http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/07/07/rex-murphy-oprah-winfrey-the-obama-supporter-fame-left-behind/Rex Murphy: Oprah Winfrey, the Obama supporter fame left behind
Rex Murphy Jul 7, 2012 – 6:00 AM ET | Last Updated: Jul 6, 2012 5:23 PM ET
Now that the U.S. presidential race is well and truly underway, celebrity A-listers are at it again — with one massive exception.
A-listers play the political game in a way the rest of the world can only imagine. George Clooney, for example, is hosting a fund-raising dinner for Obama in Switzerland. This might be the new definition of a real celebrity: If you can hold a fundraiser for the president of the United States on a continent that is not the one in which he is running, you are a real star. The rule has a useful corollary: If you can afford to fly out of your own country to attend a $40,000-per-plate dinner, you are a big donor.
Mr. Clooney’s Switzerland shindig for his favourite politico is but an echo of a much more significant exchange that occurred some four years ago. I was reminded of that transaction by the psuedo-news of Katie Holmes’ flight from her marriage to Tom Cruise — and the caravan of Scientology that goes with it. Those whose minds are, like mine, perilously defenceless against the absorption of the absolutely trivial, will recall that when Cruise first hooked up with Holmes, he went on Oprah Winfrey’s show and started jumping up and down on the cushions of the guest couch like a 10-year-old with a new toy, or a monkey with (as we say these days) incontinence issues.
Cruise went on Oprah’s show then because he was an A-lister, and Oprah’s was the show of celebrity shows, the singular plateau on the nearly barren savannah of celebrity display cases. Oprah was the queen of all that she surveyed. She was regularly highlighted as one of the most, if not the most, influential persons in the United States. If she touted a book, it went to the top of the best seller lists. She waved a wand and the already famous were made more famous. And she was ardently “non-political.”
But four years ago, the House of Oprah made an epic decision: It chose to endorse Barack Obama. Oprah featured Obama on her show, with Michelle, and put the celebrated Oprah muscle to task for his campaign. It was a truly momentous event — the most powerful woman in entertainment endorsing a presidential candidate.
The move was timely. Obama had not yet crested to the great heights of adulation that marked the later stages of his campaign. Oprah endorsed him when it counted, then — having made her point — withdrew from the stage. I can’t think of a more significant moment in the modern intersection of the worlds of Hollywood and Washington, celebrity and power.
Was Oprah’s benediction a “tipping point”? Was it the moment when Obama jumped from being just another candidate to being a star in a class of his own?
Perhaps, but that was then. What of now? Well, something strange has happened. Oprah has lost her chi. She ended her long-time relationship with mainstream television and decided that she should have her own network. It is one of the very few examples of a person ordering her own self-exile. And the result is that she has simply ceased — in television terms — to be. I cannot recall a more precipitous drop in status, and in the influence status bestows, than Oprah’s almost complete fall from entertainment eminence.
Who speaks of Oprah now, save in valediction? Is she endorsing Obama this time? Who cares? Had her “fall” something to do with breaking her tradition of staying out of politics? I think the answer is simpler than that: Fame is frail, celebrity is a bubble and the spotlight passes.
I’m sure Oprah’s absence won’t cast a shadow on the dinner in Switzerland, not will Mr. Clooney raise a glass to the departed queen. Oprah will be an unacknowledged ghost at that banquet. No star, and no president, wants a reminder of glories that have faded, or of stars than shine no more.
National Post
