Oprah winfrey

Wednesday

Cockburn

How the Harris campaign blew $1 billion in 107 days

Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign spent more than $1 billion in three months, according to a detailed report from the Washington Examiner’s Gabe Kaminsky. FEC records not only show that Kamala paid $1 million to Oprah Winfrey’s production company, but six figures on a building set for her Call Her Daddy podcast, as well as millions on digital consultants and “event production” — also known as her supposed “in” with the celebrity world. TMZ, true to form, asked Oprah in the street if she had been paid by the Harris-Walz campaign. Oprah said the reports were “not true” and that she was “paid nothing — ever.

Monday

Stephen L. Miller

Kamala Harris ran the Fyre Festival of campaigns

As the finger-pointing begins, and the autopsy of the Kamala Harris campaign continues, financial details are being released on how the Harris campaign managed to blow more than $1 billion in war-chest funds — and not only lose, but get wiped off the electoral map by Donald Trump, who ended his campaign with roughly $488 million. That’s not a Dr. Evil typo: Kamala Harris not only blew a billion dollars, but actually ended up $20 million in debt. Where did the money all go? To celebrities mostly, and elaborate sets and stages. As it turns out, not all of those celebrity “activists” appeared with Kamala Harris because they believed in her or were doing their civic duty by getting engaged. They charged fees — and some were astronomical.

Friday

The Spectator

Kamala vows to shoot intruders in Oprah town hall

To hear the New York Times tell it, you’d think Vice President Kamala Harris had finally started answering questions about the Biden administration’s accomplishments and her own policy positions. The Times claims Kamala “hit core campaign themes,” “spoke off the cuff” and “confronted a range of pressing issues” in a two-hour sit-down interview with Oprah Winfrey.But did she really?When asked about how she would secure the southern border — one of voters’ top concerns — Kamala said:So it’s a wonderful and important question. I, you know, my background was as a prosecutor, and I was also the elected attorney general for two terms of the border state. So this is not a theoretical issue for me. This is something I’ve actually worked on.

Thursday

Roger Kimball

Facing down the Democratic legal tsunami

Sydney Smith (1771-1845), the great English wit and Anglican divine, once said that he never read a book before reviewing it because he found that “it prejudices a man so.” (He also confided that his idea of heaven was “eating pâté de foie gras to the sound of trumpets.”) I have nothing to add to Smith’s soteriological dictum. In partial defense of his announced journalistic practice, however, I will note that while it might compromise his reliability as a literary cicerone, there are plenty of situations for which such lack of exposure is a beneficial prophylactic. I write during the Democratic National Convention. I have sat down to watch none of it. Like Smith, I know that doing so would prejudice me.

Democratic

Thursday

Amber Duke

DNC attempts to sanitize Walz’s false statements

Chicago You get freedom, you get freedom, we all get freedom! At least that was the pitch from Oprah Winfrey who gave a surprise speech at the Democratic National Convention. The celebrity talk-show host and businesswoman received the most raucous applause of Wednesday night’s festivities and ignited the crowd like none other of the evening. But it’s still unclear exactly what “freedom” the Democrats are talking about besides the ability to terminate your pregnancy up until birth. Yet even Oprah couldn’t make us forget the enduring awkwardness of Joe Biden being forced out of his reelection campaign. Who could help but raise their eyebrows when President Bill Clinton claimed that Biden had “voluntarily” relinquished power?

Democratic vice presidential candidate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz speaks on stage during the third day of the Democratic National Convention (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

Thursday

Cockburn

Oprah ditches WeightWatchers after shedding pounds with drugs

After twenty-five years battling her weight before a studio audience, Oprah has finally dropped those pesky forty pounds... with the help of weight-loss drugs. Now the media mogul has dropped WeightWatchers too.  Earlier this week, Oprah announced that she would be leaving the company after nearly a decade on its board of directors and starring in commercials.   “I look forward to continuing to advise and collaborate with WeightWatchers and CEO Sima Sistani in elevating the conversation around recognizing obesity as a chronic condition, working to reduce stigma and advocating for health equity,” said Oprah, who apparently no longer needs the weight-loss program.

oprah winfrey weightwatchers

Monday

David Christopher Kaufman

Being curious about race does not make you racist

When you exist in a mixed-race family like I do — black dad, white Jewish mom, Asian uncle, Latino ex-husband — race is something that’s hard to escape. We talk about our similarities, explore our differences and consider how the experiences of one generation might be similar or different for the next. Race is somehow always on our tongues. But that doesn’t necessarily make my family racist. Nor does it make the royal family racist either.  Back in March 2021 during Oprah Winfrey’s sit-down with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, I was horrified by their now infamous exchange over the alleged concern by unnamed Windsors about the skin color of the Sussexes’ first kid. We all know what supposedly went down.

race

Monday

John Mac Ghlionn

Are Barack Obama and Russell Brand in a cult?

What do the likes of Warren Buffett, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey and Russell Brand have in common? They are all fans of neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), a pseudoscientific hodgepodge of strange hacks and corny aphorisms supposed to change an individual’s thoughts and behaviors. NLP practitioners claim to have the power to help clients achieve desired outcomes. Comedian Jimmy Carr, currently touring the US, recently spoke about the power of NLP during an interview with podcaster Chris Williamson. Carr has also spoken about the power of NLP on other hugely popular podcasts. Like Buffett, Clinton, Obama and Brand, Carr has achieved unimaginable levels of success. But the idea that NLP can help you reach some higher plane of awakening is not rooted in solid science.

nlp

Thursday

Cockburn

Sassy senator Mitt Romney spills the tea

Utah senator Mitt Romney is not holding back in an upcoming biography set to be released Tuesday, Romney: A Reckoning. According to one publishing source, McKay Coppins's book offers Romney's lively and at times devastating take on nearly every major political figure of the last twenty-five years. After reading several titillating and tantalizing excerpts from the biography, Cockburn fears he may be dethroned as DC’s cattiest gossip columnist. Unsurprisingly, the two biggest victims of Romney’s snark are Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis. Romney doesn’t try to hide his resentment at the two politicians' success and instead wastes no time calling them both authoritarians and Trump a fool.

mitt romney

Friday

Taki

The Oprah-fication of Wimbledon

Now that the weakest Wimbledon since 1973 — the year of the boycott — is over, a few thoughts about Pam Shriver’s recent revelations that her coach Don Candy, deceased, was also her lover. Candy was fifty at the time, while Pam was seventeen, which in my book made Candy a lucky guy, assuming it was legal. The age of consent varies from place to place, and the only time I had to defend myself was when an irate father, whose twenty-eight-year-old daughter I had dated, rang me early in the morning and complained about me being seventy-two. “There is no age limit as far as being too old,” I told him. He rudely hung up on me. But before I go on about Pam Shriver and her oldie coach, a few comments are in order about how Oprah has taken over tennis and even Wimbledon.

Monday

Cockburn

Meghan has ‘moved on’ from the royal racism row

After over three years of incessant scheming, moaning and making specious accusations of racism against her in-laws, Meghan Markle’s PR team are insisting she has "moved on." In a statement press secretary Ashley Hansen claimed: “The Duchess of Sussex is going about her life in the present, not thinking about correspondence from two years ago related to conversations from four years ago. “Any suggestion otherwise is false and frankly ridiculous. We encourage tabloid media and various royal correspondents to stop the exhausting circus that they alone are creating.” It’s important to add here that the statement was first posted by the Sussexes’ personal cheerleader and royal reporter Omid Scobie.

meghan markle podcast racism

Friday

Kara Kennedy

Harry and Meghan’s great miscalculation

Ladies and gentlemen, that’s a wrap. The last leg of Meghan and Harry’s docuseries aired Thursday, where we learned about institutionalized gaslighting, how terrified Harry is of big, bad Prince William and what Beyoncé thinks about the whole saga, obviously. The final three episodes, admittedly, were the bombshell some hoped for. Harry and Meghan’s usual approach of accusing nameless figures of terrible acts went out the window. Prince William was the villain, King Charles didn’t come off much better. Hell, they even threw in some sly digs at the late Queen. For many Brits, this is a cardinal sin. Apparently, we're done. All over. H tells us that finally: it’s time to move on.

harry meghan

Wednesday

Cockburn

Meghan Markle: America’s laziest interviewer

Remember Oprah Winfrey's bombshell "interview" with Meghan Markle and Prince Harry earlier this year, in which she stroked her subjects’ egos and failed to probe them on any of their hyperbolic claims? Well, Cockburn has found an even worse interviewer than Oprah: Meghan Markle. Listening to Archetypes, Meghan’s podcast about "dissecting labels," Cockburn found it a little weird that the guests never spoke over each other. You’d think that as the interviewees they’d try and get a word in edgeways through Meghan’s babbling. After labeling the show a "candid conversation" it seems the conversation is actually happening without Meghan. One of the podcast guests has revealed that she didn't actually speak to Meghan for the show in an Instagram post.

meghan markle podcast racism

Tuesday

Dot Wordsworth

The language of the victimhood war

Language is used in a weird way in the victimhood war, where those who see themselves without agency bravely speak their truth to power. Their truth cannot be negated merely by examining the evidence, for it derives from lived experience. The powerful are axiomatically guilty, and must be called out for their behavior, or behaviors, as the new usage puts it. They must then own or take ownership of the issue. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex found themselves victims without agency in the racist world of the royal family. During their interview with Oprah Winfrey, they spoke of conversations between the Duke and a member of the family about their unborn son Archie and what color his skin might be.

own

Thursday

Alexander Larman

How Meghan Markle wins the White House

In October, Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, made her most significant political intervention to date. She marked her fortieth birthday by writing an open letter “as a mom” to Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, and asked Congress to legislate for paid family leave for new parents. Markle may have thought she was pushing at an open door: the Democrats were striving to include paid family leave in the Build Back Better Act. But this may not be the only open door Meghan is pushing at. Seasoned observers will notice the Markle trademarks in the letter. There is the folksy appeal to her humble heritage: “I grew up on the $4.99 salad bar at Sizzler... I knew how hard my parents worked to afford this because even at five bucks, eating out was something special, and I felt lucky.

meghan

Friday

Cockburn

How private should Prince Harry’s life be?

‘Never complain, never explain,’ the Cockburns say. Our family friend Prince Harry has a different motto: carry on moaning and show me the money. Perhaps this time the Prince of Wails has good reason to be crying on the couch. A formal report has found the BBC guilty of deceitful and dishonest behavior in securing its infamous 1995 interview with Princess Diana. There were stinging reactions from Princes William and Harry yesterday, and questions in the UK about whether the BBC, a state-funded broadcaster deserves public funding. Cockburn is an old polo chum of Prince Charles and wonders whether this could finally be the spur for the estranged princes to reunite?  After all, the mood in Buckingham Palace is one of vindication.

prince harry nazi

Thursday

Damian Reilly

Prince Harry is here to help

Nothing duller for those of us not in therapy than listening to people who are in therapy talking about it, something they seem to like to do incessantly, at every opportunity. For this reason, my heart sank during the Oprah interview — which I’d been looking forward to tremendously — when early into his appearance, Prince Harry made an unsmiling reference to the ‘many years’ he had spent ‘doing the work — and doing my own learning’. Here we go, I thought. Sure enough, not long later he was telling the ludicrously softball interviewer of his family, his father, particularly: ‘they only know what they know. I’ve tried to educate them, through the process that I’ve been educated.’ Difficult to imagine how much the Windsors must have enjoyed that.

harry therapy

Sunday

Mary Kate Skehan

The Windsors are the first and best reality TV family

Isn’t it nice to think about someone else’s problems for a change?  I think this must be the experience of the millions of Americans who tuned into Oprah’s exclusive interview with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Harry and Meghan, earlier tonight. Our politics are dysfunctional, sure, but have you heard about the British royal family, who in addition to a long history of presiding over murderous colonial regimes, are also not very nice?  Of course, there’s no reason that any American should care about the wife of a rich guy who’s sixth in line to an entirely symbolic office in a faraway country. Even if the British sovereign made meaningful policy decisions, Prince Harry is in no danger of becoming king.

harry meghan oprah

Saturday

Esther Watson

Meghan is filling the gossip-shaped hole in our universe

Tomorrow night, Meghan Markle’s interview with Oprah Winfrey will air. CBS reportedly paid $7-9 million for the rights to the two-hour conversation in which 'no topic is off limits'. Millions will tune in. I’ll be one of them. I don’t subscribe to the view that Meghan is a hero sticking it to the establishment. Nor do I think she is the Antichrist. Yet I’ve spent countless hours reading every bit of Harry-Meghan content on the internet. Like half the planet, it seems, I’m transfixed. Why? The cause is simple. The pandemic has deprived me of gossip and I’ll do anything for it now. The past year has been many things — scary, frustrating, lonely. More than anything, though, for most people, it has been boring. Saying so is taboo.

Thursday

Justin Lee

Jeanine Cummins is guilty — of writing a bad book

Flatiron Books has canceled the promotional tour for Jeanine Cummins’s new novel American Dirt due to ‘safety concerns’. Cummins’s novel, which follows a Mexican mother and her young son as they flee cartel violence and seek asylum in the United States, is intended to spur readers’ sympathy at a time when Americans are increasingly indifferent to the plight of refugees. Instead she is the target of rancor and her book the target of censorship.‘I’ve never in my life seen this kind of public flogging,’ said novelist Ann Patchett, defending Cummins even as other writers signed an open letter asking Oprah Winfrey to rescind her endorsement.The outrage is following a familiar script.

american dirt jeanine cummins