Bruce’s Beat

Corporations are immortal, amoral externalizing machines. They exist above and outside the laws of man and God to rake in profits while making sure someone else pays the cost. When insurance companies lose billions in the stock market, they raise premiums and are awarded government bailouts. When electric utilities squander their monopoly profits on dangerous nukes, their rate payers and taxpayers must pay the price. When manufacturing corporations pollute the soil, air and water, any health effects and cleanup costs are somebody else’s problem. Corporate accountability is unaccountability, pure and simple. So when media billionaire Oprah Winfrey acts like what she is – a marketing machine, a corporation – nobody should be the least bit surprised.

Brand Oprah and Corporate Accountability

In the January 19, 2006 installment of Freedom Rider, “Oprah’s Best Self” BC‘s Margaret Kimberly expertly skewered Oprah Inc. for promoting the bogus work of a white ex-junkie she had every reason to believe was based on lies. More than a few BC readers wrote commending Ms. Kimberly’s work. This is what one subscriber had to say:

Oprah failed to mention that she had been informed months before she anointed the book that it was a LIE. Nonetheless, for reasons that only she knows, she ignored this information, and declared the book a “must read.” Only after being severely attacked by the country’s press did Oprah withdraw her endorsement of the book and acknowledge that she had been wrong to imply that it was OK to tell a little lie as long as it was embedded in a larger truth. She then decided to publicly attack the author in what I consider a vicious manner, striking a “Don’t mess with Oprah” posture. I find her behavior extremely duplicitous and far from honorable and am totally unable to understand why she has been deified.

I don’t know if Margaret K is going to write on this again, but my own view is that Oprah is a machine, an industry, a brand. Her prime motivation is to protect the brand. So after being outed for letting this liar on the air and hyping his book, her protect-the-brand strategy is to attack the author just like you said. Don’t mess with Oprah.

By the way, I have sent in my $50 membership check.

EB

Regular BC readers will know this is neither the first nor the worst instance of Brand Oprah’s cynical abuse of the public trust to turn the dubious book of a self-serving liar into a best seller. Back in April of 2004, corporate Oprah boosted the book and launched the career of HIV-AIDS huckster J.L. King, who has made a nice living ever since spreading the racist, homophobic myth that the rise in HIV-AIDS among black women is due to secretive and predatory bisexual black men on the so-called “down low”.

Unlike the Oprah show, BC actually consulted the Centers for Disease Control. We interviewed real HIV-AIDS researchers, public health professionals, and advocates of testing and treatment. In our September 8, 2005 cover article, “The Low Down on the Down Low,” they unanimously agreed that J.L. King’s and Oprah Inc.’s lurid myth of bisexual black men on the DL as the principal transmission vector of HIV-AIDS in the African American community was unfounded and a dangerous misdirection away from real efforts to educate the public, combat the epidemic and save lives.

America, and especially black America, is still waiting for the apology to come from Oprah Inc. for boosting the fraudulent “Down Low” book of J. L. King. As is the case with most corporate actions, obstructing the cause of HIV-AIDS education and treatment has arguably benefited Brand Oprah and boosted book sales for yet another of her favored huckster-authors, while others have paid the price.

Those others, arguably, have been those who contracted or unknowingly spread the virus who might otherwise have heard accurate information and acted on it, as well as some of the already infected who have come forward later than they might have, or not at all, thanks to the misdirection of “down low” hysteria. They, and we, are still awaiting Brand Oprah’s apology for that one.

Solutions

We try our best to answer email from our readers, and mostly succeed. Most write us about specific stories or events, but some readers come to us with more general questions, like this reader in the UK:

Good Morning Black Commentator,

I am a subscriber to your website but can I make a point, without offense? In what ways are you encouraging solutions? I really believe in solution based projects. The piece with regard to Hillary Clinton was based on why she is the way she is. That, in my opinion is a “so what” question. It is important to keep the “triangulating, back pedaling and pandering” in mind, but why is it we spend so much time criticizing when more important things need to be done? The more time we spend concentrating on other people and “things” the less time we spend on ourselves and what “we need to do.”

Much Love,

Sandra

Our estimable editor and co-publisher Glen Ford answered Sandra thusly:

Dear Sandra,

We deeply appreciate your readership and critique. You voice a common complaint, one which is understandable, in that everybody wants “solutions” to the manifold problems that plague us. However, BlackCommentator.com is not The Book of Solutions, nor does such a publication exist. Our masthead reads:

“The Black Commentator: Commentary, Analysis and Investigation on Issues Affecting African Americans.”

Before one arrives at the solution phase, one must grasp and describe what is happening. A conscientious publication is obligated to place events/trends in context; to strip away the conventional and perceived wisdom to reveal the actual nature of things, as in “analysis.” Then one discusses and comments on the situation, as in “commentary.” Hopefully, one has done enough digging and checking – due diligence – to be confident that the subject has been adequately “investigated.” And one also has an obligation to investigate subjects that are ignored or distorted by hostile media.

When we “out” Black Trojan Horses in service of the Right and call upon Blacks to “shun” and “denounce” them so that their value to the enemy is diminished, that is a kind of solution to the infiltration problem.

When we provide dramatic and compelling evidence that the Congressional Black Caucus has been fractured and largely neutered by the defection to the Right by a number of named congresspersons, causing BC readers to create a CBC watchdog organization (the CBC Monitor), it is clear that our work has summoned forth an historic response to the crisis.

We are very careful not to overbill ourselves, or stretch our mission to the point that the operation collapses. BC is not a think tank; it attempts to stimulate others to think more deeply, and to provide information, analysis and commentary that should lead to action. We are not a mass organization; we speak to the “influencers,” the folks whose opinions and actions matter to masses of our people.

There are vast holes in the institutional Black political framework, which inevitably tempts (or drives) African American individuals and organizations to wear a rack full of hats. As a result, they are often incapable of fulfilling any of the assumed responsibilities, leading to failure on all fronts.

BC is not all things to and for all of our people. But we hope we are of some value to you, every Thursday.

Sincerely,

Back to the Plantation

Margaret Kimberly’s weekly Freedom Rider offerings are always on the mark, and a favorite topic of reader email. Her insightful column of January 26, 2006 “Hillary Clinton’s Plantation,” sparked several reader responses, including this one:

Your comments on the item referring to Hillary Clinton’s speech were right on target. However, the Democratic Party is the only instrument strong enough to compete with the new Republicans, so we have no choice but to work with (or through) them. We must re-orient them and get them out of the bad-mouthing business. They need a positive program that is more attractive than the mess in which we now find ourselves. I propose that this be a well thought-out program for achieving and maintaining peace through cooperation with the United Nations rather trying to run it. This should involve withdrawal of troops from Iraq and closing our bases there (and possibly elsewhere), joining with the United Nations to repair the damage we have done to the country, restoring our honor by re-joining those pacts we have broken, disarming our nuclear arsenal or placing it under international control, honoring the World Court, etc. Terrorism needs to be a priority but war on a country or countries is not effective in controlling anything!

Dr. Bob

We thank Dr. Bob for his compliment, but wonder about the viability of several of his suggestions.

To name just a couple, our own views are that for the time being, we must work inside as well as outside the Democratic party, and that our work inside it must focus on active opposition to both Republicans and to the Republican-lite and corporate funded DLC-style misleadership of the Democratic party. This must include holding the Black Caucus accountable to the wishes of its constituents, to the demands of the Black Consensus.