Produced by Spielberg and Oprah

The left's idols. The latest favorite? Indians. Apparently the French are not "vibrant" enough, nor is their cuisine good enough. The Hundred-Foot Journey, based on some novel by someone who pushes the multicult line.

Too little, too late?

To do some good, that is...

EW: Oprah to reunite 'The Sound of Music' cast for the first time in 45 years (via Soomp)

Novaseeker on a story featured in Oprah's magazine:

Actually I expect that the guy would lose more if divorced, hence why he is "agreeing", reluctantly, to what Jean Morgan effectively crammed down his throat here. As a quasi-SAHM, she will win, and win huge, in divorce. Family court viciously, absolutely viciously, punishes men who had wives who stayed at home or scaled back work (as Morgan suggests she did here, based on his income) in order to make time for child-raising. That’s a "favor" he did her that the state will make him dearly pay for forever, essentially, given that they were married 20+ years. So, he’s basically stuck between a rock and a hard place: he can get divorced, in which he will probably end up living in an apartment while the house is sold to redistribute the equity, and she gets what she wants (and probably more) anyway, or he can agree to this non-divorce divorce and live in the same house while his wife continues to draw on the joint assets and finances and remains "amicable" with him. On balance, he’s probably better off in the latter case, financially, even though it’s utterly emasculating. The family law doesn’t give him good choices.

Morals of the story: (1) never in a billion years have a stay at home wife unless you’re willing to support her financially until you die and (2) realize that in this culture, once your usefulness as a nest-husband has evaporated, don’t expect your wife to want to stick around — she can and will do what she wants, and depending on how your marriage works financially, you may have pretty much no good options at that point in your life.

All of this really just points out the inequitable nature of no fault divorce. As with adultery, a spouse who doesn’t do anything "wrong" still gets punished if the other spouse simply gets bored, as long as the bored spouse is the one who earned less money. It’s an insane, immoral system.

The Catholic Thing: Oprah and the Dominicans
By Joan Frawley Desmond

I forced myself to endure Oprah in order to watch that episode with the Dominican sisters. I think the sisters handled it rather well, given the format of the show, and I liked watching the short clip of compline.

The American Papist: Today: The Sisters’ big day on Oprah!

Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist

The Thinking Housewife: The Spiritual Alchemy of Oprah

I thought it was good news, but...

then I find out Oprah Winfrey is launching her own network in 2010... What was the good news? Her show is scheduled to end in September 2011.


Oprah Winfrey to launch US cable television network‎
'Oprah Winfrey Show' to end in 2011 - Television- msnbc.com

Camera Lucida: Why Does Oprah Cry On Air? A little for the camera, and more for herself

Feel-good spirituality

That's what Gaius Baltar is promoting for his sect--God loves us because we are perfect as we are. So what we need to do is to find God's presence in us, realize His acceptance of us, and come to accept ourselves, and thus be spiritual. Is this what the creators of BSG thinking of religion? Or are they [or Baltar] tailoring the colonial fleet's monotheism to fit Baltar's neuroses? A riff on the new-age spirituality or Oprah perhaps? On the other hand, how is Baltar's new religion linked to the quest for perfection by the cylons?

According to Christian Tradition, we are loved by God not because of who or what we are or have done, but because of God's own goodness. We are not a cause of God's love--rather God is the cause of His love, and His love seeks to diffuse itself through Creation. We could come to understand this through a metaphysical proof; but ours is not an age of reason. It remains to be seen what the stance of Ron Moore and the other creative minds behind BSG towards religion is.

In the meantime: Sci Fi Friday: Ron Moore on Religion vs. Humanism in Star Trek and ...

Something about Stuart Kauffman: Pantheism Watch (via Postmodern Conservative)

S. M. Hutchens, The Oprah Club

The Oprah Club

Mere literacy has no value in itself. It is worthy only as the servant of virtue. The virtues of Oprahism, however, appear to be subordinate to, and ordered by, the prime virtue of self-realization and self-actualization rather than that of finding the self by losing it in sacrificial service to others, subject to the will of God. Its heroes tend to be Prometheans injured by, and in defiance of, the Traditional Moral Order (let us all weep for them a bit), lap-christs for the entertainment of silly women. Oprahism, to be sure, is chock-full of "virtues," but the order in which they are placed relative to one another in the scheme of the whole makes the phenomenon a veil of evil.

Dr. Fleming on the Oprah and Obama partnership

The Oprah Obama Show

Oprah is dangerous

First she touted "The Secret."

[Recapturing Our Catholic Patrimony entry; Our Sunday Visitor article]

I was curious as to what other spiritual garbage she might be peddling so I tuned in today, and lo and behold, another program with "happiness" experts. Oprah is a woman with too much media power and influence for her own good. One of these experts was "Dr." Robert Holden of the Happiness Project. (The American site: Success Intelligence.) It doesn't take a guru to recognize that people are unhappy, being absorbed with materal things, work, and themselves--however, it takes a saint to show them the way to true happiness. Positive (or delusional) thinking is not happiness, it's another false form of pride--I am NOT the lord of the universe, and it is not my role to re-create the world in my image.

Encouraging people to pursue their dreams even if the pay isn't there may seem like "good" advice, but (1) what of their obligations to support others, and (2) what kind of economy subsidizes their activities? It's still "all about me"--there is no attempt to differentiate between good self-love and bad self-love.

Whom do you serve?

Vocation has been perverted by these self-help "experts," who talk about finding "significance" and "purpose," but there is no reference to the demands of justice, especially social justice. Again, I am not the source of my own role--rather God has called me to one, as my Lord and Creator. I don't expect to see any of these people criticizing the current economic system--they have too much invested interest in it, making use of the system to market their snake oil.

Oprah picks Cormac McCarthy's 'The Road'

Oprah picks Cormac McCarthy's 'The Road'

By HILLEL ITALIE, AP National Writer
Wed Mar 28, 3:18 PM ET

NEW YORK - Before Wednesday, few could have imagined the names " Oprah Winfrey" and "Cormac McCarthy" appearing in the same sentence.

McCarthy, one of the country's most revered and press-shy authors — a man only slightly more accessible than J.D. Salinger — will give his first ever television interview, lured by the long arm of Winfrey, publishing's biggest hit-maker and a media superstar.

Winfrey announced Wednesday on her Chicago-based TV show that McCarthy's "The Road" was her new book club pick.

"Mr. McCarthy respects her work, admires what she has accomplished, has an awareness of her book club, and thought it would be interesting to participate in the conversation with Oprah," McCarthy's publicist, Paul Bogaards of Alfred A. Knopf, told The Associated Press. "He knew who she was when she called."

In selecting "The Road," not only will Winfrey meet with an author who, according to Bogaards, has given just two interviews in the past 40 years, but she has taken on a novel with little of the uplifting spirit she often favors.

"The Road," published last September by Knopf, is a sparely written story of a father and son trying to survive as they wander through a burned and bare, post-nuclear landscape. Praised almost universally by reviewers, it was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle prize and is considered a leading contender for the Pulitzer Prize.

"It's unlike anything I've ever chosen as a book club selection before because it's post-apocalyptic. (It is) very unusual for me to select this book, but it's fascinating," Winfrey said on her show.

McCarthy, 73, is known for novels such as "All the Pretty Horses" and "Blood Meridian," and has been widely cited as an heir to William Faulkner for his biblical prose and rural settings, yearning back to a time when television itself, much less TV talk shows, was unthinkable. He has been called too sentimental, but critic Harold Bloom, famous for his discernment, regards McCarthy as one of the greatest living American writers, along with Don DeLillo, Philip Roth and Thomas Pynchon.

"That shows good taste on her part," Bloom said of Winfrey's choice.

Winfrey has taken on harsher stories before, such as Elie Wiesel's Holocaust classic, "Night," and, notoriously, James Frey's "A Million Little Pieces," a memoir of addiction and recovery that turned out to be largely fabricated.

In the coming weeks, the reclusive McCarthy, who did not appear on Wednesday's show and who lives in Santa Fe, N.M., will conduct his "first television interview ever," Winfrey said.

"It's a bit of a surprise, but a wonderful surprise," McCarthy's editor, Knopf president Sonny Mehta, told the AP. "This is good news for those of us who have been in the Cormac McCarthy business for a very long time."

"The Road" is one of McCarthy's most popular books, spending several weeks on numerous best seller lists. According to Nielsen BookScan, which tracks about 70 percent of industry sales, it has sold 138,000 copies in hardcover. Thanks to Winfrey, that total should increase by hundreds of thousands. A paperback was not planned until September, but Vintage Books, understandably, is publishing one now, with a massive first printing of 950,000 copies.

"It's going to be a big year for Cormac," said Mehta, noting the planned release later this year of the Coen brothers film, "No Country for Old Men," based on the McCarthy novel of the same name.

Winfrey's choice also marks the first time in five years that she has picked a work of contemporary fiction. In 2002, she suspended the club for a year and revived it with an emphasis on "classics," such as John Steinbeck's "East of Eden" and Faulkner's "As I Lay Dying." Her pick before McCarthy was Sidney Poitier's memoir, "The Measure of a Man."

___

Associated Press writer Megan Reichgott contributed to this story from Chicago.

the author's official homepage
Random House page
Village Voice review of The Road; NPR review; The Guardian review; Washington Post
Wired article: At the Sante Fe Institute

Not that I care about Oprah's book club, since I don't think she is the modern guru that others think she is, but I have heard about The Road before, and it would be interesting to hear what Oprah-watchers think of it. I don't expect it to lead them to change their lifestyles. Perhaps someone should tell Oprah about Mr. Kunstler's The Long Emergency. But that's not fiction...