Fascinated with Oprah lately, huh?

Personally I won't watch her show unless Angelina Jolie or Gwyneth Paltrow is one, and even then I leave the sound down.

This kind of scrutiny for oprah is inevitable , after all this is politics and once you put yourself out there there is going to be some pushback.

I for one look forward to this weekend being over , so that Oprah can go back to the show , I am a very huge fan of Oprah and all this criticism of her in the context of politics just seems strange but not totally unexpected.

The impact of her jumping into the fray would be seen in the coming months both for Obama and for herself.If obama still loses , i wonder how that will affect her standing.

Because this is a totally new territory.

i wish someone would make a big deal about this.

Im SURE SHES A NICE PERSON.

But just how much money does she NEED!?

Theres the old union question -

"which side are you on?"

well, she wants into our debate - she should have to answer that question.

He's going to teach the unions about anti-union TV celebrities the same way he taught GLBT Democrats about gay-bashing from McLurkin.

thank you for posting this, I had no idea Oprah ran a non union organization.  

Dare ye challenge?  

Obama has a terrible, completely corporate lobbyist endorsed position on H-1B, L-1 guest worker Visas which have decimated high tech and also which the AFL-CIO is actively trying to get reforms passed on.

So, ya know, I just don't get the Obama surge here at all.

hype, not hope.

but he's fooled the media...or actually, maybe they like him because they KNOW  exactly who he REALLY  s.

ONE OF THEM.

Obama is starting to strike me as a bit of a phoney. If he really supported labor, he would have had the Prah event in some other place in NH, and now that I am reading this stuff about anti-union Oprah, I'm pretty surprised. But this is the same person who voted "present" on choice issues in Illinois, insteat of taking a stand. For all the talk about Hillary Clinton being calculating, Obama is the one who doesn't take a stand.

I had no idea Oprah was so anti-union. I am an aspiring screenwriter, so the WGA strike is important to me, as is solidarity with our brethren in the IATSE.

Thank you for bringing this to light. Looks like another case of the Audacity of Hope pimping for an Abundance of Ambition.

Obama/Oprah's hypocrisy on unions needs to get spread far and wide and Daily Kos is the starting place.

its very obvious from what she said today - and how she has acted then and in campaign 2000 - that she voted for Bush.

Hey Seymour, your diary is now posted on Kos.

IATSE is in the AFL?  Really?  Thnks for the newsflash.

again, where is your proof?

again, I ask, is this really about the house that she films in's union contract?

does harpo have Union contracts?

Hope you are right.

I'll be pleased as punch to find out that she has a union house and all this is mis-informtion and the Oprah show has shut down in solidarity with the WGA strike.

Whoa - that would seriously be a relief to find out.

Hope you ARE right!

Some things ARE more important than politics...Right?

by Seymour Glass

You know what is more important than politics - someone's good name.  Before running aroudn here and on other sites casting dispersions on Oprah as diaries, not just misinformed comments, don't you have some responsibility to know a little of what you are talking about?

You want proof that IATSE is part of the AFL-CIO? Are you kidding me? Here: http://www.iatse-intl.org/home.html

And you ask if she's shut down in solidarity with the WGA strike?  Are you kidding me?  She's not a signator of the WGA and none of these Unions stop work out of solidarity.  Sandy, let me introduce you to a very helpful website: http://www.google.com/

and you have nothing!

FIRST.  DONT YOU KNOW SARCASM?  
Of course I knew that the stagehand workers are in the afl.  No kidding.  IM in the AFL.  I get the magazines!  Newsflash!  I was making fun of YOU!

She's not a signatorie of the WGA...again no kidding.  Thats the whole point.

Wheres all this PROOF you say you have.  where were you quoting these names from.

I have  twice asked if they are people that have union contracts with the venue or with HARPO?

AND YOU JUST REMAIN SILENT.

So let me guess the answer to that question.

Today Harpo has 221 employees (68% are women), modest turnover (10% to 15% a year), and stability at the top. The average tenure of 16-year-old Harpo's ten most senior execs is ten years. The cavernous Harpo headquarters, housed in a onetime hockey rink reconfigured into a maze of offices and production facilities, has an in-house spa and a gym--where most mornings Oprah can be spotted sweating on the treadmill. Pay and benefits are "exceptional," says Debbie McElroy, a headhunter with the Lucas Group who recently tried to recruit a $100,000-a-year personal accountant for Oprah. "Employees get an average six weeks' vacation their first year at Harpo," McElroy says.

Source: Fortune magazine, April 08, 2002
And she takes her entire staff and their entire families (1000+ people) on lavish vacations in Hawaii.

Actually Oprah turned vehemently against the war in Nov 2002 to the point where Michael Moore praised her in his book and begged her to run for president.  And the day after Colin Powell's UN speech she did a 2 day show that was so anti-war it was taken off the air in some markets. 48 hours before the war she even brought on Michael Moore to protest it.

Oprah may have allowed hawks to express their opinions on one show, but Hillary in addition to actually VOTING to give Bush the authority to go to war, and opposing the Levin ammendment which could have prevented the war, expressed extreme hawkish opinions herself, and did so within weeks of the war:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYATbsu2c P8

You know what Oprah was doing right before the war. A 2 day anti-war special inwhich Jessica Tuckman mathews explained there were no links between Iraq and Al Queda and in which clips of people and leaders all over the world begged America not to go to war.  And 48 hours before the war Oprah couragously put Michael Moore on her show.

Oprah is a scab. Plain and simple.

You have corporate republicans and you have corporate democrats. And you have scabs.

Oprah is a scab.

John Foster
GCC/IBT Local 4C

The Great Debaters, directed by Denzel Washington, produced by Oprah Winfrey (and 6 others) for Harpo Films.  Unions:

WGA
DGA
SAG
IATSE
Teamsters

Why do you feel the need to keep changing your identity online?

Maybe Stephen Glass would be a more appropriate name?

I really don't understand some of the stuff in this diary.  What, if anything, has Oprah done to stop her workers from unionizing?

I remember when some conservatives tried to smear Nancy Pelosi by claiming that she owned a vineyard where the workers were non-union.  Turned out she paid the workers even more than union workers in the same locale, and treated them better, so they had no interest in organizing.

I come from a union town and I'm 100% pro-union.  But I'm not silly enough to believe that every worker in America wants to join a union.  It's a voluntary process and that's why you have to vote to organize.  If workers are treated well already and don't feel like they want to organize, that's their call.  

I'm very familiar with the broad range of union-busting tactics used in the real world.  What I'm not seeing is evidence that Oprah has used any of them.  Has anyone even attempted to organize her workers, and if so, what became of it?

Also, apropos of nothing, it's really f'in hard to find a hybrid car that's built with union labor.  Have you noticed that?

This is clearly the idiot Holden Caulfield, reincarnated into another charming online persona, with the same semi-literacy and fixations we've come to love.  He changes his id because (1) he's a fraud, (2) he's got too much time on his hands.  That's a pattern with certain other kooks on this site as you may have noticed...

The labor movement was the principal force that transformed misery and despair into hope and progress. Those who would limit the rights of organized labor...do a disservice to the cause of democracy.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
--------------

It is one of the oldest management-ownership lines is that "people who are making good wages - dont NEEED unions".  Its a lie.

The Oprah show is an EXCEPTION in her industry, by not being Union and thats NOT Oprah showing leadership, its showing her power and willingness to use it.

That she remains up and running while other shows are closed down over the WGA srike -
HURTS THOSE WORKERS AND DAMAGES THE UNION.

For what possible reason would the employees of Harpo and the Oprah Show have for NOT wanting a union - in a UNIONIZED INDUSTRY -  besides that their boss and owner DID NOT WANT ONE?

Youu saay you come from a Union town - buut it is very obvious that no one hass ever explained to you the reason and meaning of organized labor.

Please read these links and try to understand.

stagehands union -http://www.iatse-intl.org/about/about.ht ml

labor history
http://www.maineaflcio.org/labor_union_h istory.htm
-----

By the way.  The reason you cant find that car is exactly because of the same situation faced by Oprahs workers.  Workers too scared to vote in their own best interests because they are scared it will cost them their job.
--I didnt know this about Pelosi, have looked into it and am very disappointed .  Its her rich, money-money-money husband I bet. Jerk.

As far as I can tell, they didn't say much about Unions, or their busting thereof. But, there's a very interesting report about what they DID say, and part of it is here:

Messianic rhetoric infuses Obama rallies

By: Ben Smith and David Paul Kuhn
Dec 9, 2007 06:04 PM EST

COLUMBIA. S.C. and MANCHESTER, N.H. - In a giant Sunday afternoon rally suffused with Christian - and at times messianic - rhetoric, Barack Obama made his largest-scale pitch to black and white Democrats of South Carolina, the third and most devout presidential primary state.

The crowd filled nearly half of the 80,000-seat Williams-Brice Stadium to hear the Illinois senator and talk show host Oprah Winfrey, who campaigned with him over the weekend. His campaign said more than 29,000 people had come to the event, previewed on the front page of the region's leading newspaper, The State.

Obama and Winfrey touched on many of the same themes of change that they had dwelt on in Iowa Saturday. But Sunday's gathering was sprinkled with women in the hats they'd worn to church, and had a distinctly Christian feel.

"I give all praise and honor to God," Obama began. "Look at the day the Lord has made."

Obama's wife, Michelle, opened the rally with a description of her husband that could, at moments, have been a description of Jesus Christ.

"We need a leader who's going to touch our souls. Who's going to make us feel differently about one another. Who's going to remind us that we are one another's keepers. That we are only as strong as the weakest among us," she said, echoing biblical passages.

Winfrey also touched on Christian themes that had not been highlighted in Iowa.

"It's amazing grace that brought me here," she began, adding that she was "stepping out of my pew" - television - to engage in politics.

It isn't enough to tell the truth, Winfrey said. "We need politicians who know how to be the truth."

Winfrey also recalled a story from "The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman," a 1974 film based on Ernest Gaines' 1971 novel.

In Winfrey's telling, the protagonist - an old woman who had survived slavery and the Civil War - would ask every child, "Are you the one? Are you the one?"

"I do believe I do today we have the answer to Miss Pittman's question - it's a question that the entire nation is asking - is he the one?" Winfrey said. "South Carolina - I do believe he's the one."

According to one academic discussion of the book by Christopher Mulvey, a professor at University of Winchester in the United Kingdom, the passage continues to ask whether the child is the one who will "carry part of our cross," a "messianic figure."

Winfrey brought the crowd to what was probably its emotional peak in her introduction of Obama and her discussion of her own choice to foray into politics, which had members of the audience raising their arms in "O" salutes. Along the way, she mixed in dollops of her own non-sectarian philosophizing.

*

The hope is that Winfrey's "authenticity," said Obama pollster Cornell Belcher, becomes synonymous with Obama's.

*

"We're here for Oprah," Nadine Pelletier said. She added that she had deep "devotion and respect" for Winfrey. Yet neither sister said she intended to support Obama on primary day.

But they may have been the exception that demonstrated the rule. At Saturday's event in Des Moines, Iowa, at least half the tickets went to staff and volunteers, according to Obama's campaign. Iowa precinct captains and their recruits earned many of the seats nearest to the front.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/120 7/7281.html

I'm sure Oprah treats those who work for exceptionally well and gives them benefits beyond what many who work in unions for similar positions. On the other hand looking at Obama, he has done conciderably weaker with Union Endorsement than Hillar and Edwards. I'm sure part of that is the fact he doesn't have as much of a record on National Union issues, but this isn't going to help him in that area. For me personally I'm supporting Hillary, and this doesn't tick me off, but if I was part of Union I and did support Obama I might have to think twice about still supporting him.

He is just another pol looking to work and advantage and he doesn't care he has to do it on the backs of union stage workers.  He doesn't care if Oprah don't support unions.

Here is the answer of what Obama said about the Unions.

"This is a great facility, and we should have union workers in here to make sure the stagehands are getting a fair shake," Obama said, explaining that the site of the event, the Verizon Wireless Arena, does not hire union stagehands.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/ 2007/12/obama-addresses.html

Wow the hatred is oozing out of some supporters. I guess that's why people here disrespect him by calling him Barry.  I guess that David Corn article is right. Some of you do feel like he is "uppity."  I feel for you.

Wow, negotiating with Unions, working for poor people who lost their jobs, walking picket lines before years before running for president and not supporting NAFTA. That's a great progressive candidate I can support

http://www.boston.com/news/local/new_ham pshire/articles/2007/12/08/agreement_ave rts_union_picket_at_nh_obama_event/

This has to be the most ridiculous string of attacks launched yet against Obama.  Jaw-droppingly unbelievable.

I'm pretty sure there's not a single person on the entire planet who actually cares about this NH union "scandal."  There are only people who already hated Obama for other reasons, trying their best to convince themselves and others that this is a story.  Obama gets the union's permission, and he brings them on stage and recognizes them, and you're flipping out.

What else is he f-ing supposed to do?  Hold the rally outside in some cold forest?  Then you'd be pissed that the forest holds non-unionized squirrels!  You'd be whining that he slighted the Acorn Buryers Local 101.  Perhaps working out an agreement with the union and telling the audience about their struggle was not enough, and you would prefer that he get down on his knees and fellate them on stage?  Oh, wait, you only want him to do that figuratively?  That's MUCH better!

One of the worst vices in liberalism is the "purity test."  If somebody deviates from the ideological extreme, they must be evil!  Freethought doubleplus ungood!  Oversensitivity, political correctness, and guilt by association are related vices, and they're all at work here in your opposition to Obama.  Support for unions is not enough -- he must be consumed by unwavering adherence to the every whim of every union supporter!  

One of the worst vices of the Democratic party is blind fealty to the unions.  Unions can do no wrong!  Unions must control the world!  If you say so, comrade.  Unions have their place and I'm glad they look out for workers when they're needed, but they aren't needed everywhere and they aren't perfect.  For example, they aren't needed on Oprah's show because she goes out of her way to treat her workers well, and she doesn't deserve to be punished for OTHER employers' shortcomings during strikes.  I would probably do the same thing in her position.  Of course, don't expect half of MyDD to understand subtlety, because for them this isn't about thinking, it's not about fairness, it's not about results, it's about ideology--FEALTY!  FEALTY!!!

This Obama complaint brings really together all the worst things about our side's ugly extremists into one compact package of grade-A bullshit.  Seymour Glass is a Rush Limbaugh wet dream, an embodiment of the right wing's most dishonest stereotypes of liberals, a walking, talking caricature.  Our side would be so much better off without such blind extremists repelling normal people from otherwise good causes.

for Obama

How nice.

Seymore, you can pick and choose your articles but your hatred for Obama comes through quite clearly. And he did answer your question you just did not like the answer.

Setec the uppity Obama is not supposed to have a rally with over 8,500 people in NH.  It is only reserved for their(meaning establishment) candidate.  What do Clinton supporters say to the poor people of NH, freeze.  We don't care it's not unionized. Yeah that NAFTA deal was her husbands thing even thought she always harps back to  the  90's. The resentment by the Clinton/establishment people is obvious. You know this campaign wasn't supposed to a contest but a coronation.

I wonder what would happen to Chairman Dean's job if Senator Clinton won the election. From what I heard and seen she can't stand him. Hey Harold Ford Jr. forget the DLC how about the DNC.  My guess if Senator Clinton wins is bye, bye 50 state strategy welcome back red states versus blue states. Rahm Emmanuel thought red vs. blue state theory was a good thing. And boy did 2006 prove him right, Oh I guess not. That was Howard Dean wasn't it.  You know the establishment dems were mad at Dean about them winning all of these seats.   The establishment can't handle power or maybe they wanted to take control when they thought Sen. Clinton was going to be elected as President.

Anyways I wonder are Sen. Clinton's maids, gardeners and butlers at her million dollar Chappaqua estate unionized? How about the ones in Arkansas? Lets investigate?  J/k. See how silly we can get.

I can't wait for the inauguration of President Obama. I hope to see the Clinton supporters there. Many blessings

I love my candidate who happens to be Senator Obama. I hope you love yours.

Oprahalooza?  Shouldn't that be Oprahfortheloser?

You don't know what you're talking about do you.  The national writers strike has shut down late night TV talk shows like Leno, Letterman, the Daily Show and Colbert because those shows tell scripted jokes.  Day time talk shows like Oprah generally don't use scripted jokes and hence don't get shut down by writers strikes. Please educate yourself. The only daytime talk show for which this is an issue is Ellen and that's because she's a member of the writers group herself.