Phantom of the Oprah
There was Oprah Winfrey at the Golden Globes, with her big glasses and 2020 visions of a presidential run, speaking to the greatest collection of sexual predators and their enablers pontificating about the rights of women in an industry where not long ago these same people, led by the pompous and condescending Meryl Streep, gave a standing ovation and an award to director Roman Polanski, child rapist.
Oprah didn't mention Polanski, or Harvey Weinstein, or Bill Clinton, or why she didn't use the show that made her rich and famous to condemn predators such as these and the Hollywood culture that demeans women and exploits them for fun and profit. If Oprah wants to run for president as a champion of women, she has a lot of explaining to do.
Triggered by remarks made by Oprah Winfrey at the Golden Globes in which she pontificated to women who have been sexually harassed or abused, "You get a voice. You get a voice. Everybody gets a voice," Juanita Broaddrick, who was allegedly raped by former president Bill Clinton when he was governor of Arkansas, and is only now being believed by leftists who were doubtful before, fired back with a blistering pair of tweets.
Oprah was quite willing to shill for Bill Clinton; she gave him time on her show to brag how he and Hillary saw a therapist to work out their marital difficulties and also interviewed him for Oprah Magazine in 2004, asking him about how the Monica Lewinsky affair affected him but never asking about the rampant harassment and abuse, not to mention alleged rape, of which he had been accused.
Juanita Broaddrick was never a guest on Oprah's show and noted that Oprah was a willing participant in the "nothing to see here" Clinton cover-up. She also promoted the presidential candidacy of Bill Clinton's enabler, Hillary Clinton, who ignored his predatory activities and covered up his "bimbo eruptions" as she rode his stained coattails to political prominence:
Clinton, who was forced to settle a sexual harassment case with Paula Jones and has been accused of everything from harassment to assault by no fewer than eight women, has a very good friend indeed in Winfrey. Her gauzy interview with Clinton in 2004 was not only an attempt to rehabilitate his image; Winfrey also set up the idea of his chief[] enabler, wife Hillary Clinton, running for president.
Worse still, as the Daily Wire points out, the only questions Winfrey asked about Clinton's countless scandals focused on Monica Lewinsky and sounded like this: "What was the most difficult part of that time for you?"
Nothing was asked about Broaddrick, Jones, Kathleen Willey, or the near[] half[-]dozen others[.] ...
Included with a photo of a chummy Bill and Oprah together, Broaddrick wondered, "Remember this @Oprah You've had so many opportunities to bring up my allegations, which have never been discredited. Why??"
Good question. The Daily Wire's Ben Shapiro told Fox News on Monday night about Oprah's sham fight for abused women, especially as it applies to the Hollywood elites, who condemned Bill Clinton's crimes and Hillary Clinton's enabling only when the Clintons were no longer power-brokers:
Shapiro told Fox News'[s] Martha MacCallum: "She was standing in front of an entire town filled with sexual abusers and harassers. She said nothing about it for 20 years; she was being cheered by people who said nothing about it for 20 years, and there she is pretending that she's leading the fight."
Oprah did not lead the fight against the culture of sexual misconduct in Hollywood, and she cannot use the excuse of "I was afraid of what it might do to my career," because she is one of the biggest people in media – she has little to fear.
Shapiro continued, "Well, I was under the impression that most of us agreed with that stuff when this stuff first broke and she lauded the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. Where were they reporting on the sexual harassment and abuse scandal for the last 20 years? It was literally their job to cover Hollywood and yet it took The New Yorker and Ronan Farrow to uncover all this stuff. Where was the Hollywood Press Association that was receiving such plaudits at the hands of Oprah Winfrey, again, a woman who was good friends with Harvey Weinstein, being cheered by Meryl Streep, a woman who gave a standing ovation to Roman Polanski?"
Oprah has had a chummy relationship with predator Harvey Weinstein over the years, being his guest at a number of awards shows and ceremonies. She attended numerous Weinstein Company events and also starred in Weinstein's movies, notably The Butler, about a longtime White House staff member. Yet she counts herself among the Hollywood elites who say they had no idea what Weinstein was up to. Her silence made her one of Weinstein's enablers, as she was with Bill Clinton.
At least one of Weinstein's accusers, Kadian Noble, claims that Oprah was more than that:
An aspiring actress says Harvey Weinstein used Oprah Winfrey and Naomi Campbell to dupe her into thinking he would help her with her career – only to use her for sex.
British actress Kadian Noble said Tuesday she was head-over-heels impressed when she first met Weinstein at an event in London because he was hanging out with model Campbell and had megastar Oprah "swinging off his arm."
"I thought, obviously, this man has something amazing in store for me," she said during a teary-eyed press conference in Manhattan to discuss the sex trafficking lawsuit she filed a day earlier against Weinstein in Manhattan federal court.
If she runs for president thinking she can ride recent events in Hollywood and politics as a champion of women, Oprah will have to explain why such a powerful and self-made woman at least sat in stony silence as people like Bill Clinton and Harvey Weinstein preyed on the very women she claims to champion.
Daniel John Sobieski is a freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor's Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine, and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.