Wednesday, January 25, 2006

The Power of Oprah Winfrey

Forget that she's a billionaire. That's not important.

Forget about Stedman, her weight problems and her dogs. That's not important.

Love her or hate her, its not important.

What's important is: She's powerful. And what's even MORE important is that she uses that power for GOOD.

Let's think about this for a second: there are many many powerful people in this world but just how many of them use their powers for good? Most of them use it to further their own gains or to hurt people or to just get attention. But what does Oprah do on a consistent basis? She uses her power, her TV show, to help others. Two cases in point:

1. She did a show about a wanted sex offender who had fleed the country. Within 48 hours of that show airing, this man was found in Belize and extradited to the United States.

2. She did a show about human sex trafficking...young girls 15 and under being sold into sex slavery. At the end of the show, she implored her audience to act. She showed 3 letters she had written and was going to send to her congressman asking them to focus more on this issue and help stop it from happening here and in other countries. She asked each audience member to write 3 letters of their own and send them...that if lawmakers got thousands of letters, they would take notice. She even made it easy for anyone to find the addresses on her website. Well people listened. Congress and the White House received thousands and thousands of letters and as a result, Bush signed a bill to put money and resources towards ending this horrible practice.

Yes one can say "oh that doesn't matter because Bush/government isn't really gonna do anything about it" but that's besides the point. Every little bit helps. But look at the power that this woman weilds. And this is only the tip of the iceberg of the things she's done to help people...She is my hero. Anyone who knows me knows how highly i think of her. She makes me proud to be a black woman. I really hope i get to meet her someday

1 comment:

Piscean Princess said...

I am in the midst of an Oprah-thon. I TiVo her show daily but as a (sometimes) working actor, I (sometimes) don't have time to keep up on a daily/weekly basis. Therefore, Sunday I started catching up (back to January 11th!)

She is my hero also and I'm glad to see that she is focusing in on child predators. Everybody's gotta have a "thing" and I'm glad she chose this one. I hope she gets 'em all!