Oprah, Lance and coming OWN attractions.

Watched the first part of the Lance Armstrong summit meeting with Oprah Winfrey, and my heart hasn't softened as a result; he's still a jerk, but one who now carefully weighs words and parses some of them in the best Bill Clinton how-do-you-define-what-the-word-"is"-is fashion.

I don't intend to endure Part Two--where Lance goes into up-to-a-point detail about how his behavior impacted on family, Livestrong and what seemed to be infinite endorsement deals.

Now, let's proceed to the OWN program commercials.

Oprah's still trying to find the right mixture of high-minded and lowbrow: I saw ads for a Dallas policewomen show (intended to evoke Fox's COPS), an IYANLA promo which features her verbally taking down past-his-prime hip-hop star DMX, a commercial for a LEAN ON ME-esque reality series with a more--youthful-and-telegenic-than-Joe Clark protagonist and--finally--a special on S&M/bondage being packaged as suitably middle-of-the-road for America thanks to the mainstream success of the FIFTY SHADES OF GREY novels.

Not to mention a plug for a future Oprah exclusive with Drew Barrymore on the latter's new child--with the promo having Oprah ask Drew about past bisexuality in a clear context of "wild behavior you later have to explain to your kids."

Considering the alleged more-than-friends relationship between Oprah and Gayle King, this sort of inquiry dives into the deep end of the moral hypocrisy swimming pool.

Some random opinions following today's news about Anderson Cooper.

1. Regardless of timing, it's commendable that CNN's Anderson Cooper decided to join his lesser-known colleague Don Lemon (who came out awhile ago) and declare himself proudly gay in both his public and private lives.
2. The irony remains that Cooper works for an organization (Time Warner) which still is a prime mover in keeping certain gay celebrities tightly closeted--and publishing "he/she is straight with his/her supposedly-straight lover/spouse" fantasies for their print/web readership.
3. No comment about the Tom Cruise/Katie Holmes divorce (of which a settlement has now been reached--announced Monday July 9th), except to say that it's interesting that it shares the same news cycle as Anderson Cooper's coming-out e-mail to THE ATLANTIC's Andrew Sullivan.
4. Regarding Number 3, it's safe to say that most closeted thespians will remain that way (as Time Warner's ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY recently mentioned in a cover story, male celebs who are out aren't likely to be cast in straight romantic mainstream movies--or, likely, superhero/fantasy/action franchises, reinforcing a decades-old casting prejudice of the motion picture business)--unless they're outed or choose to out themselves late in their careers when their better days as money-earners in the Industry are behind them.

A wreath on the grave of THE JAY LENO SHOW.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jay_Leno_Show

Two notes to add to the Wikipedia article:
1. I'm assuming that David Letterman was possessed by a malign form of glee in proposing the Super Bowl commercial for LATE SHOW WITH DAVID LETTERMAN to Jay Leno--knowing that Leno's shaky hold on a "good guy" persona would take a further hit with a "can't laugh at
myself" turndown.

2. Last week, Bill Maher made his final guest appearance on THE JAY LENO SHOW.
When Maher brought up the topic of Jay's "vulnerability" (see Note #1),
Leno cut Maher off and rushed to a commercial break.

One final prediction: The Jay/Dave ratings war may be a bit more unpredictable from March onwards. Yes, Leno will be Number One some nights--and Letterman will beat him on other occasions.

And more than a few of us will opt for Coco if he finds himself on Fox or Comedy Central.

Conan, Jay and NBC: What we've learned.

After Friday night's great finale for THE TONIGHT SHOW WITH CONAN O'BRIEN, I now feel free to make a list of things I've learned (as well as most of you reading this):
1. I can't wait for Comcast to fire Jeff Zucker, Jeff Gaspin and Dick Ebersol and bring in new
executives that might have some grasp as to how to run a broadcast network in the 21st century.
2. NBC's trying to create a new myth--that THE TONIGHT SHOW is a franchise must be executed in strict lowest-common-denominator fashion in order for it to be Number One.
That myth is based solely on Jay Leno's pandering-to-fratboys tenure on the show since 1995. If you take the network's myth
as gospel, then Steve Allen (too quirky) and Jack Parr (too talky, books too many smart guests) could never host the show if they were alive today. Even Johnny Carson, who would occasionally book author Truman Capote and scientist Carl Sagan, would be suspect to current NBC management.
3. In spite of NBC giving Conan a gag order and allowing Jay to go on OPRAH for another platform for Mr. Leno to do his ".....ehhhhh, I'm just a working class guy that NBC took off when I was Number One" schtick, the legend of Coco will persist. Especially because Conan was likely screwed into the ground by network weasels who insisted that he try hard to mute his normal humor and come up with a Leno-esque way of doing THE TONIGHT SHOW--and, then, when Conan was passive-aggressively fired for giving them the show they wanted, they turned around and unfairly accused him of "not listening" to them.
4. Conan O'Brien's next TV series may not knock off Jay, Dave or Jimmy Kimmel (likely the front-runner for Leno's TONIGHT SHOW chair), but it's guaranteed to be fresher and funnier than its competition--as long as network execs let Conan be Conan and stop all the second-guessing and other interfering-with-creativity nonsense.

The Oprah Book Club, Jonathan Franzen and a lesson the L.A. poetry community won't learn.

Here's an op-ed article by Julia Keller which appeared in THE LOS ANGELES TIMES today re the Oprah Winfrey Book Club: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-book-club30-2009dec30,0,6657148.story

A salient passage (with highlighting by me):
So forget Kindle. What transformed literary culture in 2000-09 was "The Corrections" (2001) by Jonathan Franzen -- not only the book, which is a big, gorgeous, strapping 19th century novel smuggled into the 21st, and a Midwestern novel to boot, but also the story behind the story. It was selected by Oprah Winfrey for her book club. Franzen was less than thrilled about the honor -- previous Winfrey books struck him as dreadfully down-market and plebeian -- which led to a mini-dust-up with Winfrey and a sudden spotlight on a dirty little truth: Literature is the last refuge of the snob. Most of us thought, in our infinite ignorance, that readers are readers, and the more readers, the better. But not Franzen: He wanted only certain kinds of readers.Winfrey's book club began in 1996, but it was the Franzen episode that put it on the map. Yes, her imprimatur made a huge difference in a book's sales from the get-go, but "The Corrections" -- the intricate, beautifully written story of the slow, tottering fall of a Midwestern family -- made her book club controversial, and in the United States, nothing is truly important until it has started a few arguments.The first decade of the 21st century revealed two things to the literary world: the power of a TV talk-show host to shape our collective taste in books, and the rudeness of a self-important author when that taste happened to include his work. (Never mind that Winfrey also favored William Faulkner, Toni Morrison and John Steinbeck; she was still too lowbrow for Franzen.)

My choices for People of the Year.

Purely subjective choices for People of the Year:

1. Joe Lieberman--the man who gives aid and comfort to Republicans,

conservative Democrats and the health insurance lobbyists who love them.

2. Stanley McChrystal--this generation's version of the general

who once croaked "old soldiers never die, they just fade away"

and prompted President Harry Truman to remove him for defiance

regarding the Korean War; President Obama, facing a similar situation

with Afghanistan, meekly rolled over instead.

3. Lloyd Blankfein--head of Goldman Sachs, the bank

which apparently keeps Gordon Gekko's motto "greed works"

to heart.

4. Jeff Zucker--the man who has made NBC what it isn't today.

5. Oprah Winfrey--the talk-show megamogul who's moving from

syndication to ruler of her own cable network (acronym OWN)

6. Tiger Woods--from all the recent chatter, one would think

that he's the first-ever sports celeb to ever have affairs. Now

the media has shifted to wondering how much endorsement

money he stands to lose.

Oprah Winfrey will end THE OPRAH WINFREY SHOW after 25 years in 2011.

Read Nikki Finke's blow-by-blow account of Oprah's decisionmaking, plus a comment Oprah allegedly made regarding Southern California vs. Chicago:
http://www.deadline.com/hollywood

THE OPRAH WINFREY SHOW started out as an imitation of the interviews-plus-let-audience-ask-some-questions format which made Phil Donahue a success. And, in the early seasons, Oprah exuded an Everywoman appeal (at one point, the show used the song "I'm Every Woman" for its theme) which made it easy for audiences to identify with her.

As the years went on, Oprah became super-rich and the self-important, lording-it-over-everyone aspects of newfound superwealth permeated the show (with a low point being her on-air scolding of the Paris department store Hermes for apparently not knowing who she was). Also there was her tendency to lapse into a sort of vocalese (JUUUUULIIIIIA ROOOBBEEEERRRTTTSSS!)--with her delivery of the line "I'm having a Martha Moment!" (prior to Martha Stewart's jail time and her Mark Burnett-assisted comeback as a rival daytime host) being particularly memorable in the wrong way.

Having said that, the show had its moments of insight/watchable guests-and-experts over its two-plus decades. And, through the Book Club, viewers were exposed to both writers they weren't familiar with plus great novels they may not have read otherwise.

So let's see what the Discovery-affiliated Oprah Winfrey Network will offer longtime fans/newcomers in 2011.

WE ARE COLUMBINE: poem written 10 years ago.

We Are Columbine

I
At the first memorial service
for the students and the teacher
whose lives were obliterated by
two malign young men,
I saw two teenage girls on the podium
looking out at the huge crowd
and engaging in a school cheer-
WE ARE…..COLUMBINE!

Some might call this school spirit
unshaken in the face of tragedy.
To me, it seems more like a form
of obliviousness, almost as if the tragedy
was a brief, unexplainable tornado
instead of an incident partially caused
by the indifference and callousness
of certain students and faculty
who value conformity and achievement
more than compassion and outreach
to people who are “different”.

II
Ten young people were contacted
by the school district in Littleton.
According to district spokesperson
Rick Kaufman,
the students were presented with
“alternatives [such as home schooling]
to returning to school for the rest of the year.”
The ten students were “strongly suggested”
to take the offer.

Ten students-
some of them may be guilty
of little more than simply knowing
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.
Ten students profiled as troublemakers
by a frightened school district.
Ten students likely to be shunned
by peers eager to preserve
the narrow, exclusionary cliques
found in every American high school.
Ten students who deserve empathy
and compassion from a suburb that deifies
the alleged virtues of luxury, appearance and order.
WE ARE…….COLUMBINE!

III
Columbine isn’t just a high school.
Columbine is a state of mind.

We are Columbine
when we vote against
state initiatives and bond measures
to build new schools
(or to renovate older ones)
to ease overcrowding of students.

We are Columbine
when we openly deride and mock
such proposed Federal programs as
“Midnight Basketball”-
designed to provide an alternative
to gang lifestyles for city youth.

We are Columbine
when we walk down a busy street
and flinch at the sight
of teenage boys and girls headed our way.

We are Columbine
when we see these teens
and we hate their clothes,
their baseball caps worn backwards,
their hairstyles, their jewelry
and the color of their skin.

WE ARE…….COLUMBINE!
Now
and Forever.