You Are Oprah. I Am Oprah. We Are Oprah

As talk titan Oprah Winfrey prepares to say goodbye to broadcast television, poised to make her nearly assured profitable stake in the cable TV world, misty media farewells have already begun. Showbiz Tonight on HLN hosted an "Oprah Effect" conversation, musing over Winfrey's powerful influence over her TV masses. She starts her last season of The Oprah Winfrey Show - running on ABC affiliates now for a stunning 25 years. Questions still posed are, who will 'replace' her, and what's the secret to her popularity and impressive staying power?

It's simple. You are Oprah. I am Oprah. We are all Oprah.

No, I didn't join a hippy commune, nor did I finally succumb to a Shirley MacLaine New Age philosophy. Oprah may be a bubbly, one of a kind media personality, but in ways she accomplishes a great deal, by not doing all that much. She's certainly proven herself as an actress - earning an Oscar nod in The Color Purple, and raves in the TV movie Women of Brewster Place - but what she clearly always excels at is just being there. Like Peter Seller's classic movie Being There, Oprah takes us on a journey with her chat fest, and she's always there for us. She's our big sister on the couch alongside a crazed Tom Cruise bouncing up and down like a Mexican jumping bean glued to a pogo stick. She's a stern mother admonishing deceptive author James Frey (A Million Little Pieces) that he lied to her and her audience about his book on drug addiction. She's there, she's comforting, and she acts almost as an enormous mirror of meditation to our collective, social conscious.

The 2010 Kennedy Center Honors will include Oprah among honorees this year. She'll share the prestigious accolade with Paul McCartney of The Beatles and country music giant Merle Haggard. Oprah has much to be proud of, and boasts an almost unmatched originality. Still, we've put Oprah in a rarefied place, because we wished it, and because she very often reflects us. She's been like a televised best friend, a member of our family, our confessional and confident for a quarter of a century on broadcast TV. But like the saying goes; Oprah - it's not all about you. The 'Oprah Phenomenon' is about a lot of things, but most powerfully of all - it's about all of us.

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