Oprah for VP?

by Smitty

Michael Graham has a listener who says Oprah is cancelling her talk show to run as VP on the 2012 ticket. Democratic party, presumably.

Bwahahahaha! Oprah is so much more competent as an executive that she'd crush BHO, even after another three years of him trying to figure out how to pick up the scatalogical legislation by the clean end and give it a polish.

I just can't foresee The Aura allowing itself to be diminished by The Oprah.

Update: Cynthia Yockey arrives at the point from a different angle: "Oprah picked Obama to be president and is surprised to be under the bus now that he doesn’t need her any more"

Tears of Hope

"We watched everything and George was still doing all the anchoring for ABC and as soon Beyonce said 'At Last...' George called me at home and he went, 'Honey?' and I said 'I know!' and we both started crying."

-- George Stephanopoulos's wife, Ali Wentworth, on "Oprah," describing Inauguration Day

UPDATE: Linked at Hot Air Headlines.

UPDATE II: Matthew Archbold: "[W]e're supposed to believe that he's objective. I'm not sure I can get there unless he cried when Clarence Thomas was sworn onto the Supreme Court."

Sarah to Oprah: Drop dead

The road to 2012 doesn't go through Chicago:

It's not Oprah Winfrey's fault that former Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin hasn't been a guest on her talk show yet! Winfrey declared, "I said I would be happy to talk to Sarah Palin when the election was over... I went and tried to talk to Sarah Palin and instead she talked to Greta [Van Susteren]. She talked to Matt [Lauer]. She talked to Larry [King]. But she didn't talk to me. But maybe she'll talk to me now that she has a [multi-million dollar] book deal."

And maybe not.

Oprah's inauguration

She's going to be in D.C. for the entire week of the inauguration. Renting the Kennedy Center for use as a temporary studio:

Winfrey, who fundraised for Obama, appeared with him in several key primary states, including Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. She was also on hand for his acceptance speech at the Democratic convention in Denver, and his victory speech in Chicago last month.

Prediction: The backlash against Obamamania will eventually undermine Oprah's popularity. By 2010, her ratings will be in serious decline.

Oprah, Obama & Wright

Newsweek has a great story:

For any spiritually minded, up-wardly mobile African-American living in Chicago in the mid-1980s, the Trinity United Church of Christ was -- and still is -- the place to be. That's what drew Oprah Winfrey, a recent Chicago transplant, to the church in 1984. She was eager to bond with the movers and shakers in her new hometown's black community. . . . 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 . . . was the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. . . .
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.

Very interesting. Oprah saw the potential for trouble, but Harvard-educated Obama didn't. On the other hand:

Winfrey, who has endorsed Obama and campaigned on his behalf, had long understood the perils of a close association with Wright . . . [but] was blindsided by the pastor's personal assault on Obama.

Surprising, yes, but not all that much. It's obvious Wright resents Obama's attempt to distance himself. If you want an insight on Wright's character, ask his wife's ex-husband:

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama's loose cannon of a spiritual adviser, stole the wife of a parishioner - after the man sought Wright's help in saving his troubled marriage, the former husband told friends.
Delmer Reed, 59, confided to pals that he believed the minister moved in on his wife while Wright was counseling the couple at his Chicago church in the early 1980s, The Post has learned. "That's exactly how he said it," Reed's divorce lawyer, Roosevelt Thomas, told The Post.
"It looks like Delmer might have been right," he said, because after Delmer and Ramah Reed were divorced, she got remarried - to Wright. "Either that or this was the biggest coincidence in the world."
Asked about the relationship between Wright and his ex-wife, Reed told The Post, "Oh, the things I could tell you."
Initially, he didn't believe the rumors.
"People were telling me that my extremely attractive wife was seen with the pastor," Reed said. "But I didn't believe it. I thought, 'So what?' "
Was he wrong in the end?
"Well, yeah," he said.

If the pastor treats his congregation like that, his vengeful behavior toward Obama is not surprising.

Texas cult: The Oprah factor

Rusty Shackleford says the Texas FLDS compound story has "stunk to high-heaven from the git go," and look at the way Rusty puts two and two together:

Houston Chronicle: "The Texas Rangers told us [hoax suspect Rozita Swinton] was obsessed with the FLDS. They confiscated tons of material on the FLDS (in the search of Swinton's home). She even gave real addresses and real names of FLDS people."
Rusty: Hence, how Swinton would be able to "identify" the man who "Sarah" was allegedly married to, but didn't know that Dale Evans Barlow, the man originally pegged as the "50 year old husband", didn't actually live in Texas, but in Arizona.

Right, and now let me add something else to the equation: Notice that the middle (maiden) name for "Sarah" was "Jessop" -- "Sarah Jessop Barlow."

Well, Flora Jessop is the executive director of the anti-polygamy group quoted in that same Houston Chronicle story. And if you do a Google search on "FLDS" and "Jessop," you immediately discover that Carolyn Jessop is the author of a bestselling book, "Escape," about her life inside FLDS -- and that Carolyn Jessop appeared on "Oprah" in November 2007!

Bingo! So what must have happened is that Swinton:

• Watched this "Oprah" episode in November;
• Became obsessed with the FLDS cult;
• Read about the compound in Texas;
• Learned the name Dale Evans Barlow from reports of his prosecution;
• Combined Barlow's name with "Sarah," a common female biblical name, and "Jessop," the name of the two prominent ex-FLDS women, to create a name for her fictional 16-year-old victim; and
• Then did a Google search to find the phone number of a domestic-abuse hotline near the FLDS compound in Texas.

OMG! More than 400 children have been seized by the state of Texas because of an "Oprah" episode?

Also I wonder if Swinton became an Obama delegate for the same reason she became obsessed with the FLDS, namely, she saw it on "Oprah"?

UPDATE: The "Oprah" Web site includes an excerpt from Carolyn Jessop's book, including this bit about physical abuse among FLDS:

[T]he women we'd see in the community when we went shopping were wearing dark sunglasses. I was surprised when a woman took her glasses off in the grocery store and I could see that both her eyes were blackened. I asked my mother what was wrong, but the question seemed to make her uncomfortable and she didn't answer me. My curiosity was piqued, however, and every time I saw a woman in dark glasses, I stared at her to see if they were covering strange, mottled bruises.

Hmmmm. Remember how the hotline tipster "Sarah" talked about beatings? And then this:

We were taught that outsiders were "agents of the devil" who wanted to kidnap us and take us away. They were seen as evil people who wanted to destroy the work of God. If they could get access to the children of God's chosen, then they would try to hurt or destroy us.

Right -- another theme in the tip from "Sarah." But perhaps the telltale clue here is this:

[Oprah producer Lisa Ling's] guide in Colorado City is Carolyn Jessop. Carolyn was raised by three mothers and has 36 brothers and sisters. At 18, she says she was forced to marry a powerful 50-year-old FLDS leader, Merril Jessop. Carolyn had eight of Merril's 54 children, but she says she was always desperate for freedom.

The tipster "Sarah" likewise was "was forced to marry a powerful 50-year-old FLDS leader." But whereas Carolyn Jessop was 18 when she was married, the Texas hotline hoaxer Rozita Swinton decided fictional "Sarah" should be 16, having been forced to marry at 15 -- i.e., conveniently below the legal minimum marriage age in Texas, so as to constitute the basis for a search warrant.

Nearly every element of the story that "Sarah" told in her calls to the abuse hotline was included in the November "Oprah" episode or in Carolyn Jessop's book.

UPDATE II: Rusty notes the "fake but accurate" angle on Swinton's hoax, and says:

Sure, she lied about everything, but isn't the goal of removing children from parents who's lifestyle we don't approve of trump truth? . . .
Let's just go into any community and take away all the kids since we know that some of them are abused, some get knocked up young, and some are molested. In some communities, these phenomena are pervasive. . . .
There is a bright line which government cannot cross under normal circumstances. That line is the home.
A raid on an entire community, without probable cause, in peace time is tyranny, plain and simple.
What next, raiding a hippie commune because we know they must smoke dope and we know they practice free love?

As I've pointed out earlier myself, "if every pregnant 16-year-old in Texas is cause for a paramilitary raid, they're going to need more SWAT teams."

UPDATE III: Sorry if these updates are creating a thread longer than God's arm, but stuff just keeps popping up. This is from a Salt Lake Tribune story that Rusty linked:

FLDS women who were in state shelters with their children until Monday say investigators appeared desperate to find "Sarah" and were grilling girls by that name. ...
On Monday, hours after being separated from the children taken into state custody, FLDS women claimed authorities appeared driven to find Sarah.
"They are trying to pin it on anybody named Sarah," said Annette, who is back at the YFZ Ranch after more than a week in custody with her six children and five nieces and nephews she is raising.
Sarah is a common name and several are in custody, she said. One by one, the Sarahs have been interviewed, she said. "They find out and then let them go, then grab another one and try to find out and the let them go."
"There is just not a Sarah that fits what they said," said Annette.
Investigators have zeroed in on one Sarah in particular, Annette said. The girl, who has a 5-month-old daughter, is petite and looks young, so the investigators don't believe she is 18, she said.

So while the Texas attorney general says "the case really doesn't hinge upon that particular 16-year-old," investigators spent days grilling every teenager named Sarah from the Texas ranch -- including one 18-year-old who merely looks young. Sounds to me like Texas officials know they've got a credibility problem in this case.

PREVIOUSLY:
4/19: 'Underage sex cult'

4/18: Obama delegate in cult hoax?
4/18: Texas cult case: Where's Sarah?
4/14: Polygamy cult custody case
4/11: Texas teen sex cult update
4/10: Cult's sick sex temple
4/9: Not in the Constitution
4/9: 'Spiritually married'?