I don't like Oprah. I admit this may have something to do with the fact that I'm "Mr." Mike, but in truth I don't think so. Like most people, I have a day job and really don't get the opportunity to see "The Oprah Winfrey Show." Yet I still see Oprah—everywhere.

The last time I actually watched an entire show was several years ago when the topic was something along the lines of "who knows you better, your man or your best friend?" They brought on celebrities and their best friends and showed videotape of poor Steadman answering questions about Oprah's shopping habits. He got them wrong, but Gayle King (Oprah's best friend) got them right.

It was incredibly unfair, a fact that Oprah acknowledged during the show by saying "we were having some fun with the guys."

This season's show is more about how you should run your life than about lesbian cousins in love. She's reinvented the show several times in an attempt to get above her schlocky past and the results are lower ratings. Jerry Springer's show ended Oprah's ten-year run as queen of daytime talk.

But it's not just her daily weepfest that I detest. It's her power. This is a woman who can single-handedly put a book on the bestseller list (and increase the price in the process). She can sway the market prices of commodities (yes, I know she won the libel suit, but the Texan's had a point about her public influence). This is a person who can give her best friend a syndicated daytime talk show. This is a person who can greenlight a movie, make herself the star, and guarantee its success by her very association with it.

Look at "Beloved" Oprah's latest foray onto the big screen. The fact that she made a movie got her more free publicity than it deserved. Lest we forget the power behind the film, it's been refereed to as "Oprah Winfrey's Beloved" in the press. The AP ran a story about how Oprah prepared for the roll by spending the night in the woods near where the underground railroad ran. She spoke about how a man was there portraying a slave owner and called her "the n-word." I'm sure that really helped her get her head in the game. Never mind that she could buy and sell this actor in wholesale lots.

Now I'm seeing commercials for "Oprah Winfrey Presents: 'The Wedding'" a TV movie. I recently ordered a book for Mrs. Mr. Mike from Amazon.com. It came with a sticker labeling it an Oprah Winfrey book club pick.

At my local bookstore, I found a book titled Journey to Beloved by Oprah Winfrey. In it were photos from the film, most of which were—you guessed it—of Oprah Winfrey.

Her recent drop in ratings has lead to some questionable decisions regarding her show. For eight weeks she devoted a segment to creepy author John Gray of Men are from Mars Women are from Venus fame. These weepy sessions have driven several fans to change the channel on Wednesdays.

November sweeps are coming up and Oprah's ratings may determine whether she leaves the show finally. She's made rumblings before and usually the contracts become lucrative enough that she's stayed. Many stations use Oprah's show as a lead-in for their newscasts. If the ratings go, so might the show's plum position on the daily lineup.

As an aside to all this, Mrs. Mr. Mike thinks that my problem with Oprah is that she's a woman. She cites examples of my distaste for other "women in power" (I don't like Laura Ingraham, either). That's simply not the case. It's not that Oprah's a woman, it's that she wields so much influence in the popular culture that her tastes (in politics, movies, literature, and diet) become adopted by teaming masses. That means good projects are pushed out of the way to make room for the Oprah juggernaught.

Oprah went from a 19-year-old anchorwoman in Nashville, to the highest-paid entertainer in the world. That's worth celebrating and even envying a little. But she uses this power to tell others they should live their lives more like she lives hers. I'm not interested in how Oprah lives her life.

Oprah's media saturation is amazing. She's on the cover of People, listed in Entertainment Weekly as the most powerful Hollywood power player, featured in a photoshoot with Barbara Walters and Diane Sawyer (both of whom are women with power that I like, dear) in the November issue of Vanity Fair.

Walters interviewed her recently in a prime time network weep fest of personal discovery.

In it's second week in theatres, "Beloved" came in at an unhealthy 7th behind "Pleasentville," "Practical Magic," "Antz," "Bride of Chucky," "Soldier," and "Rush Hour," several of which have been out longer than Oprah's "baby." It dropped 48 percent in attendance after the first week.

Granted, "Beloved" didn't get as wide a distribution as some of the larger films, but it got twice the hype. Word of mouth was supposed to drive this film and if the numbers are any indication, that isn't happening. This is what Mr. Mike like's to call the "Madonna's 'Evita'" slump.

Oprah has the power to get a film made, but she falls short when it comes to getting it past the critics. Some like it and some don't, but many of them have the same criticism: It's too long (2 hours 51 minutes), the editing is confusing, and Oprah isn't a lead actress. Others have more specific gripes. Case in point Charles Taylor's review in Salon:

		If "Beloved" didn't have its origin in a novel written by a black woman, Demme's movie might seem a disjointed and over-the-top white fantasy about the suffering of black folks and their strange, healing folk ways. Odd things happen in black households, the movie seems to say, powerful forces the rest of us can't understand. But thank goodness the black community knows how to take care of its own. There is a separatism to "Beloved" that's depressing coming from a director whose previous films showed an embracing, integrationist spirit (and I don't just mean racially). Nothing in "Beloved" moved me as much as the black faces Demme quietly but deliberately included throughout "Something Wild." The presence of those people was an unmistakable rebuke to the ethos of the Reagan era, with its narrow ideas about who constituted America.

Entertainment Weekly gave it a C+.

Bjorn Thompson of Savoy Magazine called the movie a failure noting:

		And yeah, a lot of things don’t work in Beloved. In place of dramatic tension or character development, there is a lot of shouting and swooping close-ups of actors’ faces. The emotional pitch is kept at a screeching frequency, and if that tends to make the picture exhausting, it also tends to make it dull. What with all the shouting and flying spittle, it’s tough to know which overblown scene is supposed to be the climax — so we tend to habituate, and the intensity of the scenes loses its value. Beloved cries wolf so many times, we stop listening. And Rachel Portman’s score didn’t help matters any — it’s a gaudy, exaggerated, artless effort. Also, like many recent high-middlebrow Hollywood offerings (Amistad, Saving Private Ryan), Beloved equates repulsive with “authentic.” The rationale appears to be “if we have the courage to film someone pissing, that demonstrates moral courage.” Actually, it’s a way of arousing the audience’s prurient pretensions; because “polite” films (like Trip to Bountiful) don’t show stuff like this, it must mean ruder ones are sufficiently contradistinguished from polite, eighties-type Oscar-harvest gloss. This confers integrity to the audience, as if seeing Beloved was an act of moral courage! It’s a questionable line of reasoning, but it has lead to some remarkable visuals — in this case, Oprah Winfrey jetting an inch-thick stream of steaming piss at the camera. Personally, I might have done without it, but I see where the scene is leading — it is meant to symbolically represent Beloved’s rebirth (Sethe’s “breaking water”), and also to suggest Sethe’s “animal characteristics,” which is the term Schoolteacher, her former master, used to “scientifically” designate black people’s psychology/physiology.

There is, of course, no doubt that Oprah's fan base will always be there for her no matter how she decides to spend her millions. Oprah is a vocal advocate for a number of causes, though she tends to refer to them as "her" charities.

Just the same, you can't expect to be so powerful without causing some sort of backlash. That was part of the reason for the veggie libel suit out of Texas. Granted, Oprah really should be allowed to say what she wants on her show. I'm glad the Texans lost what many people have seen as a ridiculous suit. But the suit itself and the reasoning behind it could (and should) be separated.

If Oprah has the power to boost a book to the bestseller list simply by devoting a show to how much she likes it, then is it so unreasonable to say that when she comes out against a product, sales of that product may fall? If that product is a freely traded commodity such as beef, then is Oprah's opinion enough to make the market fluctuate? I would say yes.

Of course, the law in Texas under which they tried to sue her was ridiculous. Yes she can sway the prices of beef with a wave of her hand, but no, she shouldn't be censored from speaking out.

Critics of Oprah's show say it has evolved into "change your life television." It's full of psychobabble and new-age gobbledygook. Ratings (and the cancellation of John Gray's segments) indicate that Wednesday's are watch anything but Oprah days. They say Oprah has grown sanctimonious and self-righteous. She even sings her own theme song.

If you're an Oprah fan and have stuck with her through the early tabloid days, through the fat and thin days, and are still with her in the weepy "change your life" days. Good for you, I guess. You've found an idol.

I just hope you haven't found a role model.

Maybe these links will help:

The official Oprah Winfrey Show site. Warning, this site may cause you to question your (and Oprah's) sanity.

The Oprasis: a cyber-gathering of ex-fans and critics.

Movie reviews (68 of them) of "Beloved" care of Movie Review Query Engine

CNNfn story about how publishers love Oprah's book club (well the ones that get picked do).

Mighty Morphin' Oprah: Watch as Oprah's weight and ratings drop!

Yahoo's coverage of the cattleman's suit and Oprah's victory for free speech.

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