Michael Jackson: Chilling film forces America to confront singer's legacy

Jackson is accused of sexually abusing boys, prompting fresh soul-searching in what could be a national reckoning

In 1993, Oprah Winfrey visited Michael Jackson at his Neverland ranch for a television special – Jackson’s first interview in 14 years, watched by more than 90 million people worldwide.

This week, Winfrey hosted an hour-long show about the King of Pop with a very different tone, in front of a studio audience of sexual abuse survivors.

The show aired on US screens on Monday following the concluding episode of the two-part HBO documentary, Leaving Neverland, which has hurled America into a fresh bout of soul-searching over Jackson’s cultural legacy, his estate’s financial future and whether his music is too good to be muted. More broadly, it is also the latest test for the nation’s attitude towards stars accused of sex crimes.

“For me, this moment transcends Michael Jackson,” said Winfrey, who has said she was sexually abused as a child. “It is much bigger than any one person. This is a moment in time that allows us to see this societal corruption. It’s like a scourge on humanity and it’s happening right now.”

Commentators are again grappling with the question of whether it is acceptable to enjoy
art regardless of its creator’s conduct. Photograph: Michael Caulfield Archive/WireImage

Winfrey interviewed the film’s central figures: James Safechuck and Wade Robson, who accuse Jackson of sexually abusing them when they were both boys, and the documentary’s British director, Dan Reed.

“It takes days to recover from this documentary,” the film-maker Judd Apatow said on Twitter. “Five minutes in, you will think to yourself, ‘Oh my God, every word they are saying is true.’”

After years of defending Jackson, actor Corey Feldman, who was a friend of his as a boy, shifted his stance following the release of the documentaries.

“I don’t want to be perceived as I’m here to defend Michael Jackson, because I can no longer do that. I cannot in good [conscience] defend anyone who’s being accused of such horrendous things,” he said.

Leaving Neverland, which aired in the UK on Channel 4 on Wednesday and Thursday, focuses on interviews with Safechuck, Robson and their families. The men claim that Jackson groomed them as children, invited them to Neverland, contrived to separate them from their parents, initiated sexual contact, convinced them it was a normal loving relationship, and brainwashed them into secrecy.

 Five minutes in, you'll think to yourself, ‘Oh my God, every word they are saying is true'
Judd Apatow
Reed has suggested the film could prompt “America’s [Jimmy] Savile moment”. Savile, a longtime BBC DJ and presenter who died in 2011, was found to have serially preyed on children years after accusers were brushed aside, prompting a national reckoning in Britain.

The Jackson-Savile comparison comes with contrasts, not least the level of the subject’s fame. Leaving Neverland also lands less than 18 months after the New York Times published an article detailing allegations against the Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein which catalysed the #MeToo movement that has torn down dozens of powerful men in showbusiness, politics and the media who appeared to act with impunity.

Abuse victims Wade Robson and James Safechuck with the Leaving
Neverland director Dan Reed. Photograph: Taylor Jewell/Invision/AP

That one-time symbol of wholesome family values, Bill Cosby, was convicted last year of sexual assault, while, in the wake of January’s broadcast of a six-part television documentary, the singer R Kelly was charged in Chicago last month with 10 counts of sexual abuse, including against three minors, which he denies.

Among these figures, none have had more influence over American popular culture than Jackson, whose legacy is also worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

“Michael Jackson’s legacy is bigger than Michael Jackson, right?” said New York Times critic-at-large Wesley Morris on the Daily podcast. “We can’t cancel Michael Jackson because cancelling Michael Jackson means cancelling America in some way. Not just our love of [the] music, but our sense of who we are as a people.”

Jackson family members issued a statement calling Leaving Neverland a “public lynching” and a “tabloid character assassination” that revisits previously rejected claims. Jackson was cleared of child molestation charges by a California jury in 2005. The Jackson estate is now suing HBO for $100m for allegedly violating a non-disparagement clause related to a contract the network signed in 1992.

Meanwhile, a vast global army of fans have mounted defences on social media. Jackson supporters have flooded the internet with rebuttals to the documentary, questioning the credibility and motives of Robson and Safechuck.

Commentators are again grappling with the question of whether it is acceptable to enjoy art regardless of its creator’s conduct. Yet while radio stations in the UK, Australia and New Zealand dropped Jackson’s songs from their playlists this week, no major American network or streaming platforms have announced bans.

According to figures provided to the Guardian by the Nielsen analytics company, radio airplay in the US dipped by 20% on Tuesday and Wednesday compared with the same days a week earlier. But US sales and on-demand streams of Jackson’s music were not significantly affected.

A Chicago run of a new musical featuring Jackson’s songs, Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough, was cancelled last month with the producers citing scheduling problems, but a Broadway stint is still planned for next year.

The biggest of the Jackson-themed shows playing in Las Vegas is a Cirque du Soleil spectacle, one of several lucrative official ventures to surf a wave of public sympathy in the years after his death aged 50 in 2009.

With tickets that cost between $75 and $250 in a 1,085-capacity theatre, few seats remained available for either performance on Saturday. A Cirque du Soleil spokesperson declined to comment on sales or the future of the show.

A 1991 episode of The Simpsons featuring Jackson’s voice is being removed from streaming services and TV broadcasts, the show’s executive producer told the Wall Street Journal on Friday.

“This was a treasured episode,” James L Brooks said. “There are a lot of great memories we have wrapped up in that one, and this certainly doesn’t allow them to remain.”

He added: “I’m against book burning of any kind. But this is our book, and we’re allowed to take out a chapter.”

(Source: The Guardian)

Her marriage was the jewel in her blog universe. Then she found out her husband was cheating

The world can be divided into two groups: those who’ve never heard the name Glennon Doyle Melton, and those who know pretty much everything there is to know about her. The bulimia and the alcoholism, the anxiety, depression and drugs. They know the contents of her refrigerator, how she looks when she first wakes up, where she finds God and what she says in response to her 8-year-old daughter’s mid-dinner inquiry about how babies are made. (Prayer alone doesn’t cut it, she explains .)

The number of people who know these things about Doyle Melton is not insignificant. She’s a writer whose publicity team estimates that her blog and social media posts reach 7 million readers a week. And that camp is about to get a lot bigger.

This week, Doyle Melton published a new book about the one aspect of her life that she hasn’t fully shared with followers: her husband’s infidelity. Tens of thousands of copies have been pre-ordered. And that was before Oprah announced “Love Warrior: A Memoir” as her new book club selection, a designation almost guaranteed to catapult it onto bestseller lists.

Doyle Melton became a quasi-famous person with a cult following in the traditional way: She quit her job to stay at home with her three young kids. Isolation, exaltation and ennui ensued. As it does. Every day, she says, was “too much and not enough.”

In 2009, the Virginia native was living in Centreville, feeling starved of authentic connection, when she noticed people posting Facebook lists of “25 Things About Me.” While her baby napped, Doyle Melton banged out her own list. She wrote about her conflicted feelings about parenthood and marriage and about her stained daily existence.

“My number six was, ‘I’m a recovering food and alcohol addict, but I still find myself missing food and booze in the same twisted way someone can still love a person who beats them and leaves them for dead,’ ” Doyle Melton, who now lives in Naples, Fla., recalls during an interview at her sister’s home in Falls Church, where she was visiting.

Later, she noticed that her friend’s number six was, “My favorite snack food is hummus.”

“I was like ‘Ohhhhhhhh, crap. We’re not doing that here, either,’ ” she says. By “that” she means telling the truth. The real truth. The one that no one was sharing on the playground or at the bus stop or in church. The one that wasn’t airbrushed with smiling family photos and knee-jerk pleasantries. “I’m great! How are you?”

“I was starting to feel shame that I’m not doing this right,” she says. “I’m not doing parenting right. I’m not doing marriage right. I’m not doing faith right. I’m not doing life right.”

Hours after she posted her list, Doyle Melton’s inbox was filled with dozens of emails from friends and acquaintances saying, “I never knew. . .” and “Me, too.” When her pastor asked her to speak at church — thinking that she would talk about her relatively mild bout of postpartum depression — she instead related her whole story, including the drugs and alcohol, the stint in a mental institution and her flirtation with suicide. Afterward, a line of people waited to confide in her.

That night she told her husband, Craig, “This is what I’m going to do. I’m going to be a truth teller. This is a key that can unlock people,” recalls Doyle Melton, now 40. “This is what I’m going to do with my whole life.”

She started a blog called ­Momastery. She wrote in the predawn hours and forced herself to hit “publish” every day before her children awoke. Over the first two years, the blog gained slow, steady traction. Then an acquaintance offered to redesign the website. The day after it went live, with “share buttons” that allow readers to promote posts on their own social media accounts, Doyle Melton published an essay titled “Don’t Carpe Diem.” In it, she recounted the near-daily exchanges she had with older women who saw her with her young kids and cloyingly advised her to “enjoy every moment.”

“Clearly, Carpe Diem doesn’t work for me,” she wrote. “I can’t even carpe fifteen minutes in a row so a whole diem is out of the question.”

Glennon Doyle Melton started the Momastery blog after quitting her job to stay at home with her children. (Scott McIntyre/For The Washington Post)

Someday, when she’s the old woman standing in line behind a harried young mother, she hopes she’ll have a clear enough memory to say, “It’s helluva hard, isn’t it? You’re a good mom, I can tell. And I like your kids, especially that one peeing in the corner. She’s my favorite. Carry on, warrior. Six hours till bedtime.”

A couple of hours after the essay posted, the counter on her site said that it had been viewed 250,000 times. “I was like, ‘Oh, this is broken,’ ” she says, sitting on her sister’s couch, her bare feet curled beneath her.

It wasn’t broken. The post had gone viral. Within a week, she was getting calls from New York book agents, and soon 10 publishers were in a bidding war for rights to her first book, a collection of essays called “Carry On, Warrior.”

The book debuted at No. 3 on the New York Times bestseller list in April 2013 and eventually sold more than 200,000 copies.

But the week before Doyle Melton was to go on the road to promote it, her spinning world slammed to a halt. Craig, the doting husband who seemed like a crown jewel in her perfectly imperfect life, confessed that he’d been cheating on her throughout their marriage.

Doyle Melton told readers that she and Craig were separating because of something he’d disclosed during a therapy session, but she didn’t share much more.

“Love Warrior” fills in the sizable gap. It tells of the couple’s first meeting 15 years ago during a drunken bar crawl in downtown Washington. The abortion of her first pregnancy. Their backyard wedding after she became pregnant a second time, at 25. Their struggles with communication and sex. Craig’s porn habit and extramarital one-night stands. Doyle Melton’s simmering resentments and discomfort with physical intimacy. And, then, how they recovered from all that — through anger, grief, self-exploration, so much therapy and, ultimately, grace.

It’s a haunting powerhouse of a book, not just because it gives readers a chance to do what we’re told we can never do: Be inside someone else’s marriage. There’s solace and fascination in that — the chance to be less alone in our own relationships just by seeing what someone else is going through in hers.

But the story isn’t just about the healing of a marriage. It’s about what happened to Doyle Melton — what happens to so many young women — at the dawn of adolescence, when societal pressure bears down just as hormones and insecurities flare up. And the extreme measures so many take to find acceptance. For Doyle Melton it was bingeing and booze. For others it’s self-mutilation or starvation. And the effects last long after high-school graduation.

“We're all like, ‘What's wrong with the girls? Why aren’t they eating? Why are they worried about their bodies?’ Are you kidding me?” she exclaims. “Maybe because every message they've gotten since they’re born is that in order to be a successful woman, you have to get smaller and quieter until you disappear.”

Doyle Melton wavered about writing the book — and exposing her family’s pain so fully to the public — but in the end decided that she had to. “I am someone who spent a lot of time in a prison. For me, bulimia, alcoholism, drugs were like being jailed,” she says. “And the only way I know how to stay free is to be really freaking honest.”

Craig, a former model turned suburban soccer dad, agreed. It was his journey, too, and though he could have been cast as a villain, in many ways he’s portrayed as the most empathetic character in the saga. “He’s a believer in this truth-telling thing,” Doyle Melton says. “It’s scary and hard, and we believe in it as a way of life.”

Melton with her husband, Craig, and children, Chase, Tish and Amma. (Glennon Doyle Melton/Glennon Doyle Melton)

Doyle Melton often appears at the top of lists of “Mommy Bloggers,” a term that stashes hordes of women under the same tattered pink umbrella. What sets her apart, aside from her graceful prose and good humor, is the intimacy she offers. Both to herself and between followers, who often write about their own struggles in the comments section and are cheered on by other readers.

In person, she comes across much as she does in print: self-aware, funny and wise. She says she hopes that readers will gain from her book the same thing she gained from the breakdown and redemption of her marriage: “Freedom from fear. The courage to listen to that voice that’s inside of them that knows who they are and knows what they need to do,” she said.

At the end of a 2½ -hour interview, she pauses before answering a question about whether she worried that writing a book about saving her marriage might somehow jinx her marriage.

“No,” she finally says. “I don’t really believe in jinxing.”

Besides, “what this whole journey of the warrior has taught me is that I’m not afraid anymore of my marriage falling apart,” she says.

Because now she knows this: “That no matter what happens, I’m going to be fine.”

Two weeks later, a month before the book’s release, she posted a new update on the blog: She and Craig are separating again.

“You can be shattered and then you can put yourself back together piece by piece,” she wrote. And sometimes, “no matter how hard you try, you simply cannot fit into your old life anymore.”

(Source: Washington Post)

Men of Hollywood, spare us your ‘solidarity’ and actually speak up, for once in your over-privileged lives

A-list men tore up the sartorial rulebook and wore black tuxes to the Golden Globes to show their support for the women’s protest? Not enough, guys. Not enough

After the fuss over actors and actresses wearing black to the Golden Globes, is protesting by fashion the most effective form of protest for female celebrities?

Graham, by email

You can hardly blame actors for thinking so. For decades, women have spoken out against abusive men in Hollywood, from Louis B Mayer to Alfred Hitchcock to Mel Gibson to Casey Affleck, and, until October 2017, when the Harvey Weinstein scandal broke, they were ignored, laughed at and ostracised, while the men were, almost invariably, protected. After all, don’t female actors know they are supposed to be silent and objectified? It wasn’t just Hollywood players who told them this, but the media, too, and never more so than at the Oscars, Golden Globes and Baftas. These ceremonies are supposed to be celebrations of their work, but became entirely about reducing them to silent show ponies, whose careers could be made or broken by whether some daytime TV host liked the Gucci dress their stylist called in. Anyone who dared to make a political statement at these events was derided – shut up and let’s just look at your dress, Meryl!

So, I don’t blame female actors for feeling their loudest instrument is their wardrobe. Personally, I would have preferred them all to go to the Golden Globes wearing sweatpants, a 17-year-old Hard Rock Cafe T-shirt and Ugg boots, rather than a minxy black Alberta Ferretti dress, to show what a woman looks like when she really DGAF, but one step at a time. I do, however, have some words I’d like to say about the men.

As you may have read, some of the actors showed their support by dressing in black, too, which, as protests go, really puts those Black Power salutes at the 1968 Olympics to shame, don’t they? Oh sure, Tommie Smith and John Carlos might have risked their own and their families’ livelihoods and safety, but did you see that the Rock wore a black tuxedo instead of maybe a burgundy one?

Look, it’s super cool that some of the guys want to show solidarity with the ladies – we appreciate it, guys! And God bless, for example, Seth Meyers, who may or may not have been wearing black (I honestly can’t remember), but gave good hosting (let’s all take a moment to make a silent prayer of thanks that Ricky Gervais wasn’t hosting this year). But I would like to talk a little about a phenomenon I have noticed of late that I call the Woke Man. The Woke Man is one who is recently, and suddenly, like, really down with the important liberal issues. He will tweet ever so urgently about how completely outrageous Toby Young’s nine-year-old tweet about Claudia Winkleman’s breasts was, and then blithely talk over and humiliate women. He will insist that he is, like, totally a feminist because he is A Good Guy and he follows some women on Twitter. So, now all women should listen to him because he knows what’s best for them.

Matt Damon, Taika Waititi, Jeff Bezos and Chris Hemsworth wear black at the Golden Globes. Photograph: Alberto E Rodriguez/Getty Images

In other words, being the Woke Man allows a chap to seize the moral high ground with minimal effort. Wearing a black tux to the Golden Globes to show solidarity with women is the ultimate A-list Woke Man move, given that (a) most men wear black tuxes anyway and (b) it says precisely nothing. You know what would really show solidarity with women in Hollywood who have suffered harassment and unfairly reduced employment opportunities, guys? If you actually spoke up for once in your over-privileged lives.

You could refuse to work in a film in which you’re being paid more than the actress opposite you. You could admit how much Weinstein’s misogyny worked for you, in that none of you were expected to give him a naked massage in order to get a role in his next movie, and you could own up that many of you knew what was going on and never said a word. I mean, sure, we can go into 2018 believing that none of Brad Pitt’s high-profile friends knew what Weinstein was up to, as they have insisted, even though Pitt has said he confronted Weinstein over the alleged harassment of his then girlfriend, Gwyneth Paltrow – but really, who has the energy? Did Pitt never mention this story in between takes on Ocean’s Eleven, or on one of his boys’ holidays with certain other actors who worked quite a lot with Weinstein? Did it never come up, over cigars and whiskey on a Cannes hotel balcony, that, after going after Paltrow, Weinstein then allegedly harassed Pitt’s ex-wife Angelina Jolie? Are we all really supposed to believe this? It’s 2018 and I’m just too tired to fake credulousness any more.

Men – especially high-profile Hollywood men – have many more means of speaking up at their disposal other than via their wardrobes. But this requires them to relinquish some of their privilege, given that speaking up for others means sacrificing something of yourself. It means not being the centre of attention, not having your ego fed at all hours of every day and, most of all, it means acknowledging how much you yourself have benefited from the current system, and how much you trampled over women to do so. Ugh, how awkward! So much better to post some self-validating tweets and wear a Gucci tuxedo. Yeah, that’ll show ’em!

(Source: The Guardian)

Oprah becomes first black woman to win prestigious Golden Globes award

Oprah Winfrey gave one of the most iconic speeches of all time at the 2018 Golden Globe Awards when she accepted the Cecil B. DeMille Award.

The award was given by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association for incredible contributions to the entertainment industry.

Actress Reese Witherspoon presented the 63-year-old actress and media mogul with the honour saying Winfrey's hugs "the greatest thing ever."

Winfrey, who stars in the upcoming movie A Wrinkle In Time, delivered an impassioned monologue talking about racism, sexism and the #MeToo movement and even honoured Rosa Parks and the late Civil Rights icon Recy Taylor.

“It is not lost on me that, at this moment, there is some little girl watching as I become the first Black woman to be given the same award,” Winfrey said in her powerful speech. “It is an honour and it is a privilege to share the evening with all of them.”

She later discussed the importance of women coming forward with their experiences of sexual assault.

"For too long, women have not been heard or believed if they dare speak the truth to the power of those men," Winfrey said. But their time is up. Their time is up. Their time is up.

After repeatedly saying "time is up" Winfrey received a standing ovation from the audience.

Read the full speech below:
"Thank you, Reese. In 1964, I was a little girl sitting on the linoleum floor of my mother's house in Milwaukee watching Anne Bancroft present the Oscar for best actor at the 36th Academy Awards. She opened the envelope and said five words that literally made history:" The winner is Sidney Poitier." Up to the stage came the most elegant man I ever remembered. His tie was white, his skin was black—and he was being celebrated. I'd never seen a black man being celebrated like that. I tried many, many times to explain what a moment like that means to a little girl, a kid watching from the cheap seats as my mom came through the door bone tired from cleaning other people's houses. But all I can do is quote and say that the explanation in Sidney's performance in Lilies of the Field: "Amen, amen, amen, amen."

In 1982, Sidney received the Cecil B. DeMille award right here at the Golden Globes and it is not lost on me that at this moment, there are some little girls watching as I become the first black woman to be given this same award. It is an honor—it is an honor and it is a privilege to share the evening with all of them and also with the incredible men and women who have inspired me, who challenged me, who sustained me and made my journey to this stage possible. Dennis Swanson who took a chance on me for A.M. Chicago. Saw me on the show and said to Steven Spielberg, she's Sophia in 'The Color Purple.' Gayle who's been a friend and Stedman who's been my rock.

I want to thank the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. We know the press is under siege these days. We also know it's the insatiable dedication to uncovering the absolute truth that keeps us from turning a blind eye to corruption and to injustice. To—to tyrants and victims, and secrets and lies. I want to say that I value the press more than ever before as we try to navigate these complicated times, which brings me to this: what I know for sure is that speaking your truth is the most powerful tool we all have. And I'm especially proud and inspired by all the women who have felt strong enough and empowered enough to speak up and share their personal stories. Each of us in this room are celebrated because of the stories that we tell, and this year we became the story.

But it's not just a story affecting the entertainment industry. It's one that transcends any culture, geography, race, religion, politics, or workplace. So I want tonight to express gratitude to all the women who have endured years of abuse and assault because they, like my mother, had children to feed and bills to pay and dreams to pursue. They're the women whose names we'll never know. They are domestic workers and farm workers. They are working in factories and they work in restaurants and they're in academia, engineering, medicine, and science. They're part of the world of tech and politics and business. They're our athletes in the Olympics and they're our soldiers in the military.

And there's someone else, Recy Taylor, a name I know and I think you should know, too. In 1944, Recy Taylor was a young wife and mother walking home from a church service she'd attended in Abbeville, Alabama, when she was abducted by six armed white men, raped, and left blindfolded by the side of the road coming home from church. They threatened to kill her if she ever told anyone, but her story was reported to the NAACP where a young worker by the name of Rosa Parks became the lead investigator on her case and together they sought justice. But justice wasn't an option in the era of Jim Crow. The men who tried to destroy her were never persecuted. Recy Taylor died ten days ago, just shy of her 98th birthday. She lived as we all have lived, too many years in a culture broken by brutally powerful men. For too long, women have not been heard or believed if they dare speak the truth to the power of those men. But their time is up. Their time is up.

Their time is up. And I just hope—I just hope that Recy Taylor died knowing that her truth, like the truth of so many other women who were tormented in those years, and even now tormented, goes marching on. It was somewhere in Rosa Parks' heart almost 11 years later, when she made the decision to stay seated on that bus in Montgomery, and it's here with every woman who chooses to say, "Me too." And every man—every man who chooses to listen.

In my career, what I've always tried my best to do, whether on television or through film, is to say something about how men and women really behave. To say how we experience shame, how we love and how we rage, how we fail, how we retreat, persevere, and how we overcome. I've interviewed and portrayed people who've withstood some of the ugliest things life can throw at you, but the one quality all of them seem to share is an ability to maintain hope for a brighter morning, even during our darkest nights. So I want all the girls watching here, now, to know that a new day is on the horizon! And when that new day finally dawns, it will be because of a lot of magnificent women, many of whom are right here in this room tonight, and some pretty phenomenal men, fighting hard to make sure that they become the leaders who take us to the time when nobody ever has to say 'Me too' again."

(Source: Independent)

Yes, Oprah - We "still" eat with our hands, so what?

Media Mogul Oprah Winfrey is in the headlines again, not to say for the bad reasons! People haven’t forgotten that she was in India, for the first time, in January to shoot an India special for Oprah's Next Chapter. The series was aired on Discovery Channel and its affiliate TLC - The Lifestyle Channel - over the weekend. So what? There lies the crux of the story. Winfrey's negative take on India in the show has been largely criticized.

During her visit, Winfrey visited a Mumbai slum, the Jaipur Literary Festival, where she taped an interaction with noted writer Deepak Chopra, a widow’s home in North India, rounding off with a must-see trip to the Taj Mahal. The episode also filmed Winfrey spending time with families, from the slum-dwelling poor to millionaires, including being escorted by Indian film icon Amitabh Bachchan and his family to a glamorous Bollywood party hosted in her honour by leading Mumbai socialite Parmeshwar Godrej.

Watching the show – yes, I must admit, her talk shows are addictive and I often end up watching some of them, compromising with some hours of my sleep -- I was shocked to see her take on India and Indians. 

She was guided through a slum in Mumbai by Gregory David Roberts, the author of Shantaram, and went to meet a family of five. She was surprised to see the family – parents and three children – living in a 10x10ft room. She was surprised to see the whole family living in a small space. But what was most shocking was she asked the children how they could live in such a “tiny” room and actually wanted to know, “Don’t you feel it’s too cramped?” She asked the, if they were happy living in such a small place. Maybe the children, who are happily living with their parents, might have wondered why she’s asking such a foolish question! Not enough of her queries, she asked the father if “he was happy and satisfied”, which made the man to get tears in his eyes. All he said was he wished he could earn more and provide for a more comfortable life for his children. Adding to the woes, Winfrey didn’t keep quiet, after making the man weep in front of his family, she said that she knows how awful it is for children to see their father weep!

In fact, she looked for a shower head in the toilet and was amazed to hear that the family bathed with a bucket! She was astonished by the fact that all their clothes fit onto a small shelf. Why didn’t she ask the family how they enjoyed the big LCD TV that adorned their walls? Had she mentioned about the TV, maybe it would have killed the whole purpose of her visit to the slum, to their house. The painful story would have been marred by the mention of the TV! When their older daughter told Oprah that she’d like to go to London to study further, Oprah played her role as American ambassador. She said: “No. Come to America, it’s a lovely country. It’s the best.”

After visiting the slum, she visited a rich joint family, which was dressed in full Indian regalia, in Mumbai. They served her a meal in silver plates and bowls. She looked at the food and asked one of the family members, “So I hear some people in India STILL eat with their hands”. I felt like screaming at her ignorance or maybe arrogance… Which Indian will not get angry at her question? I wondered if people in the US eat pizzas, burgers, sandwiches and tacos using forks and knives, or I don’t know if they have some other cutlery for them!

Another generalization she did when she told her viewers, “ALL women in India live with their mothers-in-law and extended family.” Where did she get this impression from? Everybody living with mothers-in-law and extended family? God knows and she knows…

Then, decked in Tarun Tahiliani’s designer saree, she headed towards Bachchan family. There she met the family and saw Aishwarya Rai and Abhishek Bachchan’s child and said the baby was “lit from within”. Sorry, I couldn’t understand what she meant by that!

Later, she went to the party thrown in her honour by billionaire socialite Parmeshwar Godrej. She wondered at the paparazzi outside the Bachchan home, which is quite impressive on any given day. AT the party, she said hi, hello to Priyanka Chopra, Shiamak Dawar, Anil Kapoor and other Bollywood stars. She interrogated A.R. Raman – sorry, that how she called him, Raman not Rahman! She talked to him about how “even he lives with his mother and whether he loves his wife who he had an arranged marriage with”.

Leading news channel CNN-IBN posted an “open letter” to Oprah Winfrey from an Indian who eats with her hand” on its website penned by Rituparna Chatterjee. The letter read: “Oprah, your comment about eating with the hand is really not that big a deal to us; we are used to gross Western ignorance regarding our ancient country. But as a responsible public figure about to air a show that will be beamed across the world, you should have done your homework. Using our hands to eat is a well established tradition and a fact none of us are ashamed of. Our economic distinction has nothing to do with it. A  millionaire here eats the same way a pauper does. You have been to Asian nations. You should know that.”

Questioning Winfrey's motives, Chatterjee added, “Poverty is an inseparable part of India, you say, and seek out the human stories that make the grind bearable. But which India have you come looking for? The one that shops at state-of-the-art supermarkets and vacations abroad or the one whining about their misery in tiny holes of homes with LCD televisions on the walls? The India that scrapes by with $200 a month but sends its children to subsidized government schools to pick up fluent English? The India of your press information - fascinating, with its many-headed goddesses and grimy, naked children playing by roadside hovels - or the India of the future - an economic superpower that looms large outside the range of an average American's myopic vision?”

A critique of the show by online news site Firstpost.com writer Rajyasree Sen described the two-episode series as “myopic, unaware, ignorant and gauche. This was Middle America at its best worst”.

Winfrey's tour of a Mumbai slum, where she met a family of five living in a cramped room, was also criticised by Rajyasree Sen. She said: “And the slum is where Oprah’s 'oh-my-god-how wonderfully-pathetically-quaint-to-be-so-poor' avatar stepped out in full glory. .. Now I’m not surprised that Oprah was surprised to see an entire family living in such tiny quarters. Although I’m sure she could find cramped ghettos in the U.S... She did look for a shower head in the toilet and seem amazed to hear they bathed with a bucket. And she marveled at how all their clothes fit onto a small shelf. She pointedly avoided any mention of the massive LCD TV which adorned their wall. That would have killed the sob story. When their older daughter told Oprah that she’d like to go to London to study further, Oprah also played her role as American ambassador to the hilt and said, “No. Come to America, it’s a lovely country. It’s the best”.”

Another leading newspaper group Dainik Bhaskar posted the headline “Snobbish Oprah Mocks India” and said: “In a typical American snooty style, the talk show queen tried to portray a superficial ‘sob story’. Oprah was anything but a good guest when she went around the small room interrogating the family members about their ‘poor’ living style and ‘miserly’ living.”
In its coverage of how the show got a “thumbs down”, India Real Time – not to forget it’s the Wall Street Journal's India-specific blog -- said: “The smell of incense (tick), the sari fitting (tick), the aspirations of slum dwellers (tick), and the glitz of Bollywood (tick). Let’s not forget arranged marriages and the fact that Indians, even rich ones, “still” eat with their hands (tick, tick). India as Westerners imagine it, one stereotype at a time.”

On the other hand, a few of the many online comments to the India Real Time story supported Winfrey's coverage of India's reality. “The views Oprah presented are cliched BUT TRUE! I am an Indian who lives in the U.S... To many middle and upper class families, the India Oprah presents simply does not exist. I was shocked to speak to members of my family and they denied that people are dying of malnutrition and starvation below their very ivory towers,” said a post by RJ.

Some even say that Oprah showed what’s reality and there’s nothing wrong in what she did. “Oprah showed what she saw in India. What’s wrong with that? If we can’t clean up our act, then we have no business feeling offended,” said another post by Esh.

Is it something to do with how India and Indians are projected after Slumdog Millionaire? Maybe, who knows? Many people in the West think India is filled with slums and Indians have been stereotyped like that everywhere. “Since the time Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire, Indians have been stereotyped everywhere like that. Whenever I’ve met someone, they do mention Slumdog Millionaire, as if every Indian was that. For many in Europe, India is what is shown in Bollywood movies, women are sexy, wearing short skirts and barely covered bodies and couples sing and dance around trees and in public areas. They are not able to differentiate the real life from movies. The most common stereotype in Europe about India is that there are a lot of people in India dying or dead on the streets. Many are scared to visit India, just because there are too many people,” said a post by Gajendra K.    

So I’m not the only one who’s criticizing Oprah’s take on India, a whole lot of Indians are also of the same opinion.