Oprah Stung by Backlash

As everyone expected, the women who support Hillary are in an uproar over Oprah's landmark stand in favor of Barack Obama. The message boards and comment pages on Oprah's website are becoming clogged with venomous accusations of the daytime diva's "treason" and "bigotry".

One commenter, austaz68 said, "For the first time in history we actually have a shot at putting a woman in the White House and Oprah backs the black MAN. She's choosing her race over her gender."

The symptoms are obvious. Since these women are so bigoted themselves in favor of Hillary - entirely because she happens to be female - they assume that Oprah is also guilty of bigotry. But, since it's not their brand of bigotry, she is a traitor to the cause.

Never mind that Oprah's message has always been one of hope for the future, and having a positive outlook. Never mind that Barack is campaigning on that very platform, a natural match. Oprah must be a closet racist!

As Orson Scott Card points out, in his novel Empire, it is typical of today's political society that we are so overburdened with rhetoric, so prejudiced towards our own preferred views, that we are able only to see the bias in the other side.

Of course, this 'woman-first, woman-all' reaction makes sense on another level. Since Oprah's real reason for supporting Obama has nothing whatsoever to do with race, but only with his positive message, then it stands to reason that only those people who advocate a negative outlook on life would oppose her efforts with such hateful, vicious messages.

Psychologically, a positive person would want to think the best of Oprah's motives, so would want to hear what there is to be said about the matter before deciding whether or not to crucify her. A negative person prefers to see what is wrong with the world, and, thus, would see Oprah's actions as tantamount to bailing out on the feminist cause.

There's a lesson in this: a positive person is more prone to having an open mind. Negative folk would rather ignore petty things like reason and fact, and simply go on a rampage for any perceived wrong enacted against their illusionary view of the world.

In a very scary way, these events demonstrate Card's point startlingly well. He calls this narrow-minded philosophy of political views "madness," and points out that both sides of extremists, both right and left, have it. And he's not wrong.

One would think that the feminist movement would be a group filled with hope. They want equal rights, fair play, and an even field. They would work to bring about meaningful, positive change in the world to make that happen.

One might even suspect that they would, of their nature, seek equality for all - not just between men and women. Unfair fairness just isn't fair, and doesn't make much sense either.

Yet, that very assumption of a positive attitude seems to be entirely wrong. These people who are attacking Oprah clearly have no interest in equality for all, or want anything to do with Barack's message of hope for a better future. They just want a woman. And they will be as hateful and spiteful and unfair as they need to be to further their agenda.

If the American Gladiator star Helga ran for President, they'd back her over Obama too. Because she's a woman, and that is ALL that matters.

It really is madness to accuse Oprah of such abject bias when she is, in fact, continuing to support the very same endeavors that these women claim to be in favor of. They put the lie to their own doctrine, showing all the world that they don't want 'equality', they want superiority. Women first. Women all.

So forget the issues. Forget your own principles. Women have to support Hillary because she is a woman. To ignore that fact is to put an unfair level of "fairness" on the election.

Sorry, ladies; you can't expect anyone to pay attention to your fight against sexism when you are sexist yourself. Either you are hypocrites, or, as Card suggests, insane. Most probably, the sad fact is a little bit of both.

But most tragic of all, by embracing an acidic view, full of the rhetoric of negativity, against anyone who actually does represent REAL equality or fairness, your work has become one of building a bitter, not better, tomorrow.

"Shame on any woman for supporting a candidate for president for no other reason than she has no penis. So be it. If she wins, I pray she has balls."

Steve Hargrove, Vienna