Exultant portent of things to come

Oprah Winfrey AP

The recent 2018 Golden Globe awards were capped by the acceptance speech delivered by Oprah Winfrey, this year’s recipient of the Cecil B. DeMille lifetime achievement award.

Viewers and show biz stars were moved by her felt exhortation for them to fight against endemic exploitation in the entertainment industry and equal opportunities and pay for women.

Oprah’s talk was deemed to be one of the major highlights of the annual event, effectively roused listeners into belated realization and action for radical reforms.

Even more significantly and memorably, after she delivered it, Oprah’s exhortation continued to move viewers and made them think—and vow to act.

It’s most surprising but potent effect extended beyond its original objective, to provide the #MeToo and Time’s Up reform movements a clarion call and rallying cry.

It prompted some people to see Oprah in a different light that is much more influential and important than her show biz and media origins—as a national leader.

The day after she spoke, social media buzzed and blazed with many people’s shared realization that she had it in her to aspire for the United States’ highest office—and run for president!

Of course, some dissers and dissenters scoffed that Oprah had no political experience—but, her new legions of supporters begged to disagree, pointing out that she was influential in the movement over a decade ago to motivate Barack Obama to run and successfully become the first black US president.

Oprah’s many achievements, popularity and inspirational influence in the US, in their view, make her a logical choice to be fielded by the Democratic Party in the next presidential polls. She has a good chance of becoming the country’s first female chief executive, a high-flying aspirational goal that eluded even Hillary Clinton.

When we saw and felt the rising tide and tsunami-force wave of support for “President Oprah,” we felt elated, because we had written about the very same possibility some years ago.

President Donald Trump AP

We recalled that Donald Trump himself expressed it even before he ran for office: In an old interview, he was asked whom he would tap as his vice president if he did decide to make his bid for president—and his answer was, “Oprah Winfrey.”

But, would Oprah win over Trump if they both ran for president? Some observers cite the innate advantage a sitting president enjoys to douse hopes for an Oprah victory.

But, others opine that Trump has been behaving so “unpresidentially” in office that many more Americans will vote for Oprah to replace him and trump him.

Now comes the hard part: To make Oprah want to run, in the first place.

All this time, she has been nixing the notion—but, she appears to be less negatively “thinking about it” of late, so there’s hope.

For our part, we take heart in the pledge and promise “embedded” in Oprah’s very name, Winfrey, which constitutes a triumphant slogan in itself—“Win Free”!

Is that an exultant portent of things to come?