ok i am going to have a crack at oprah/obama. what oprah is selling is redemption: easy, instantaneous redemption, redemption that is sold as a product line. every issue of oprah mag has five redemptions at 1500 wds each. that's why oprah loved frey: it's a story of redemption, and the fictional material, by jacking up the degradation, jacked up the redemption. my soontobeexwife marion (under a pseudonym) wrote the tale of my struggles with alcohol for oprah last year. i think it's fair to say, first, that it was fundamentally distorted. but it featured a superficial redemption that fit it nicely into the mechanical oprah narrative. well, this is exactly what obama offers: a redemption that comes in the form of a few words, hope, change etc. they are a good matchup in this regard. i guess what i don't understand about oprah is that you'd think after the thirtiesth diet doesn't work or after frey heads back to skid row, she'd get a little worried about whether she can churn out seventeen more inspiring redemptions this week, or whether they actually mean or accomplish anything, other than making you feel sort of good for a few minutes.