OPRAHPOST!!!! FANTASTIC!

So you might have read that article in Newsweek concerning one Oprah Winfrey. The long and short of it is that "O," as she's called by her fans and imaginary friends, promotes quackery and other foolishness on her TV show. Well, mainly quackery.

I don't watch Oprah. Honest to God. I swear. I mean I've watched it every now and then, but I don't watch it religiously. I FUCKIN'DON'T, OKAY? From what I gather, her show is supposed to be very, very friendly to everyone on it and in the audience. It's like "The View," but not menopausal. And not at all interesting. Or so I thought.

I always figured there was something off about Oprah. Her popularity didn't really shock me, after all. Bored people have to watch something, after all. But there's something just so unsettling about Oprah herself. She's like a matron who fills the day up end-to-end with activities for the kids. What does she do on her downtime? Does he have downtime? She gives the impression that she is all about herself and her media empire. It doesn't help that she apparently has no significant others or anything like that. Does she just sit around all day, thinking of something new to do on her show? Some might consider that talent, but I consider it madness.

And now we have all this quackery. The easy thing to do is denounce her for promoting vagina shots (a hyuck), demoting vaccines and generally duping her audience. But I'm not after what's easy. If I were, I wouldn't be chasing women from Massachusetts!

Denouncing Oprah is not only easy, it's pointless too. As far as I can tell, Oprah's media empire is, like Foix, a vassal, a microcosm, an illusion. It's Oz for the bored housewife. Confronting it doesn't do any good because if Oprah were to fall, her former toady Dr. Phil would take over, or Judge Alexis, or Maury, or Tyra, or Ellen, or whomeverthefuck. There are already dozens of choices for people who are too stupid to question everything they see on TV, and worse, are overly responsive to friendly-looking people.

Oprah is not the problem. She's the symptom. The presence of an Oprah means something is wrong. Destroying her empire is like alleviating fever while ebola ravages your body. But if she's not the problem, who or what is?

The problem is, of course, the media at large. In this particular case, it's the destruction of science and reason, deliberately done so to sell shit. I don't honestly think that Oprah believes in the stuff she's selling. Nobody can be that stupid and do what she does. Hell, she even had to pull back one of her audience members for attempting to destroy cancer with the sheer power of her will! That's not the actions of a fool, that's the actions of a liability-aware saleswoman.

But the attempt to destroy the intellect of her audience is deliberate, and it's cliched to point out why she's doing this. But it's interesting to compare this to ye olden days of advertising. Back then, advertisers attempted to sell their shit by appealing to science, reason, intellect, etc. Well, mostly. I mean, there's no intelligent way to promote cigarettes. The Oppenheimer Lucky Strike spread famously bombed. But if they were selling a toothbrush, they'd point out that their toothbrush was approved by the American Dental Association, and then you would run screaming out of the convenience store. SHOPLIFTER!!!

Even into the 90s, when video games were advertized, technical prowess wasn't merely demonstrated by showing the action (mainly because video games were barely presentable to begin with), they had to appeal to technology to get you going. Who doesn't remember the n-bit wars? That's right, nigs, the SNES is TWICE AS POWERFUL AS THE NINTENDO!!!

Of course it was bullshit, but it made you feel smart. It used numbers and technology and charts and shit. It made you feel like you were reaching into the future, whether it was cars, bedspreads, slinkies, Skip-Its, rat poison, darts, or anything at all. But today's advertizing mostly eschews that. At least mostly when it comes to products that aren't medicine or electronics.

And this isn't just about advertizing. There's a growing sense that the powers that be want us to act more stupidly than normal. They don't want to trick us into thinking we're smart. They want us to actively reject intelligence in favor of superstition and retardation.

How else can Jenny McCarthy (JENNY MCCARTHY) convince people that vaccines are bad? If you fancy yourself an intellectual, you're going to reject Jenny McCarthy outright. You're too much of a fancypants scientist with your pocket calculator to listen to a crude bimbo, are you? But if you actively indulge in stupid behavior, all of a sudden you're on the level of Ms. McCarthy against the hoighty-toighty doctors and their poison vaccines. Now your stupidity is a weapon of righteousness!

But what can this sell? Oprah's using it to sell bullshit cures. But a lot of people have put thought into this, and they want something. Maybe it's our industrial overlords. Maybe they want to keep launching CO2 into the atmosphere with impunity. Well if scientists talk about global warming, that would interfere with their plans. If enough people are stupid enough to believe that mankind can't ruin the atmosphere because of the Bible, though, then stopping global warming becomes a lot harder.

What about evolution? A relatively benign subject all things considered, except a lot of people are now invested in squelching it. Why? Well, if people listen to scientists about biology, then that means they would trust them in other areas. If you're invested in people believing that the world is only 6,000 years old, though, then science is bad bad bad! It's witchcraft, practically! If you have people denouncing scientists, then they'll also believe that condoms have a huge failure rate and that psychology is a sham. Remember, folks, the Church was freaked out about something as simple as heliocentrism.

If this attitude persisted in the old days, we'd have politicians questioning whether cigarettes really cause cancer. "It's not the cigs, it's a coincidence! Maybe if you stopped touching yourself, your throat and lungs would be clear today!!" If Marlboro had this idea back then, they might just have prevailed, and cigs would be right up there with booze on the TV today.

If you need to be told that advertising in all its forms is pervasive in everything, you should probably sit down. Everyone and everything that is in a position of power is out to dupe you. Oprah is no different. Crushing her makes no difference. Jon Stewart elaborately eviscerated "Crossfire," only to have 500 more shows of its ilk spring up. The truth wants to be heard, but lies talk the loudest.

Oprah operates on the same level. She doesn't want you to really think about what she's saying. She just wants you to feel it, just like nana rocking you to sleep and talking about cookie gumdrop kingdoms and happy endings. No, not those happy endings. I could use one right now, though.

And before you think this is a women's-only thing, keep in mind that men are convinced that cars are primarily useful as a status symbol.

What we're seeing is a definite shift, I believe. Our overlords are not longer content with making us think we're smart. They want us to simply feel wonderful about everything, and if something is making us feel less than wonderful, don't come talking to people who deal in facts or numbers or figures. Talk to the people who make you feel warm and fuzzy. The cold, hard logic of science can't make you do that unless you're a nerdlinger who cuddles up every night with booleans and fractals and whatever the fuck that thing is on Wikipedia.

I always thought that "Brave New World" was the scarier of the two dystopias (the other being "1984".) "1984" seemed like it would give you just enough freedom to cause trouble before going out in a blaze of glory. But in "Brave New World," if you stepped out of line, theyd just launch soma at you until you were a blathering tard. How do you fight against that? Surrounded by people who want everything to be hokey-dokey no matter how screwed up everything was.

The scientist today is turning into the troublemaker, where before they were seen as the guardian, the wizard of society inventing all this cool new shit for us to play with. Now they're pooping our parties, what with screwing with our cars and coal factories, and defying our Bible. If we take away the scientist, who will we turn to?

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Oh my God.

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THE PLUMBERS!!!!