Oprah is a comic genius

You have to give it to Oprah.  She overcame what sounds like a less than ideal childhood to become one of the wealthiest women in the world - presiding over a multi-billion dollar operation for a quarter of a century - with no discernible talent or skill.

Housewives of American (and later the world) could not get enough of her.  Hollywood stars loved her, or the audience she used to command.  Those were the good old days when only three channels were still competing for eyeballs.  But when cable and the internet ate into her gigantic audience she knew it was time to go.  She could have retired gracefully five years ago when her contract came to and end but I guess the
adulation of the TV viewers is a difficult drug to give up.

But her own cable channel is hemorrhaging money like there's no tomorrow and the only time anyone under the age of 50 watches it is when a misbehaving celebrity comes in to grovel to auntie Oprah so that she can forgive them on our behalf.  It's also useful to those who have attained fame and fortune and just can't wait to tell the rest of the world how happy and content they are.  In short, The Oprah Winfrey Show is nothing more than a joke that we watch now.  A joke that's being played by the host on her audience.  I can't help but imagine her having a little chuckle when she goes home.

This weekend Beyonce braced the Oprah show to be receive her Oprah seal of approval and the "Oprahisims" abound.  In the fifteen minutes I could stomach, she pronounced Beyonce "the preeminent Mistress of the world", described her performance at the Super Bowl as the manifestation of "art meeting God".

I had to bail when she declared where mistress Beyonce's allure really lies, the crux of the tension between hot and cool, according to Queen Oprah.  It's beyond creepy and had she been slightly conservatively dressed, it could quite easily have passed for a "nun hitting on a choir girl" sketch on SNL.  Oprah is perpetrating a giant Kaufman-esque prank on us and she's only getting away with it because we all think she lacks self awareness.