By the time Oprah went national, in September 1986, she was already an Oscar-nominated actress for "The Color Purple" and relentlessly hyped as broadcasting's next big thing. As it turned out, she was. For the next several years she sailed comfortably along on a sun-kissed crest of success. She collected Emmys and broadcasting awards like they were seashells on the beach, dominated the ratings, branched out into television production with projects like "The Women of Brewster Place" and spawned a seemingly endless supply of talk-show clones. Then, while at the top of her game, she looked around and made an intriguing observation -- most daytime talk shows are crap. And she, Oprah, the talented self-made millionaire businesswoman who'd spent a lifetime idolizing black female leaders like Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman, was becoming a purveyor of sensationalism and exploitation. So she made a decision.

"I am not going to be able to spend from now until the year 2000 talking about dysfunction," she declared in 1994. Trash TV was out, empowerment was in. She began changing the tenor of her show from scandal to self-improvement, and started something she called Oprah's Book Club, a regular reading group to discuss works of merit she'd chosen and encouraged her audience to read. The reaction was enthusiastic, to say the least.

Oprah's detractors sniff at her viewers' lemming-like obedience -- a blessing from Winfrey can guarantee a bestseller -- but the merit of her choices and the impact on her audience is not so easily dismissed. The comfortably literary humanities majors of the world can yawn and declare that they don't need Oprah to tell them what to read, but the person who hasn't picked up a book since high school, who has never read for pure pleasure, knows, because of Oprah, the transforming power of books. And authors -- from Wally Lamb to Jane Hamilton to Edwidge Danticat, and even big names like Toni Morrison -- have reached a whole new readership.

If it's easy and valid to criticize Oprah's pop psychology format and her sanctimonious derision of the TV genre that unquestionably owes its success to her (let she who has never done a show on women who've had babies by their fathers throw the first stone), her tireless attention to issues like child and domestic abuse remain unimpeachable. In 1991, for example, she helped draft and lobby for the National Child Protection Act, to create a centralized national database of convicted child abusers. Call her self-involved, weight-obsessed, controlling, workaholic or simplistic -- not only won't she disagree, she'll probably do a show on it. (Recent episodes have covered, in true Oprah fashion, unequal relationships and the trials of perfectionism.) But no other celebrity so intuitively comprehends the power she holds over her audience, or takes that responsibility so seriously.

Of course, that influence hasn't escaped the attention of others either, notably Texas cattlemen. They were so spooked when Oprah announced in 1996 that fear of mad cow disease had permanently turned her off burgers that they blamed her for causing beef prices to plummet and sued her. Ever resilient, she moved her show to Amarillo for the trial, won the suit and came out smelling like a rose.

Other entertainers contentedly grab the ratings and wait for the trucks of money to roll up to their mansions. Oprah, while still visibly enjoying the fruits of her success, has gone one step further. With the spotlight glaring on her, the microphone in her face, the girl from Kosciusko smiles and says, "Now that I have your attention ..." As she publicly struggles with her own demons, with her scars and her weaknesses, she throws down the gauntlet for her audience to do the same. To get out of abusive relationships. To educate themselves. To even, amazingly, turn off the damn TV and read a book. And if she cries or throws her arms around a guest with a candor that can be at times unsettling, it also provides a leveling counterpoint to every cool, straight-faced news reader and every riot-inciting, histrionic ringmaster. Critics may deride her show as facile, middlebrow or ickily touchy-feely, but damn if she can't bring a lump to your throat with a single quiver of her lip.

After more than two decades on the air, she remains the one talking head most boldly unafraid to demonstrate she also has a heart -- and even a stomach. If God were one of us, the Almighty would probably keep that same human touch as well, while grabbing a prime slot on TV and a big-deal production company. In short, she'd probably look a lot like Oprah.

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