Remote Control: The NAACP Image Awards Honor Oprah
By Ronda Racha Penrice, AOL BlackVoices columnist
I don't always agree with the choices made by the NAACP Image Awards but I am more than pleased that Oprah Winfrey is a Hall of Fame inductee for the '36th Annual NAACP Image Awards.' Although the ceremony took place Saturday, March 19, most of us will see it this Friday, March 25.
Now I won't say that, over the years, I have been the biggest Oprah fan. Even now, I catch her show every once and a while. And, yes, I leaf through her magazine whenever someone has it. So I am not a blind devotee of everything Oprah. That said, even I can't help but be impressed.
Since I'm from Chicago, I was in on the Oprah phenomenon a little earlier than the rest of the country. Before Oprah took over the fledgling 'A.M. Chicago' in 1984, Marilu Henner, a Chicago native from the hit series 'Taxi' as well as Jayne Kennedy, among many others, tried their hand and failed to make the show a hit. Then one day this overweight black woman named Oprah Winfrey showed up and, one year later, the show became 'The Oprah Winfrey Show' and went from 30 minutes to a full hour.
What was it that Oprah had? In those days, it was all about Phil Donahue. So much so, that Oprah's former boss, felt justified in discouraging her from taking the challenge. While Oprah was certainly no Jerry Springer, she was more risque than Donahue. She touched on topics that Donahue never entertained. Be it exposing audiences to the porn industry or legalized prostitution in Vegas, Oprah was at the very least titillating, especially since callers would then call in live.
But Oprah moved beyond that. Who can forget her live broadcast in Forsyth County, Ga., February 9, 1987? Considering that no black people had been welcomed in this county outside of Atlanta since 1912, Oprah broadcasting from there was a scary proposition. Yet Oprah was and is never afraid to challenge herself and others around her. In 1990, she revealed that she had been molested as a child and opened up a whole new national discussion. In 1993, she was on hand when then President Clinton signed the National Child Protection Act. Her power has become so great that, in 1996, when she dedicated a show to mad cow disease, beef prices dropped so greatly that she was sued. In 1998, she was, of course, vindicated.
Her accomplishments, by no means, end here. Through her Oprah Book Club, she has single-handedly increased the numbers of adults reading beyond school. In addition, she helped make Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison household names. If that weren't enough, although she has starred in a few films, she has produced even more. She's a co-founder of Oxygen, a cable channel geared towards women. She helms her own magazine, appropriately titled 'O,' which launched in 2000. In 2002, she added a South African edition and, in 2004, she began publishing home editions. Through her Angel Network, thousands of lives have been changed.
Over the years, Oprah has impressed on all of us that quality of life is as important as life itself. She has shown this even, as it pertains to her weight. Her one Achilles heel has, perhaps, been as motivating as all other things Oprah. Finally, she has accepted her body and, instead of trying to be skinny, she has achieved her perfect look the right way and inspired a whole lot of us to eat better and to exercise.
Along the way, she's become the world's first self-made black woman billionaire. Now, Bob Johnson's former wife Sheila is also a billionaire. And though I do not doubt that she put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into BET, Oprah's billions are not shared outright. Furthermore, Oprah's trajectory is even more amazing. She was born an illegitimate child in Kosciusko, Miss. The town was a place that my grandfather, a born and raised Mississippian, told me was one of the absolute worse places for a black person to be from. Yet Oprah, raised by her grandmother until age 6, managed to move on and join her mother in Milwaukee before flourishing with her father and stepmother in Nashville during her teen years. Certainly, no one could have envisioned the Oprah of today.
Twenty years later, her show is still a hit. In September, all tongues were wagging when she gave every member of the audience a car. On her own and without much publicity, she has sent countless black children to school. No one can argue with her induction into the Hall of Fame because Oprah makes the impossible seem so possible every day. And that's something we all have to respect.
March 22, 2005