5 Myths About Oprah, Obama and You

"The Oprah Winfrey Show" airs in more than 140 countries, but the woman Time magazine proclaimed The Queen of All Media has only thrown her support to a presidential candidate in one: the United States. In a move unprecedented in her show's 22-year history, Winfrey announced last fall that she was endorsing Democrat Barack Obama's bid for the presidency. In September 2007, she hosted Stevie Wonder, Cindy Crawford and Chris Rock, among others, at a fundraiser at her estate near Santa Barbara, Calif., that brought in more than $3 million for the Illinois senator. She hit the campaign trail to rally supporters for Obama in the early primary states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

And this month, in response to a report that she was refusing requests from her own staff to interview Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin on her show, Winfrey explained in a statement that, even though she was taking her first public stance in support of a candidate, she had decided not to have any specific candidate appear on her program. "I agree that Sarah Palin would be a fantastic interview, and I would love to have her on after the campaign is over," she said. So no couch-jumping for Palin, or Obama, for that matter, until after Nov. 4. But what are they missing out on? What does an endorsement from the host of the highest-rated talk show in the history of television mean, anyway?

1. Winfrey's viewers are sheep/robots who think and do whatever she tells them to .

Aside from Robyn Okrant, keeper of the blog Living Oprah, who is spending a year doing every single thing that Winfrey commands, most viewers are more selective about how much influence they let the talk-show host have over their lives. Although her famous book club made unexpected hits of such little known titles as Wally Lamb's "She's Come Undone" -- which was published in 1992 but rocketed to the top of the bestseller lists after being featured on her show in January 1997 -- as well as such classics as the 130-year-old "Anna Karenina," her boosterism wasn't enough to make 2005 the summer of Faulkner. Her big-screen turn with the three-hour film adaptation of Toni Morrison's "Beloved" was a relative flop at the box office. And many viewers have expressed ambivalence about Winfrey's endorsement of Obama. Most recently, numerous fans have taken to the message board on Oprah.com to voice their irritation at Winfrey's no-Palin ruling. "As someone who HAD enjoyed everything Oprah for years, I had become very disappointed in some of her decisions on the political front and this one is not [an] exception," wrote Mary from Cincinnati.

2. Celebrity political endorsements, even Winfrey's, don't matter.

Most don't, but this one might. Much has been written about how Winfrey's Midas touch seems to stem from some intangible force. At one taping of a book club episode of her show, I saw firsthand her almost uncanny power to command the attention of every eye and ear in an enormous room. And anecdotal evidence indicates that Winfrey's appearances on the primary campaign trail actually had a noticeable impact. A December rally in South Carolina was moved to a football stadium to accommodate the 29,000 who came to hear Winfrey and Obama, according to the campaign's estimate, and a similar appearance in New Hampshire drew 8,500 people. The Obama campaign said that these appearances yielded 10,000 new volunteers. Earlier this summer, Craig Garthwaite and Timothy Moore, two economists at the University of Maryland who have studied the Winfrey effect, wrote that her endorsement led to approximately 1 million additional votes for Obama in the primaries and caucuses, a conclusion they reached in part by doing a county-by-county analysis of sales of Oprah's Book Club selections and subscriptions to O: The Oprah Magazine.

3. Winfrey and Obama are a natural match because the content s of her show and of his campaign are so similar.

Well, yes and no. Winfrey's popularity derives from her mastery of a message that's "virtuous" without being ideological. Her show gives viewers plenty of reasons to feel good about themselves, but doesn't often require them to take a stand. Her message is appealing, but not really persuasive, because you have to argue to persuade; you have to be against something to be for something else. We know, thanks to her upbraiding of memoir fabricator James Frey, that she can do this when circumstances force her to, but her comfort level with it isn't high.

So it's not so much that the content of the Obama campaign -- hope, optimism, personal responsibility, freedom from fear, etc. -- and of "The Oprah Winfrey Show" are different, but rather that they require a different kind of involvement from their participants. Ultimately, the campaign is going to require you to vote for somebody and against somebody else. Winfrey's show really only requires you to live your best life, and to be aware; it doesn't require action against something. Or at least it didn't until now, and that's part of what both Winfrey and her viewers are struggling with. Some accused her of polarizing the Democratic primary race, and comedienne Roseanne Barr went so far as to take to her own celebrity blog to accuse Winfrey of "destabilizing the entire party and fracturing it forever along racial and gender lines."

One factor that has made Winfrey such a successful promoter of products and attitudes in popular culture has been the way she appears to be unassailable and above the fray. Because she's a billionaire, her interest has been seen as being not for sale; she has been seen as somehow pure for having no stake in the products she peddles. Now, because she appears so invested in the ideology that she has suddenly embraced, a murmur of "sellout" has run through her otherwise fairly loyal crowd.

4. She mostly helps Barack Obama by convincing her fan base to vote for him .