Be afraid, be very afraid

Can one woman be an entire industry? Oprah can.

Who are America's most influential women? According to a recent Vanity Fair poll-and I know that all enlightened minds despise these kind of lists-there are about 200 of them running around, influencing you and me right now. Among the luminaries are the usual suspects (Madonna, Madeleine Albright) and some real puzzlers (ever heard of Sugar Ratbourd? I thought so.)

Yes, these lists are insipid, but aren't they somehow indicative of larger truths about America? Out of 200 women, from politicians to fashion designers, playwrights to CEOs, I'd say about half of the names are recognizably, unarguably influential people. And I find myself in agreement with VF editor Graydon Carter, who writes: "If there is a first among equals in our list, it would have to be Oprah Winfrey, who is arguably the most influential person in America today."

Like many people, I have a healthy fear of Oprah, the woman who has long ceased being a woman: she is an enterprise, a commodity, an industry. She is a taste-maker, a trendsetter, an activist, a critic, a thinker, a journalist, a Hollywood starlet, a glamour girl, a philanthropist, an American success story, and a cultural force all in one.

There is no one quite like her, and few private citizens who wield as much power as Ms. Winfrey come readily to mind. Bill Gates, with all of his millions and monopoly muscle, still lacks the power to cause meat prices to fall simply by saying that he feared mad cow disease. Ted Turner, media baron, could never make a book into a bestseller simply by mentioning the title on air. But Oprah can, and Oprah does.

How many housewives rushed out to buy Song of Solomon after Toni Morrison won the Nobel Prize in Literature? How many bought her books after Morrison's appearance on and endorsement by Oprah, a close friend of the author's?

As a would-be novelist, this is why I fear Oprah, a woman whose name appears on books she hasn't written, in a typeface larger than the names of the authors themselves. Not even the New York Times can pull that off. She controls, to a frightening extent, what America reads. She helped make authors like Wally Lamb and Jacqueline Mitchard. I only know their names because I worked in book retail when their first novels were published and remember dozens of customers asking for that book they saw on Oprah.

True, these books were highlighted on Oprah's now-famous book club segment, which has since its inception dwindled to a two minute reference at some point during her show where she holds up a book reverently and says, essentially, run out and buy it now. No wonder authors are clamoring to get on her show.

Despite snobbery on the part of some authors, I personally think it a victory for the American mind-set that literature is in the mainstream. Who cares is if you encounter authors through the New Yorker or through Oprah. Doesn't matter-at least you're reading. Thank Oprah for raising the level of public thinking.

Her cinematic work certainly exceeds that of, say, Madonna, but even so, Oprah is no Meryl Streep. But who else could have starred in a film adaptation of Toni Morrison's troubling and complex Beloved? None other than the woman who footed the bill for the project, executive producer Oprah.

I was happy to see that the eminent Mr. Carter distinguished Oprah as the most influential "person." For indeed, she is more than merely an influential woman. Doesn't it say something promising about America at century's end that one of its most significant private citizens is a black woman? I want to believe so. But I can't get past the fact that of the 200 women so distnguished by Vanity Fair, only 14 are black. I didn't see any Hispanic or Asian American faces.

I can think of at least six black women who are as influential, if not more, than some of the high society women depicted as being backbones of America. Come on, Vanity Fair. Even so, I don't think the gesture to include Oprah is tokenizing; rather, it is essential. Some of the other entries though, do seem like gestures-one can practically imagine the editors sitting around saying, "Come on, we need some black women. Think!" The list didn't include models (scoff if you wish, but who else influences things like anorexia?) so there was no Iman, no Naomi. But it did include writers, so where was Alice Walker? Why include intellectuals like Susan Sontag, but not bell hooks, who has the distinction, which Sontag could not claim, of being somewhat comprehensible. And why include one lone judge, when attorney Anita Hill had more impact upon legislation in the past ten years than any other jurist by focusing national attention on sexual harassment.

So maybe Vanity Fair is an unfair reflection of American society, but even so they could not overlook Oprah, who has, unlike many minority success stories, managed to retain credibility within her minority community. Clarence Thomas, whether for his political bent or other reasons, is often seen as a sell-out, in much the same way that Nirvana's breakthrough success saw them sacrificing their credibility as "alternative." See the parallel? It's dumb, but they're all the same.

Rather than dwell on where this list falls short, which it must, I want to dwell on Oprah. Lists like this are vague and generalizing, and on the whole, never a true indicator of their proposed focus. But what does it mean that America's most powerful citizen is a black woman?

Nothing. She is not the new American mammy for the next millenium, she is not America's media slave, she is not merely an exotic treat for the American eye. She's just Oprah, so be afraid.