After using her show and her massive podium to promote the presidential ambitions of Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey has finally discovered the idea of neutrality. She will not have Sarah Palin, the first woman to be nominated on a national ticket in nearly a quarter century, and the first woman to be nominated in a Republican ticket, on her daytime talk show that caters to women.
Why Oprah would consider Sarah Palin of no interest to her television audience is beyond me. Oprah has made no secret of her support for Barack Obama. She is a Chicago-style maven. Barack Obama is a Chicago-style politician. It’s not rocket science.
The problem as I see it is that Oprah is saying that she doesn’t want to use her show as a “platform” for any of the candidates. After months of using her massive power and appeal to promote Barack Obama, she’s decided that it’s a bad thing to provide a venue for discussion about any other candidate.
I think Oprah is passing up an opportunity here, but ultimately it’s smart. She could have Governor Palin on the show and grill her on the issues, but that would risk her looking like a rabid partisan, something that her audience would not approve of. Or she could have Governor Palin on the show and chit-chat about her experience as a working mother, and risk allowing the governor to set the record straight on some of the more outrageous scandals that have been circulating around her, and Oprah wouldn’t want that.
It would be refreshing if Oprah would be honest with us instead of giving us some nonsense about not using her show to support a candidate. But what do you expect from a Chicago-style media mogul?
