What Oprah Can't Forget

The Oprah pasting that took place over the New Year's holiday, in reaction to the pressapalooza surrounding her Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa, reveals a lot about the venality, racism and hypocrisy of the talk-show host's critics, yes. But less remarked upon and equally interesting is what the explosive news cycle -- one that notably seemed to veer free of Winfrey's usual iron-fisted control -- reveals about the talk show host's own frailties, not as a philanthropist or educator, but as one of the United States' most powerful, unlikely, anomalous and isolated success stories.

Winfrey's unguarded comments about the opening of her school revealed the degree to which arguably the most influential woman in the United States is still driven by the specter of her own beginnings as a poor, sexually abused child in Mississippi, and her seemingly endless spiral of desire to set the world right not simply for other young women, but for her own prepubescent self. For a moment, her self-spin veered out of control, and we got a brief snapshot not just of Winfrey's good intentions, but of the loneliness and solitude experienced by a woman who is historically and culturally unique in her power, wealth, life story and position in the world.