Everyone is talking about Oprah

After her Golden Globes speech, Oprah is the most talked about person on television. She brought the auditorium to its feet with as she recounted how Recy Taylor bucked the system back in 1944, and her impressions of Sidney Pottier winning the Oscar for Lilies of the Field. It was a life-affirming speech like the ones Barack Obama enjoyed giving and the parallel was not lost on anyone. Many persons started chanting Oprah for President that evening.

Why not? Any thoughts that experience matters were thrown out the window when Donald J. Trump won the office last year. This seemed to be the only thing holding Oprah back. Now she just says, "oh, oh."

Americans no longer place much value on a candidate's resume, at least when it comes to serving in government. We have become extremely cynical, believing that a politician is only in it for the money. Jokes abound like the one where politicians should wear patches of their corporate sponsors like race car drivers do, or that the only good politician is a dead politician, politically dead anyway.

Yet, we have elected our share of first-timers over the years and they haven't proven anymore adept at managing government than have traditional candidates. Ronald Reagan comes to mind. Bad actor turned governor and eventually president, he pretty much left management up to those around him. The result was one of the most corrupt governments in modern history with over 20 indictments. Trump's administration is well on its way to matching those numbers.

Many Americans are desperate for anyone other than Trump, and feel that only someone with a big personality like Oprah can topple him in an election. No names are emerging from the Democratic field other than Bernie and Joe Biden, both well past 70. Oprah seems youthful in her early 60s and is looking better than ever with her wavy black hair and healthy full figure. She looked absolutely radiant Sunday night.

Oprah is worth considering. She has been a positive spokesperson for so many issues over the years and has grown into one of the most powerful persons in the entertainment industry. An unlikely rise when you consider her roots. Most importantly, she would have the wholehearted support of Democrats across the political spectrum, assuming she runs as a Democrat.

However, I'm afraid this would be a major setback for traditional politics. The grassroots campaign that gave us candidates like Shirley Chisholm, Jesse Jackson, and Barack Obama will be lost. How could such a candidate compete with larger-than-life personalities?

Maybe it just a phase we are going through. The idea of "Oprah" has been tossed about for the better part of two decades. She couldn't be any worse than Donald J. Trump. Maybe we should just skip the primaries all together and go straight to the general election in 2020 and let these two battle it out on prime time television -- the Reality Show of the Century!

Dylan in America

Whoever it was in 1969 who named the very first Bob Dylan bootleg album “Great White Wonder” may have had a mischievous streak. There are any number of ways you can interpret the title — most boringly, the cover was blank, like the Beatles’ “White Album” — but I like to see a sly allusion to “Moby-Dick.” In the seven years since the release of his first commercial record, Dylan had become the white whale of 20th-century popular song, a wild, unconquerable and often baffling force of musical nature who drove fans and critics Ahab-mad in their efforts to spear him, lash him to the hull and render him merely comprehensible. --- Bruce Handy, NYTimes ____________________________________________ I figured we can start fresh with Bob Dylan. Couldn't resist this photo of him striking a Woody Guthrie pose. Looks like only yesterday. Here is a link to the comments building up to this reading group.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Welcome to this month's reading group selection. David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908. At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades. Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society. I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran. Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro

Team of Rivals Reading Group

''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005

Dispatches from Vilnius

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