David Rosenthal: belief

Transcript context

…Let's touch on that now because I think Oprah has some quotes looking back on this that are worth mentioning. The top one is, “I actually thought at that time that being thin made me better.” She talks about how she really regrets that, she calls it a mistake, she calls it hard to watch, and she says, “You can see that my ego is on flamboyant display. I’ve had to pay the price for that moment over and over and I literally handed the world on a fat wagon platter the story,” I’m editorializing this really buzzy story of is she fat, is she thin? Of course, she's a person so she's going to (I don't know) struggle with this is the right word, but fluctuate, she gains weight, she loses weight. The fact that she introduced it in such a big public way it’s that story that people want to write about in the tabloids over and over and over again every time her weight changes. She gave them, as she says, on a platter. It’s a tough thing to tie your self-worth and your physical appearance like that. I think that this is young Oprah sort of flexing in a little bit like look what I can do, look how awesome. All power to her for doing something that is incredibly difficult, but I think the older, wiser Oprah later looks back and is just clearly so bummed that she opened up in that particular way. Yeah, 100%. Let's also be honest here, Oprah, as I think we've hopefully described here, is an exceedingly once-in-a-generation sharp media businesswoman. She certainly knew that by doing this she was going to get these ratings. By handing the media this story, while certainly painful and all that, she just guaranteed the next 20 years of headlines about Oprah's weight. Again, super terrible and problematic in lots of ways, but Oprah's in the headlines. Oprah knows what will play.…

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