much exemplifies this idea that the market and individual positive attitudes are the solutions to social problems, your listeners may be familiar with a show that was on this season called Oprah’s Big Give. It’s a “reality” show where people are competing, who can give the most, who can find the neediest people, and so on. There are a couple of points in that series that really stood out.

One was in Houston, where one of the contestants decided that they were going to help this public school, this grade school in the city that needed computers, and had no playgrounds and basically had very few resources. You’ve got all these kids at the end, they built the playground, the kids were screaming with joy, the teachers were sobbing, they were so pleased. It’s a city school. It’s a public school where most of the kids we see are black or Latino. We’ve got this really “feel good” moment where the kids get this, but if you step back from it one of the things we might ask is why are public schools in the United States are so drastically underfunded and why is this seen as a solution, this charity, as opposed to taxation, where (through) the government, that we all pay taxes to we are all collectively responsible for things like education.

Related: Blogger Robyn Okrant is all Oprah, all the time »