Oprah
Another Oprah Lover Heard From
by Kitty Kelley
It always happens. The day after your book is published you meet someone who says, “Oh, I wish I’d known you were writing that biography. I could’ve told you about ….” Fill in the blanks here with some hair-raising incident you did not have in your book, despite years of research and hundreds of interviews. Never fails.
Shortly after the paperback publication of Oprah: A Biography, I received an email from a man, gently chiding me for my vaunted investigative skills. “How come you didn’t find me?” he teased. “I was Oprah’s lover back in the 1980’s and lived with her for four months before Stedman came on the scene.”
Ordinarily, such an email would be tossed into the crank bin filled with letters from felons, proclaiming their innocence. But this particular email had too many specifics to ignore. So I responded with pertinent questions to see if this Haitian film maker, Reginald Chevalier, was the real deal. Turns out he was. I called Oprah’s publicist to double-check his information but my call was not returned.
Not that I needed to add any more lovers to Oprah: A Biography. She had had several over the years, including the muzak musician John Tesh, when they worked together in Nashville, and retired radio disc jockey Tim Watts, the married man who was the love of her life for years in Baltimore. There was also a brief fling with Randy Cook, who lived with Oprah for a few months and described himself as her drug procurer.
Reginald Chevalier said he met Oprah when he appeared on her show in 1985. “She was doing a segment on look-alikes and at the time I looked like Billy Dee Williams. She later confided that she instructed her producers to keep me backstage after the show. She threatened to fire them, if I got away. She took me to lunch at the Water Tower restaurant and ordered stuffed mashed potatoes for both of us.”
Their affair began that day.
I remember how she loved taking candle-lit baths before going to bed. We took lots of them together. We spent many nights together in her new condo which she loved so much. I would be watching TV and she would be working on her next day’s show…. Besides going to restaurants for lunches and dinners, to stores to buy gifts for employees and friends—Oprah is generous with stuff—we would go to the Bears games because I was friends with one of the players. We occasionally had dinner with Michael Jordan and his wife, Juanita, or with Danny Glover, [Oprah’s co-star in The Color Purple.]
I noticed a few times she would bring up the subject of marriage and ask me if this was something I believed in. I think at that time Oprah was ready to take the plunge, and I was the chosen one…but I wasn’t interested in getting serious…. Oprah took me to her mother’s house for dinner in Milwaukee and that’s where I met Jeffrey, her gay brother [who died of AIDS in 1989]. Oprah said to him, “You stay away from this guy. He’s mine.”
Chevalier was 25 years old then and Oprah was 32, but he said the age difference didn’t matter to either of them. He accompanied Oprah to the Chicago premiere of The Color Purple. “Oprah bought a purple mink coat for the occasion and wanted me to wear purple mink as well but I just couldn’t do it.” Their photo appeared in the Chicago newspapers. “If you look carefully, you can see part of Gayle King’s face in the lower left of the picture,” he said. “Gayle was always around. Everywhere we went she was there. She was Oprah’s shadow.”
Chevalier has fond recollections of his time with Oprah, although he admits that she’s a much more reserved, calculating person off-camera than the warm, embracing person she presents on her show. “Things came crashing to a halt in April 1986,” he recalled. “I had been out of town on a modeling assignment and when I returned to the Water Tower condo, my key wouldn’t work. The concierge informed me that the locks had been changed. Oprah had left a box for me filled with all my belongings. On a yellow envelope she had written: ‘Sorry, things aren’t working between us. Oprah Winfrey.’ That was it. No phone call. No good-bye. Nothing. She was as cold as ice…. A few weeks later Stedman was on the scene— full time.”
Reginald Chevalier then.
Reginald Chevalier now.
(Photos courtesy of Reginald Chevalier.)
Cross-posted from Gawker
Writing Oprah: A Biography
by Kitty Kelley
In researching Oprah: A Biography I spent several days in Kosciusko, Mississippi where Oprah Winfrey was born and lived until she was six years old. I spent time with Katharine Carr Esters, Oprah’s first cousin, whom she calls “Aunt Katharine.” Mrs. Esters, 79 at the time, was my guide to the formative years of Oprah’s life in Mississippi and later with her mother in Milwaukee where Mrs. Esters said, “Oprah ran wild on the streets.”
During our days together Mrs. Esters talked about the strained relationship between Oprah, her mother, and the man who had fathered Oprah. “It’s not Vernon Winfrey,” said Mrs. Esters, “although he’s the one who stepped forward to take responsibility of her when Oprah needed it most.”
Mrs. Esters told me the name of Oprah’s real father but insisted I not publish the information until Oprah’s mother told Oprah the truth. When my book was published in April 2010 Mrs. Esters, obviously feeling the pressure from her powerful relative, backed away and denied what she had told me.
A few months later I received a call from Mrs. Esters’ daughter, Jo A. Baldwin, who had once worked for Oprah in Chicago as V.P. of Harpo. I had tried to interview Baldwin at the time but she would not talk. “I was too scared of Oprah,” she said. “Oprah told me if I ever talked she’d ruin me…. But I can talk to you now.”
“Why now and not then?” I asked.
“Because I now have tenure and Oprah can’t take my job away from me.”
Jo Baldwin is associate professor of English and director of the Writing Center at Mississippi Valley State University and pastor of Greater Disney Chapel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in Greenville, MS. Her friends call her Rev. Jo.
“I know now that you wrote the truth when you wrote about mom telling you the name of Oprah’s real father,” she said. “My son, Conrad, [who lives with Mrs. Esters], told me he heard mom say it.” Jo Baldwin agreed that when my interviews with her mother became public, Mrs. Esters became afraid of what Oprah might do to her, and backed away from what she had told me.
Over a period of weeks Rev. Jo and I spoke on the phone several times and exchanged numerous emails. I’ve included much of her information in the paperback of Oprah: A Biography (published January 18, 2011) but the story below is one she sent me after the paperback had gone to press.
WHY I TALKED TO KITTY KELLEY ABOUT MY COUSIN OPRAH
by Jo A. Baldwin
Over 20 years ago I found out people won’t believe you if they don’t want to. They won’t even hear what you have to say in the first place. But now almost 25 years later someone was interested in hearing about my two-year stint working for my cousin Oprah and that person is Kitty Kelley. From 1986 to 88 I was Oprah’s Vice President of Development at Harpo and most of what I had to say about her is in Miss Kelley’s paperback. But I recently remembered one story that I had buried because it was so painful and decided to share it in this blog.
When I started working for Oprah she only paid me $1200 a month—that’s $14,400 a year—because that’s what I told her to pay me based on what my mother had said about my being a fool if I thought she would let me fly as high as I could (see the paperback for more details). Before hiring me she asked me about my debts—I didn’t have any at the time—and she asked me if I had any assets. That’s when I told her about my Tiffany lamp. She asked me if she could buy it but I told her no that it was my inheritance from Mother Carr and I was going to keep it. (My grandmother and her grandmother were sisters.)
Years ago my maternal grandmother was a live-in cook and nurse for a bachelor and his two spinster sisters who had fled the Holocaust and lived in Milwaukee. I won’t say their names or what he did for a living, but he was wealthy, and Mother Carr took care of them until he died. He left her many things that some of his nieces and nephews didn’t want her to have but because he was in his right mind when he gave them to her there was nothing they could do about it. One of the items was a signed Tiffany lamp and base.
Before Mother Carr died she told my mother in my presence that she wanted me to have the Tiffany, so when she passed my mother gave it to me along with a platinum and diamond watch that I think came from Tiffany’s too although I didn’t have it appraised like I did the lamp. One appraiser said the lamp was worth $65,000 and one said $24,000, so I decided to put it in a safety deposit box at the bank because the first appraiser said it was just a matter of time before somebody stole it. It was in the bank over ten years before I had to sell it, which is where Oprah comes in.
The first year I worked for her was exciting. I traveled with her, wrote the core of her speeches because she was best when improvising, and advised her on what to say and not say. She listened to me but ended up doing what she wanted most of the time. I got a lot of exposure, which she didn’t like, so the second year she practically ended my traveling with her and doing things in her office in Chicago. The second year I mainly worked out of my house in Milwaukee.
She had given me a mink coat and Stedman’s old Mercedes I thought as gifts, but I found out she had counted them as cash income and that she wasn’t paying my taxes but that I was supposed to take the taxes out of the $1200 a month. So I asked her for a raise to pay the taxes but she said she wasn’t giving anybody a raise that year. That’s when I learned another valuable lesson. When you’re naïve after a certain age, you get punished for it. Shortly after that she fired me with no notice sending me a check for $5,000 severance pay. I used the money to relocate because she had already started having parties and celebrations in Milwaukee and inviting everybody but me, so I moved out of state.
Well, the IRS caught up with me and said I owed $9,000 in back taxes from working for Oprah. I had a job that paid enough to take care of my monthly bills, but I didn’t have that much money so I asked my mother to help me. She said she didn’t have it either. I told her they knew about my lamp and that I didn’t want to lose it, but she said sell it because that’s what an inheritance is for. So I got an antique dealer to put it in an auction and it sold for $16,500. I paid the taxes, but it took me years to get over hearing about how she gives millions of dollars away to people she doesn’t even know and wouldn’t give me a raise for the work I did for her so I wouldn’t have to sell my lamp.
To this day I don’t know how she found out I no longer have the lamp, but in a conversation I had with her about my novel—that she lied and said she never read—she had the nerve to say I was just upset with her about losing the Tiffany.
If she only knew what I know, she’d do differently.
Jo A. Baldwin has a B.A. in English from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM), a M.A. in Creative Writing from UWM, a M.A. in Speech Theatre from Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a Ph.D. in English from UWM, and a Master of Divinity from United Theological Seminary, Dayton Ohio. Baldwin is the first black American to earn a Ph.D. in English from UWM. She is an Associate Professor of English and Director of the Writing Center at Mississippi Valley State University, Itta Bena, Mississippi, and the first in the country to modify Shurley English for college students, a method for teaching Basic English grammar that she revolutionized with her own poems and songs. Her REFERENCE MANUAL FOR Shurley English MODIFIED FOR COLLEGE STUDENTS will be available pending obtaining a trademark on her intellectual property. She is the Pastor of Greater Disney Chapel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, Greenville, Mississippi, and the first to author a book on “Tuning” which is a form of Preaching in the Black Tradition entitled Seven Signature Sermons by a Tuning Woman Preacher of the Gospel published by the Edwin Mellen Press, “An International Scholarly Publisher of Advanced Research.”
Oprah: A Biography Paperback
by admin
Oprah: A Biography, with new material, released as a paperback on January, 18, 2011.
Three Rivers Press
ISBN 978-0307394873
#1 New York Times Bestseller
Read the press release here.
Read reviews and coverage of Oprah: A Biography here.
Buy: Amazon Apple Barnes & Noble
Unauthorized, But Not Untrue
What’s behind the Oprah/Letterman Feud?
by Kitty Kelley
Jon Stewart appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman a few nights ago and Stewart asked Letterman why he was always feuding with Oprah. Letterman laughed but Stewart probed he who will not be probed until Letterman told him about the day he decided to have lunch on Oprah. Both were eating at different tables in the same restaurant. Letterman told the waiter that Oprah wanted to pick up the tab. Dave waved to her and she waved back so the waiter assumed it was legitimate. Dave left and Oprah got stuck with the bill.
Stewart giggled. “That can’t be right,” he said.
“Sure, that pissed her off,” said Letterman. “Not everyone likes horse play.”
True, Oprah is not one for pranks at her expense but that was not the only reason she didn’t speak to Letterman for sixteen years.
On May 2, 1989, the night after Oprah hosted a devil-worshipping show that almost capsized her career, she appeared on Letterman’s s how. She was unnerved by the comedian’s quirky manner. The interview was awkward throughout, although Letterman did not go near the subject of Oprah’s show the previous day in which she had introduced a deranged guest named “Rachel,” who said that her family worshipped the devil and made sacrificial offerings of babies.
“And this is a—does everyone else think it’s a nice Jewish family?” asked Oprah, introducing “Rachel’s” religion. “From the outside you appear to be a nice Jewish girl…”
“Rachel” allowed that “not all Jewish people sacrifice babies…”
“I think we all know that,” said Oprah. Then she added: “This is the first time I heard of any Jewish people sacrificing babies, but anyway—so you witnessed the sacrifice?”
The phones at Harpo jangled for hours with irate callers objecting to Oprah’s blithe acceptance of “Rachel’s” claims, but Oprah was not too concerned. The next night she appeared on Late Night with David Letterman in Chicago. Letterman, who may have been drinking more than coffee, had a rowdy audience which wasn’t all that impressed with Oprah. Things became uncomfortable when someone yelled, “Rip her, Dave.” Letterman grinned his gleeful gap-toothed grin and said nothing. Years later he said, “I think she resented the fact that I didn’t rise to the occasion and, you know, beat up on the guy. Which I probably should have, but I was completely out of control and didn’t know what I was doing.”
A couple nights later, Letterman told his audience that he felt ill because he had eaten four clams at Oprah’s restaurant, The Eccentric. That iced it. Oprah slammed the door on Letterman and did not open it for sixteen years.
The following year Letterman hosted the Academy Awards show and did a play on the names of Uma Thurman and Oprah Winfrey. “Uma, Oprah; Oprah, Uma” misfired and Oprah, highly sensitive to her public image, was incensed.
After she launched O, The Oprah Magazine in 2000, Letterman took another poke at her by announcing “the Top Ten Articles from Oprah’s New Magazine”:
No. 10 P,R,A and H, the four runner-up titles for this magazine.
No. 9 Do what I say or I’ll make another movie
No. 8 Funerals and meetings with the Pope: Occasions not to use “You go, Girl.”
No. 7 While you’re reading this, I made 50 million dollars.
No. 6 The night I nailed Deepak Chopra.
No. 5 The million-dollar bill: A convenience that’s long overdue.
No. 4 My love affair with Oprah, by Oprah.
No. 3 You suckers will never know what it’s like to live in a solid gold mansion.
No. 2 Ricki Lake’s home phone number and how she hates 3 a.m. calls.
No. 1 The time I had to wait 5 minutes for a skim half-decaf latte.
By then the world seemed to be divided into Opraholics and Winfreaks who wanted nothing more than to appear on The Oprah Winfrey Show. Among them was David Letterman, who started an “Oprah Log,” begging for an invitation. Oprah ignored him but he persisted. “It ain’t Oprah ‘til it’s Oprah,” he told his audiences night after night. Soon his fans began holding up signs in front of the Ed Sullivan Theater, in airports, and at football games: “Oprah, Please Call Dave.”
After eighty-two nights, Phil Rosenthal advised Oprah in the Chicago Sun-Times: “This is a call you have to make…. Every night… he is making you look like a humorless, self-important diva who spouts all kinds of New Age platitudes about forgiveness and positive thought but stubbornly clings to grudges. He’s not the one who looks bad in this. It’s a funny bit, and so long as you refuse to play, you’re the butt of it… You’re simply digging in your heels, being stubborn, petty and stupid.”
Oprah did not make the call. She was still steamed about Letterrman’s jokes over the years:
Top Ten Disturbing Examples of Violence on TV:
No. 6 Unknowing guests gets between Oprah and the buffet
Top Ten Least Popular Tourist Attractions:
No. 3 The Grand Ole Oprah
Top Ten Death-Defying Stunts Robbie Knievel Won’t Perform:
No. 8 Screwing up Oprah Winfrey’s lunch order
Top Ten Things You Don’t Want to Hear from a Guy in a Sports Bar:
No. 1 Oops—time for Oprah.
Top Ten Things Columbus would Say About American if he were alive Today:
No. 6 “How did you come to chose the leader you call Oprah?”
Top Ten Dr. Phil tips for Interviewing Oprah:
No. 4 Grovel
Rapprochement came on December 1, 2005 when Oprah finally agreed to appear on Letterman’s show and then allowed him to escort her to the Broadway premiere of The Color Purple, prompting People to surmise:
And now, ladies and gentlemen, the Top Ten Most Likely Reasons Why Oprah Winfrey Ended Her 16-year Rift with David Letterman and Agreed to Appear on His CBS Late Show:
No. 10 She is producing a Broadway musical, The Color Purple, across the street
Nos. 9-1 See No. 10
“At last our long national nightmare is over,” said The Kansas City Star.
Letterman behaved like a star struck schoolboy. “It means a great deal to me, and I’m just very happy you’re here,” he gushed to Oprah. “You have meant something to the lives of people.”
An estimated 13.5 million people stayed up to watch that night, giving Letterman his biggest audience in more than a decade. The next day Washington Post TV writer Lisa de Moraes observed: “Letterman had become that which he once mocked. An Opraholic.”
Grateful as Letterman was to be in Oprah’s good graces he did not remain her love puppet. When she publicly announced in 2006 that she and her best friend, Gayle King, were simply best friends and not gay lovers, she once again became fodder for his late night monologue: “I hear that and I go hmmmmmm….”
Not so long ago the National Enquirer ran a cover of Oprah looking haggard and bloated with a headline that blared: “Oprah’s Booze & Drug Binges! Fed Up Stedman Walks Out—For Good! She’ll Pay $150 Million to Buy His Silence.” This prompted the always cheeky Letterman to announce:
The Top Ten Signs Oprah Doesn’t Care Anymore:
No. 1 Her last three guests were Johnnie Walker, Jim Beam, and Jose Cuervo.
Letterman vs. Winfrey will never reach pay-per-view because these heavy weights know the limits. She is accustomed to genuflection and he can’t bend a knee—for long. But both know their so-called feud serves them well, especially when they appear together on Super Bowl commercials. So let’s stay tuned for the next roumd.
Cross-posted from Huffington Post
No Oprah in the Billionaire Club
By Kitty Kelley
The name of Oprah Winfrey, the world’s first black female billionaire, was conspicuously absent from the Midas list of do-gooders released this week by Warren Buffet and Bill Gates, who have dragooned their billionaire brethren into promising to give away half their fortune. Mr. Buffet has said he intends to call Ms. Winfrey about making a public commitment to this philanthropic endeavor, and while I’m sure the conversation will be more than cordial, I’ll wager that the lady in question, whose net worth is $2.4 billion, will be unresponsive.
After all, Oprah Winfrey has already established herself as a beloved American icon and does not need the P.R. boost that will accrue to the 40 financial titans who have signed “The Giving Pledge” to share their riches with those less fortunate. But more importantly, Oprah would never voluntarily put herself on the public watch list that will dog the dollars of these philanthropists down to their last decimal, reporting on how much they donate, to whom, when and why. Diane Sawyer has already announced on ABC World News: “We’ll be watching.” Such public scrutiny is loathsome to someone as controlling as Oprah who has kept her finances as private as possible.
Yet, unlike some of the Buffet-Gates givers, she has publicized her philanthropy over the years through press conferences, interviews and her daily talk show. Her giving in the early years of her career was minimal—less than 10 percent of her incredible income—but in 1998 she began increasing her charitable contributions and making more sizeable donations to her charitable foundation:
Her biggest contribution is to her $40 million school in South Africa, The Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls, which she supports through the Oprah Winfrey Foundation. She has said that school will be her legacy. She decided long ago to make her philanthropic investment in South Africa rather than America, where she said poor children did not appreciate education.
“I became so frustrated with visiting inner-city schools that I just stopped going,” Oprah said. “The sense that you need to learn just isn’t there. If you ask the kids what they want or need, they will say an iPod or some sneakers. In South Africa, they don’t ask for money or toys. They ask for uniforms so they can go to school.”
While many applauded Oprah for opening her heart to young girls in South Africa, some criticized her for not investing in the youth of America. “I find it interesting that white people are concerned about me educating black girls,” she said. When the chorus of carps continued, Oprah spoke sharply to all her critics in an interview with BET: “To hell with your criticism,” she said. “I don’t care what you have to say about what I did. I did it.”
As you can see from the chart below, Oprah contributed 7.75 percent of her income over the last few years to her school:
A few months after opening in 2007 Oprah’s Leadership Academy became mired in scandal. Seven students were expelled for lesbian liaisons, and criminal charges were lodged against a dorm matron on fourteen counts of sexual abuse and abasement of students. The trial continues to drag on in Johannesburg.
To date Warren Buffet and Bill Gates have received commitments from 40 people to sign “The Giving Pledge,” eleven of whom are not even billionaires or listed on the Forbes list of 400 Richest Americans, but are well-known for their philanthropy. Oprah, who has made every money list imaginable, and is revered for her good works, has yet to sign. Perhaps Mr. Buffet will be able to persuade her to join philanthropist David Rockefeller, New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg, entertainment executive Barry Diller, Oracle’s co-founder Larry Ellison, energy tycoon T. Boone Pickens, media mogul Ted Turner, film director George Lucas and investor Ron Perelman. But odds are that this is one club Oprah does not want to join.
Cross-posted from Huffington Post
Kathy Griffin & Me in Conversation about "Oprah"
Part 1 of 3
Part 2 of 3
Part 3 of 3
The Duchess of Dough
By Kitty Kelley
I watched Sarah Ferguson on The Oprah Winfrey Show yesterday the same way I watch BP’s oil-spurting video from the Gulf of Mexico—hoping, praying, screaming for someone to cap the swill.
The Duchess of York and the Queen of daytime television are on a first name basis from having done previous interviews so for one hour it was “Sarah” and “Oprah” as the Duchess braided herself into knots with a yarn about why she accepted bribes and sold access to her former husband, Prince Andrew, Britain’s royal trade representative.
Lest she look like a Judas goat, Sarah said she grabbed the first bag of money ($38,000-$40,000) “for a friend of a friend,” who was in financial trouble. Then, seeing how easy that take was, she upped her ante and demanded £500,000 (approximately $750,000 US) for full and complete access to her former husband.
Watching the video of herself fall for the sting by the News of the World tabloid, she mourned the image of the woman selling herself for a mess of pottage. “Oh, I feel so sorry for her…. Bless her … Oh, she’s completely drunk,” said Sarah. She talked about herself in the third person as if to draw a distinction between the greedy, inebriated woman on camera and the humiliated person sitting in front of Oprah.
Tripping over her rationale, the Duchess got tangled in her skein about accepting a black bag of money for “a friend of a friend,” and Oprah, to her credit, said her explanation made no sense.
Oprah, whose net worth is $2.7 billion, could not fathom why the Duchess of York could not simply ask the Queen for the $40,000 Sarah claimed she needed “for a friend of a friend.” Obviously, Oprah’s producers had not told her that the doors of Buckingham Palace slammed shut on Sarah Ferguson in August 1992 when her topless photographs romping on the Cote d’Azur were splashed across the tabloids having her toes sucked by her lover John Bryan. Sarah said he was “just a friend.” Bryan protested he was not sucking her toes. “I was kissing the arch of her foot.”
Sarah was given the royal boot and a not so royal divorce from the Queen’s favorite son. Oprah asked if it was true that she only got $20,000 a year in alimony. Sarah should’ve answered, “No, it is not true.” Instead she shimmied. “I wanted friendship with the boss,” she said, leaving the impression that she had given up great sums of money to remain friends with Her Majesty the Queen.
In fact, Sarah had demanded a lump sum payment of $10 million, plus $5000 a month in child support and her title. She received $750,000 for herself, a $2.1 million trust fund for her two children and she was stripped of her title [HRH: Her Royal Highness] which meant she lost all of her royal perquisites: the royal curtsy, the royal guards, the royal train, the royal yacht, the royal trips, the royal invitations. She lost her royal box at Wimbledon, and her life-size wax figure was yanked from Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum. Denied entry to the royal enclosure at Ascot, she looked pathetic as she stood on the side of the road, clutching the hands of her children and waving to the Queen as she passed in her royal carriage. The biggest loss was her standing in British society.
So she came to America and the plucky Duchess turned herself into a money-making machine. Over the next decade she made (and spent) in excess of $30 million. With John Bryan’s help, she hawked herself to the highest bidder: $25,000 for exclusive photo shoots, $50,000 to $200,000 for exclusive interviews. She signed a book contract for “Budgie—The Little Helicopter” for a minimum of $8 million, including a television series in addition to wind-up dolls, t-shirts, hats and lunch pails. She signed licensing contract with 13 U.S. firms to market souvenirs ranging from tableware to toilet seat covers. She also signed a $3 million contract to write her life story, which she promoted on The Oprah Winfrey Show. Then she signed a $10 million contract with Weight Watchers and traveled the word (all first-class expenses paid) as their spokesperson.
Sarah Ferguson made millions but she spent even more until she found herself yesterday as Oprah said, “spiraling downwards” until she was, again in Oprah’s words, “spiritually and morally bankrupt.”
Like a priest hearing confession, Oprah prepared to absolve Sarah on yesterday’s show. “None of us are defined by our mistakes,” the revered talk show host said, “but once you get the lesson, you don’t repeat it again.” Sarah nodded but Oprah knew she didn’t get it.
“So what is the lesson?” she asked her befuddled guest. Sarah Ferguson stammered a little, her eyes glistening with tears. “I guess chronic abuse of myself… dealing with it from a place of egotistical fear….”
Oprah’s Dwindling Donations
By Kitty Kelley
Last week Oprah Winfrey posted an announcement on the website of Oprah’s Angel Network, saying she was folding the charity and would not be collecting any more money from her viewers to donate to various charities. Since 1998 she has collected $80 million.
Oprah did not say why she folding the wings of her angels but the Chicago bureau of the Associated Press quoted her spokeswoman, Angela De Paul, as saying it was not because donations had dwindled.
However, in reviewing the most recent tax returns of Oprah’s Angel Network, it appears that is exactly what has happened. The viewer donations to Oprah’s Angel Network have fallen off by almost half of what they once were.
The 2008 donations ($5,485, 511) were approximately fifty percent less than the 2007 donations ($11,808, 750), and these were well below the average annual donations ($14, 417, 074) during 2004-2007. Although the 2009 tax returns have not yet been filed those of previous years suggest that Oprah’s Angel Network has been steadily losing donations from viewers over the last few years.
The question is why. One reason is the plummeting economy that has slammed all charities. Studies show that the most generous among us are frequently those who have the least. In other words, it is not the rich who given consistently and generously but those with much less disposable income—the demographic of Oprah’s viewers. While Oprah still reigns as the number one talk show host, she has lost 3 million viewers since 2007, which would naturally diminish her donations.
A review of the tax returns of Oprah’s Angel Network indicate that she has been donating more than one-half of her viewers’ contributions to help the needy in Sub-Saharan Africa ($2, 821, 611 in 2008) and non-U.S regions in North America ($2,409, 594). The total for non-US grants and distributions: $5,231, 205. The total for U.S. grants: $3,354,322.
Some might suggest that the 150,000 viewers who contributed to Oprah’s Angel Network are contributing less now because she is donating more of their money outside the U.S. But Oprah’s fans did not give their money with strings attached. Wherever she wanted to give was fine with them and in the last few years she has decided to position herself more as a global philanthropist and concentrate most of her giving to Africa.
In March Oprah staged a 10 day online auction on Ebay (“Oprah’s Great Closet Cleanout”), selling 40 pairs of shoes and boots, 42 purses and 101 items of clothing, including jackets, skirts, blouses, sweaters and dresses. Each item was tagged as belonging to Oprah: “Oprah Winfrey Prada Red Suede Peep-Toe Heels” drew bids of over $573.00. “Oprah Winfrey Black Chanel Quilted Evening Bag” drew $2025.00. “Oprah Winfrey Carolina Herrera Dress, Worn on Show!” drew $1125.00.
Oprah did not reveal the total figure raised from her online auction but she did reveal that all proceeds went to the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy in South Africa. Oprah’s previous online auctions (1999, 2004 and 2005) benefitted Oprah’s Angel Network, which at the time gave most of their donations to U.S. charities.
As the only major contributor to her two remaining charities– The Oprah Winfrey foundation (total assets in 2008: $165,919,695) and The Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy Foundation (total assets in 2008: $47, 431, 721)—Oprah has taken a financial hit in the value of her investment assets. An examination of the tax returns from each foundation shows she has had significant losses, which may explain why she recently hired the chief investment officer away from the LA billionaire Eli Broad to manage her investments.
Needing to concentrate on an investment strategy that will build a lasting endowment for her school in South Africa suggests why Oprah decided to discontinue Oprah’s Angel Network. Having invested over $40 million in The Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy, she needs to put all her resources into keeping her legacy afloat.
Has The World’s Largest Piggy Bank Gone Broke?
By Kitty Kelley
Oprah Winfrey has just announced that Oprah’s Angel Network will no longer be accepting donations. She’s also discontinuing the Network’s grantmaking program. Oh, Oprah. Say it ain’t so. But her quiet announcement on the website of Oprah’s Angel Network makes it clear that her Angel giving has come to an end. Por que? Oprah does not say.
In 1997, she formed Oprah’s Angel Network to collect donations from her viewers. “I want you to open your hearts and see the world in a different way,” she told them. “I promise this will change your life for the better.” She started by asking for spare change to create “the world’s largest piggy bank” to fund college scholarship for needy students. In less than six months her viewers had donated more than $3.5 million in coins and bills to send 150 students to college, 3 students from every state. Even the White House contributed, and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton flew to Chicago to appear on Oprah’s show with a piggy bank full of coins she had collected from employees.
Oprah had been deeply affected by the 1997 death of Diana, Princess of Wales, and wanted to assume Diana’s humanitarian role. “We are … grieved by Princess Diana’s death,” Oprah said on The Today Show, explaining Oprah’s Angel Network, “and the world was talking about what she did charitably–and I wanted people to know, you can do that yourself in your own space where you are in your life…. You can be a princess … by taking what you have and extending it to other people.”
Oprah partnered her Angel Network with 10,000 volunteers from Habitat for Humanity to build 205 houses, one in every city whose local television station broadcast The Oprah Winfrey Show. When Habitat for Humanity built a house for Oprah’s Angel Network, they called the project Oprah’s Angel House, and after the tsunami of 2004 and the 2005 hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Oprah Angel Houses sprang up like mushrooms. She took her show to New Orleans, pledging $10 million of her own money, and from 2005 to 2006 she raised $11 million more through her Angel Network for rebuilding. She paid the operating expenses of Oprah’s Angel Network so that all donations went directly to the charities she selected. By 2008, her viewers had contributed more than $70 million to 172 projects around the world that focused on women, children, and families; education and literacy; relief and recovery; and youth and community development–all selected by Oprah and donated in Oprah’s name. She fully understood the goodwill that accrues to those who give, and so when she gave, she did so very publicly. Her philanthropy was not quiet or anonymous.
“She certainly makes an effort to do good deeds,” Steve Johnson wrote in the Chicago Tribune, “even if there is often an accompanying effort to make the effort known.” It is true that most of Oprah’s giving was followed by an Oprah press release, plus mentions on The Oprah Winfrey Show, but perhaps she was setting an example for others to follow and not just being self-aggrandizing.”
Now with her syndicated show in its last year of operation, Oprah is discontinuing “the world’s largest piggy bank,” which is dismaying to a needy nation, especially those in the Gulf of Mexico experiencing horrendous disaster from British Petroleum’s oil spill. Oh, Oprah. I hope she reconsiders and keeps galvanizing her legions of angels to continue giving.
She’ll soon be starting OWN (OPRAH WINFREY NETWORK) and have potential access to 80 million viewers, ten times the number she’s attracting now. Think of what Oprah can still accomplish.
Cross-posted from Huffington Post