Leave it to TIFF to draw one of the most influential women in the world to Toronto. That’s right; Oprah Winfrey will be in town to present the confusingly titled Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire. And as the queen of all media, it’s only appropriate that her six degrees of separation extends to another high-profile presentation: John Hillcoat’s adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Road.
Back in 2007, Oprah stamped McCarthy’s bleak tale of post-apocalyptic survival with her Book Club seal of approval — giving McCarthy his first ever television interview and effectively encouraging middle-American viewers to check out some heavy existentialism (which is about as easy as getting 15-year-olds to read Margaret Laurence).
It’s times like these that we almost forget the more insidious activities of The O; namely, serving as a sort of overlord for a dangerous collective of celebrity science pushers whose media-savvy sway is leading scores of dedicated viewers on personal-health witch hunts based on medical advice that’s about as sound as George W. Bush’s reasons for invading Iraq.
We’ve all by now grown accustomed to former psychologist Dr. Phil hocking weight-loss products, intervening at Britney Spears’ hospital bedside and appearing on his own Oprah-backed talk show. But in the past few years, Oprah has moved beyond supporting this post-Montel Williams style of group therapy, giving voice to Hollywood stars eager to tell the world about the “cures” they’ve discovered. Thigh-mistress Suzanne Somers tipped off menopausal women to something called Bioidentical Hormone Replacement Therapy, which was hailed as a fountain of youth by some, while many critics are quick to point out the treatment’s sketchy clinical proof.
More troubling, however, is the support Oprah has lent to former Playboy bunny/b-list celebrity Jenny McCarthy in her crusade against autism. In a campaign of pseudo-science that’s about as evidence-based as Intelligent Design, McCarthy purports that vaccinations caused her son’s autism but that she was able to “recover” him. Not only does this hypothesis fly in the face of most ASD research, it gives a false sense of a quick fix for a disorder that almost always requires infinite patience from all parties involved in treating a child with autism (parents, siblings, therapists, teachers, etc)
