Word: oprahization
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...really, but coy, juvenile exhibitionism. Playboy would not be a good forum for Clinton. Jimmy Swaggart wept and chewed the furniture on the soundstage of his TV ministry. Without the gnashing of teeth, Clinton might at least entertain the idea of a group format. He is good at the Oprah-type give-and-take. If confession becomes inevitable, best to take control of the drama and stage-manage it to your advantage. Errancy and repentance and redemption have become one of our most exciting forms of public theater. Catharsis by celebrity: intimate hells of divorces, drugs and bulimias metamorphose before...
...that it would really matter if he weren't a nice guy--Mike Tyson captivates--but McGwire happens to be Oprah-fied in all the right ways. He missed the opportunity to hit 50 homers in his rookie season in order to be present at his son's birth. After a batting slump and a divorce from his first wife, who had been a college girlfriend, he started therapy, and he has stayed with it. His three-year, $30 million contract stipulates that that his son Matthew, now 10, who is often the Cardinal bat boy, gets a seat...
...goal is that she won't be able to raise her eyebrows," explains Dr. Patricia Wexler, who wears cat glasses, sports a '60s-style bubble haircut and has a teasing, just-between-girlfriends way with patients that makes her office seem more like Oprah than a dermatology clinic. The injections she administers--"Don't worry! It's only a baby needle!"--leave a series of bloody little welts across Maggie's forehead. Though they look like nasty mosquito bites, they will disappear within minutes as the toxin is absorbed into the muscles; within four or five days, Maggie's forehead...
...Most Wanted, for instance, could be a topic on Oprah's show: the book is about Texas Teenagers Who Fall Desperately in Love with Convicts--and it's about childless mothers and motherless children. Dorman has said she and Mitchard raced the clock to get the book into the hands of beach readers. The haste shows. Predictable and melodramatic, The Most Wanted lacks the depth of The Deep End of the Ocean, which was a moving portrait of a family in the aftermath of a child's kidnapping...
...hope the works' weaknesses are signs merely of writers still finding their way, not a mark of the Curse of Oprah. Given the pressures of publishing, where marketing and the big chains reign supreme, perhaps all that one-hit wonders need is a bit of quiet time...