[Peace-discuss] Oprah Winfrey, proposed presidential candidate

[C G Estabrook]

A carnival barker for neoliberalism

<https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2015/may/09/oprah-winfrey-neoliberal-capitalist-thinkers>

[See Gail Thain Parker, "Mind Cure in New England: From the Civil War to World War I” (1973)]

"[There are] strong parallels in the mind-cure movement of the Gilded Age and Oprah’s evolving enterprise in the New Gilded Age, the era of neoliberalism ... Oprah’s enterprise reinforces the neoliberal focus on the self: Oprah’s enterprise is an ensemble of ideological practices that help legitimize a world of growing inequality and shrinking possibilities by promoting and embodying a configuration of self compatible with that world.

"Nothing captures this ensemble of ideological practices better than O Magazine, whose aim is to 'help women see every experience and challenge as an opportunity to grow and discover their best self. To convince women that the real goal is becoming more of who they really are. To embrace their life.'

"O Magazine implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, identifies a range of problems in neoliberal capitalism and suggests ways for readers to adapt themselves to mitigate or overcome these problems.

"Does your 60 hour-a-week desk job make your back hurt and leave you emotionally exhausted and stressed? Of course it does. Studies show that 'death by office job' is real: people who sit at a desk all day are more likely to be obese, depressed, or just dead for no discernible reason. But you can dull these effects and improve your wellness with these O-approved strategies: Become more of an 'out-of-the-box thinker' because creative people are healthier. Bring photos, posters, and 'kitschy figurines' to decorate your workspace: 'You’ll feel less emotionally exhausted and reduce burnout.' Write down three positive things that happened during your workday every night before leaving the office to 'reduce stress and physical pain from work.'

"Oprah is appealing precisely because her stories hide the role of political, economic, and social structures

"In December 2013, O devoted a whole issue to anxiety and worry. The issue 'conquers a lifetime’s worth of anxieties and apprehensions.' an apt subject given rising levels of anxiety across the age spectrum.

"In the issue, bibliotherapists Ella Berthoud and Susan Elderkin present a list of books for the anxious, prescribing them instead of a 'trip to the pharmacy.' Feeling claustrophobic because you’re too poor to move out of your parents’ house? Read 'Little House on the Prairie.' Feeling stressed because your current project at work is ending and you don’t have another lined up? Read 'The Man Who Planted Trees.' Worried that you won’t be able to pay the rent because you just lost your job? Read 'The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles.' 'Instead of feeling depressed, follow the lead hero Toru Okada, who, while jobless, embarks on a fantastic liberating journey that changes the way he thinks.'

'Oprah recognizes the pervasiveness of anxiety and alienation in our society. But instead of examining the economic or political basis of these feelings, she advises us to turn our gaze inward and reconfigure ourselves to become more adaptable to the vagaries and stresses of the neoliberal moment.

'Oprah is appealing precisely because her stories hide the role of political, economic, and social structures. In doing so, they make the American Dream seem attainable. If we just fix ourselves, we can achieve our goals. For some people, the American dream is attainable, but to understand the chances for everyone, we need to look dispassionately at the factors that shape success.

'The current incarnation of the American Dream narrative holds that if you acquire enough cultural capital (skills and education) and social capital (connections, access to networks), you will be able to translate that capital into both economic capital (cash) and happiness. Cultural capital and social capital are seen as there for the taking (particularly with advances in internet technology), so the only additional necessary ingredients are pluck, passion, and persistence— all attributes that allegedly come from inside us.

'The American dream is premised on the assumption that if you work hard, economic opportunity will present itself, and financial stability will follow, but the role of cultural and social capital in paving the road to wealth and fulfilment, or blocking it, may be just as important as economic capital. Some people are able to translate their skills, knowledge, and connections into economic opportunity and financial stability, and some are not—either because their skills, knowledge, and connections don’t seem to work as well, or they can’t acquire them in the first place because they’re too poor.

'Today, the centrality of social and cultural capital is obscured (sometimes deliberately), as demonstrated in the implicit and explicit message of Oprah and her ideological colleagues. In their stories, and many others like them, cultural and social capital are easy to acquire. They tell us to get an education. Too poor? Take an online course. Go to Khan Academy. They tell us to meet people, build up our network. Don’t have any connected family members? Join LinkedIn.

'It’s simple. Anyone can become anything. There’s no distinction between the quality and productivity of different people’s social and cultural capital. We’re all building our skills. We’re all networking.

'This is a fiction. If all or most forms of social and cultural capital were equally valuable and accessible, we should see the effects of this in increased upward mobility and wealth created anew by new people in each generation rather than passed down and expanded from one generation to the next. The data do not demonstrate this upward mobility.

'The US, in a sample of 13 wealthy countries, ranks highest in inequality and lowest in intergenerational earnings mobility. Wealth isn’t earned fresh in each new generation by plucky go-getters. It is passed down, preserved, and expanded through generous tax laws and the assiduous transmission of social and cultural capital.

'The way Oprah tells us to get through it all and realize our dreams is always to adapt ourselves to the changing world, not to change the world we live in. We demand little or nothing from the system, from the collective apparatus of powerful people and institutions. We only make demands of ourselves.

'We are the perfect, depoliticized, complacent neoliberal subjects.

'And yet we’re not. The popularity of strategies for alleviating alienation rests on our deep, collective desire for meaning and creativity. Literary critic and political theorist Fredric Jameson would say that the Oprah stories, and others like them, are able to “manage our desires” only because they appeal to deep fantasies about how we want to live our lives. This, after all, is what the American dream narrative is about – not necessarily a description of life lived, but a vision of how life should be lived.

'When the stories that manage our desires break their promises over and over, the stories themselves become fuel for change and open a space for new, radical stories. These new stories must feature collective demands that provide a critical perspective on the real limits to success in our society and foster a vision of life that does fulfill the desire for self-actualization.'

[This is an extract from "New Prophets of Capital" by Nicole Aschoff, published by Verso Books.]

See also 

"Oprah Winfrey, Warmonger?"
https://www.counterpunch.org/2002/11/.../oprah-winfrey-warmonger/

"Oprah and Elie Wiesel”
https://www.counterpunch.org/2006/02/01/oprah-and-elie-wiesel/

"The Shopkeeper's Tale”
https://www.counterpunch.org/2013/08/19/the-shopkeepers-tale/