It wasn’t long ago that Oprah Winfrey was the Queen of All Media.
Today, with no syndicated show to call her own and a flailing cable network mired in red ink, the Queen no longer sits atop her throne.
The National Post’s Rex Murphy says Winfrey’s endorsement of then-Sen. Barack Obama may have started her downward trajectory, but her fall is just another sign of the fleeting nature of modern celebrity.
Was Oprah’s benediction a “tipping point”? Was it the moment when Obama jumped from being just another candidate to being a star in a class of his own?
Perhaps, but that was then. What of now? Well, something strange has happened. Oprah has lost her chi. She ended her long-time relationship with mainstream television and decided that she should have her own network. It is one of the very few examples of a person ordering her own self-exile. And the result is that she has simply ceased — in television terms — to be. I cannot recall a more precipitous drop in status, and in the influence status bestows, than Oprah’s almost complete fall from entertainment eminence.
Who speaks of Oprah now, save in valediction? Is she endorsing Obama this time? Who cares? Had her “fall” something to do with breaking her tradition of staying out of politics? I think the answer is simpler than that: Fame is frail, celebrity is a bubble and the spotlight passes.
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