Tony Allen-Mills, New York
AMERICA’S favourite television presenter is paying a painful price for her intervention in the US presidential campaign last month. Oprah Winfrey has been dubbed a “traitor” by some of her female fans for supporting Barack Obama instead of Hillary Clinton.
Winfrey’s website, Oprah.com, has been flooded with abarrage of abuse since the queen of daytime chat shows joined Obama on a tour of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina in mid-December.
Her intervention was widely credited with broadening Obama’s national appeal - especially among women - and with helping him to an upset victory over Clinton in the first vote of the election year in Iowa.
Yet a backlash by Clinton supporters appears to have prompted a rethink by Winfrey, the African-American media titan who is routinely described as the most influential woman on television.
She did not reappear in the final days before the New Hampshire primary - which Obama lost to Clinton - and has been absent from the most recent campaigning in SouthCarolina, which votes next weekend.
Obama aides believe that Winfrey will return to the campaign. Her own staff noted last week that in addition to her daily broadcasts on television and satellite radio, she has also been busy negotiating a multi-million-dollar deal with the Discovery cable network to create her own television channel, the Oprah Winfrey Network.
Yet Obama’s rivals suspect that Winfrey has been startled by the virulent reaction to her previous campaign appearance.
It started with a message on her website entitled “Oprah is a traitor” and rapidly expanded to include several discussions that attracted hundreds of comments.
In the original post, a reader called austaz68 said she “cannot believe that women all over this country are not up in arms over Oprah’s backing of Obama. For the first time in history we actually have a shot at putting a woman in the White House and Oprah backs the black MAN. She’s choosing her race over her gender.”
In a subsequent comment, 2nurselady wrote: “I don’t think Oprah is a ‘traitor’, but I do think she may be alienating a lot of her fans.”
Others have accused Winfrey of racism for siding with Obama when such a well qualified woman as Clinton was running.
Winfrey has built her career on empathising with women’s issues and offering a daily diet of redemption and hope. Her show typically focuses on women who have suffered but survived.So hostile has the response been that some suspect dirty tricks. “All the rude and hateful messages on here can’t be from Oprah fans,” another visitor noted. “Someone’s campaign (wonder who?) is sabotaging the message boards.”
Hell hath no fury as Hillary's minions scorned by a powerful Black woman who exercises her constitutional right to support whomever she chooses, for whatever reasons she chooses, to become the Democratic nominee for President of the United States of America.
The very idea that supporting Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton makes Oprah a traitor for "choosing her race over her gender" is insane. Who are these people? Clintonites, of course.
These people are not Ophra's fans. Their behavior betrays a fanaticism, vindictiveness and nastiness that characterize Hillary's deranged followers.
This is only a taste of what a Hillary presidency would be like with her Brownshirst ensuring purity of thought and monopoly of devotion to First Woman Hillary. Or else. Sig Heil!
Official Portrait?
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