Much ado about Oprah -- Jan. 11, 2018 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Not since an obscure senator took the stage at the 2004 Democratic National Convention has a single speech caused such a Democratic swoon. Until Oprah.

Back then, a fervent Barack Obama stirred hearts when he said: “I stand here knowing that my story is part of the larger American story, that I owe a debt to all of those who came before me, and that in no other country on earth is my story even possible.”

In her moving, nine-minute speech at the Golden Globes last Sunday night, Oprah Winfrey stirred hearts when she put her own humble childhood in the story of the nation’s fitful progress toward racial and women’s equality.  

“So I want all the girls watching here, now, to know that a new day is on the horizon!” she thundered. The tour de force brought soaring hopes and a down-to-earth challenge from the incumbent. 

“I’ll beat Oprah,” President Donald Trump said, adding, “I know Oprah; I don’t think she’s going to run.”

We should all hope she doesn’t run – and not because we want a second Trump term. As appealing as Winfrey is, the last thing America needs is another unqualified and untested celebrity in the Oval Office.

Experience still matters, as Trump’s struggles have shown. You wouldn’t let someone with no veterinary training or experience operate on your dog – simply because you admired her attitude. Surely experience in governing should carry as much weight.

At 63, Winfrey has reached the pinnacle of success. Forbes estimates her worth at $3 billion. She has earned $300 million since 2015 just from lending her presence to Weight Watchers. Millions read her magazine and the books she recommends.

She’s the third-most-admired woman on the planet, behind Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama, according to the latest Gallup poll. For the record, among men Trump comes in second, behind Barack Obama and ahead of the Pope and Billy Graham.

But what are Winfrey’s public policy positions? She says she’s apolitical and has voted for Republicans as well as Democrats. Smart for business.

She favors tougher gun control measures, LGBT and abortion rights and protecting young adults under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

Her lack of government experience means no record on which to judge her. It also means she has no firsthand knowledge of how to get things done in Washington. How much would her policies recycle Obama’s?   

Make no mistake, if Oprah says 2020 is a go, she’d jump to the front of the Democratic line -- mainly because there is no line, just hopefuls milling around.   

Fans have been after her to run for president for years, but Trump’s election got Winfrey actively thinking about it. 

“I never considered the question even a possibility. I thought, `Oh gee, I don’t have the experience, I don’t know enough. Now I’m thinking, `oh!’” Winfrey said in an interview last March.

When Obama won the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, beating supposed frontrunner Hillary Clinton, he was 47 and had no major, or even minor, accomplishments in Washington. That inexperience would haunt his presidency.

But during the campaign he had something Clinton lacked. Oprah endorsed her old friend.

“Because I know him personally,” she told Larry King. “I haven’t done it in the past because I haven’t felt that anybody, I didn’t know anybody well enough to be able to say, `I believe in this person.’”

She added in gracious, Oprah fashion: “I have not one negative thing to say about Hillary Clinton.”

We’ll see if Winfrey can withstand the siren song of becoming the first female president and whether she’ll put herself through the wringer of her first political campaign against an incumbent president who enjoys bullying and tweeting personal insults and lies.

News reports already have questioned Oprah’s CEO skills, her long-time fondness for junk science and whether she looked the other way about sexual harassment in Hollywood. Soul singer Seal asked if Oprah was an enabler of disgraced mogul Harvey Weinstein’s despicable behavior. All this in less than a week. 

Winfrey’s inspiring personal story makes real the American dream. We can hope generations of young people – girls and boys – see her as a role model.

But the White House is not a prize America awards its most famous or because we admire someone’s style or business success. That’s a lesson we should have learned by now.

©2018 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Not overnight: Melania Trump had years to prepare as first lady -- Dec. 22, 2016 column

By MARSHA MERCER

In the olden days before he let loose on Twitter, Donald J. Trump called Howard Stern’s radio show and let loose.

In June 1999, Trump confided on air that his daughter Ivanka, then 17, had made him swear he wouldn’t date anyone younger than she was.

“As she grows older, the field is getting very limited,” the twice-married billionaire joked.

A few months later, Trump, 53, was dating a beautiful Slovenian model named 

Melania Knauss, 26, less than half his age but old enough to meet his daughter’s rule, and he reportedly was “exploring” a White House bid.  

Bad boy Stern had Trump and Knauss by phone on his program and asked her what she was wearing.

“Not much,” she replied. The conversation went downhill from there. Trump bragged about their sex life.

Asked soon afterwards about her boyfriend’s comments on their relationship, Knauss told feature writer Joyce Wadler of The New York Times: “It’s the man thing, that’s how the man talks.” Sound familiar?

The prescient Wadler wrote:

“Is Mr. Trump a lucky billionaire or what? He’s got a woman who does not simply stand by her man but over him. (Five feet 10 ½ inches, but over six feet in her spiky Manolo Blahniks)...she has done Vogue covers in Europe. She also speaks four languages.

“Who she is, beyond that, is difficult to say, for speaking with Ms. Knauss is like speaking with a huge, shimmering bubble. She’s light, she’s fun, she’s exceptionally wonderful to look at; two hours later you walk away and the conversation disappears into the air. Pop! If anything substantial was said, it is difficult to recall. She might, in other words, be the perfect political spouse.”

The frothy story ended with what newspapers called a kicker – a surprise revelation. In this case, it was a preposterous question: What would Melania’s role be as first lady if she and her boyfriend ever did end up in the White House?

Knauss didn’t laugh or blow it off.

“I would be very traditional. Like Betty Ford or Jackie Kennedy,” she said. “I would support him.”

Trump married his third wife in 2005, and their son Barron was born in 2006, the same year she became a United States citizen.

Most Americans trace Trump’s political debut to his escalator ride in June 2015 and fail to consider his long game, that he was turning over the possibility of the presidency, even as a lark, in 1999.

The Trump family will be White House-bound in less than a month. Well, he will be. Melania Trump and Barron are staying in New York until the end of the school year. Her full-time job is as mom, she says.

Daughter Ivanka Trump, now 36, and her husband Jared Kushner, parents of three, are house-hunting in Washington. She may have an office in the East Wing and may stand in as first lady on social occasions.

By any measure, the Trump presidency will be unlike others.

But Melania Trump and all first ladies must cope with one immutable truth: The presidency is hard on families.

“The next family that comes in here -- every person in that family, every child, every grandchild – their lives will be turned upside down in a way that no American really understands,” first lady Michelle Obama told Oprah Winfrey this week on CBS.

President President Barack Obama and Michelle were fierce warriors for Hillary Clinton, but they have shown extreme grace since the election, vowing to help the Trumps however they can. Donald Trump, rarely generous toward Obama, has praised the president and first lady for their kindness.

So, it was jarring to see Michelle Obama tell Winfrey: “Now we are feeling what not having hope feels like.”

That comment from an advance clip was newsworthy because she was speaking for millions of disappointed voters. When the full program aired later, however, it was clear that the current first lady has compassion for the next.

“You really don’t know what you don’t know until you’re here,” Obama said she told Melania Trump. “My door is open.”

As Democrats and Republicans criticize President Trump for his personnel and policies – that’s the American way -- it’s worth remembering that a first family gets dragged into the spotlight.

Michelle Obama said of first families: “It’s not for us to complain about it. So you don’t hear complaints. But it is a – a truth, an actuality, that there is a weight to it.”

©2016 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Fat chance: still selling hope -- June 19, 2014 column

By MARSHA MERCER

In the Roaring Twenties, an enterprising young English immigrant living in Chicago began selling hope in a jar. 

“I, M.J. McGowan, after five years of tireless research, have made the discovery you have been waiting for,” he announced in ads in True Romance and other magazines. 

“At last I can tell you how to reduce quickly, comfortably – without the bother of tiresome exercise, without the boredom of stupid diet, without resorting to enervating salt baths, without rubber suits,” he said. 

Simply pat on the new Reducine cream, his ads claimed, and “excess fat is literally dissolved away, leaving the figure slim and properly rounded, giving lithe grace to the body every man and woman desires…quickly, surely, and permanently.”

The Federal Trade Commission wasn’t buying.  

McGowan had published “false and misleading statements as to the quality and effectiveness of said compound,” the FTC charged, and got a cease-and-desist order.  It was the first time the agency had gone after a purveyor of false hope in the fight against fat.

In the 87 years since then, the FTC has filed hundreds of cases challenging false and unproven weight-loss claims, Mary Knoelbel Engle told a Senate panel on Tuesday. She’s the associate director of the Division of Advertising Practices in the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection.

And yet Americans’ hunger for a magic potion is stronger than ever.  We spent an estimated $2.4 billion on weight-loss products and services last year, and the growing industry is expected to reach $2.7 billion by 2018. Nevertheless, nearly 70 percent of Americans are overweight or obese.

“The endless flood of unfounded claims being made in the weight-loss industry vividly illustrates the challenges we, and consumers, are up against,” Engle told the Senate Commerce subcommittee on consumer protection.

Next to her at the witness table – and in the hot seat -- was Dr. Mehmet Oz. 

Dubbed “America’s doctor” by Oprah Winfrey, Oz is a cardiothoracic surgeon with a loyal daytime TV viewership and a huge reach. The Doctor Oz Show is seen in 118 countries.  Senators grilled Oz about why he touts nontraditional, “miracle” weight-loss remedies.    

For example, in April 2012, Oz said, “You may think magic is make-believe, but this little bean has scientists saying they found the magic weight-loss cure for every body type. It's green coffee extract."

Sales of the dietary supplement skyrocketed, and the FTC started investigating. Last month, the agency filed suit in Florida, alleging that the company promoted Pure Green Coffee with Oz show footage and claimed clinical proof that people could lose weight rapidly without changing their eating or exercise habits. The FTC says more than 536,000 bottles of the product have been sold since May 2012.

“I get that you do a lot of good on your show,” Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., who heads the subcommittee, told Oz.  “But I don’t get why you need to say this stuff because you know it’s not true.”

Oz contends he’s trying to motivate and energize people.  

“My show is about hope,” he said. Talking about the latest products gives viewers hope, and they may try something that jumpstarts their weight loss, he said.

Oz doesn’t get income from the products, and he warns that the products aren’t for long-term use. He has sued some companies that use his name, face and words in their ads.

He conceded, though, that “I do think I’ve made it more difficult for the FTC” because “in an intent to engage viewers, I use flowery language. I use language that was very passionate, but ended up not being helpful but incendiary. It provided fodder for unscrupulous advertisers.”

Oz said he’s being more careful with his language, but as a “cheerleader for the audience” he plans to keep talking about the latest products.  

“When they don’t think they have hope, when they don’t think they can make it happen, I want to look – and I do look -- everywhere, including at alternative healing traditions, for any evidence that might be supportive to them,” he said.

McCaskill was adamant. “When you call a product a miracle, and it’s something you can buy, and it’s something that gives people false hope, I just don’t understand why you need to go there,” she said.

Now, more than ever, buyer, beware of hope in a jar.

©2014 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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