[BretLudwig]

Why Oprah left Wright: Because she's black enough

"I've always guessed that Barack Obama has spent a lot of time studying
Oprah Winfrey's success. But, they are very different in important ways.

Allison Samuels reports in Newsweek:

[Oprah] Winfrey was a member of Trinity United from 1984 to 1986, and
she continued to attend off and on into the early to the mid-1990s. But
then she stopped. A major reason€”but by no means the only reason€”was
the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

According to two sources, Winfrey was never comfortable with the tone
of Wright's more incendiary sermons, which she knew had the power to
damage her standing as America's favorite daytime talk-show host. "Oprah
is a businesswoman, first and foremost," said one longtime friend, who
requested anonymity when discussing Winfrey's personal sentiments. "She's
always been aware that her audience is very mainstream, and doing anything
to offend them just wouldn't be smart. She's been around black churches all
her life, so Reverend Wright's anger-filled message didn't surprise her.
But it just wasn't what she was looking for in a church." ...

In time, she found [a new church]: her own. "There is the Church of
Oprah now," said her longtime friend, with a laugh. "She has her own
following."
Friends of Sen. Barack Obama, whose relationship with Wright has
rocked his bid for the White House, insist that it would be unfair to
compare Winfrey's decision to leave Trinity United with his own decision
to stay. "[His] reasons for attending Trinity were totally different,''
said one campaign adviser, who declined to be named discussing the
Illinois senator's sentiments. "Early on, he was in search of his identity
as an African-American and, more importantly, as an African-American man.
Reverend Wright and other male members of the church were instrumental in
helping him understand the black experience in America. Winfrey wasn't
going for that. She's secure in her blackness, so that didn't have a hold
on her.''

Once again, we come back to Obama's Achilles heel being the need to prove
he's black enough.

Everybody always says that "Obama is comfortable in his own skin," yet his
autobiographical writing is supremely uncomfortable. Last year, I called
him "an unfunny Evelyn Waugh," and indeed in its "enough, already!"
self-pity, Dreams from My Father is a little reminiscent of Waugh's more
overly sincere autobiographical novels, such as Brideshead Revisited. Like
Waugh, Obama's analyses of other people are coldly impeccable -- it's his
self-conception that's worrisome.

In Britain, it wasn't unthinkable for a novelist to become Prime Minister,
as, in fact, Disraeli did. But I don't think anybody ever recommended that
Waugh enter politics. Nobody read Brideshead Revisited and said, "Yes,
this is the kind of steady hand we want on the tiller of state."

With Obama, I just can't tell. I don't think it's too much to ask that he
figure out some way to reassure the voters that his internal conflicts
aren't going to get in the way of his duties."

http://isteve.blogspot.com/2008/05/w...ause-shes.html

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