The Heroic Oprah

I’ve made comments in the past that are less than complimentary of Oprah’s viewers. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t have a high opinion of Oprah herself. The woman is clearly an entrepreneurial genius.  For decades, she has been providing the market with what it demands, whether it be her brand of trash talk in the nineties, or the touchy-feely fare she now provides for monied housewives with hours of free time. She delivers what the public wants.

Sure, as the world’s leading Obamaite, her politics are terrible, but unlike virtually all the millionaires in the United States Senate, for example, Oprah’s millions come from giving the people what they want and not from cushy government contracts funded with the sweat of taxpayers.

I see that Drudge is passing around all the latest unflattering news about Oprah from the new Kitty Kelley book, but I just thought I’d mention one of Oprah’s more heroic moments: Her opposition to the Texas Cattlemen who sued her for daring to say that she didn’t want to eat hamburgers anymore. Few realize that the food industries in this country are among the most heavily subsidized, and industrial food producers like the Texas Cattlemen benefit from massively preferential federal laws, subsidies, and armies of lawyers and lobbyists. They’ve made it a crime to criticize their product, so when Oprah criticized American beef, they sued her.

Millions of dollars later, Oprah won the case and struck a great victory for freedom of speech against the tax parasites that masquerade as kind-hearted American ranchers and farmers.

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8:46 pm on April 12, 2010