I never liked Oprah.

The first time I heard about Oprah was sometime in 1985 or 1986 when a friend called…

“Dude, ya gotta turn on channel 4”

“Why”

“There’ skinheads on Oprah, man”

“Yeah, so what, who the f.ck is Oprah?”

“Dude, you don’t know who Oprah is? She’s this black chick on TV and she’s got skinheads on. It’s unreal, dude. One of ‘em just called her a monkey. I almost sh!t.”

“Okay, Okay, dude, I’ll turn it on… see ya”

Click

I don’t remember what I was doing, but I didn’t watch Oprah. I wasn’t interested. Remember this was a year or two before the infamous Geraldo skinhead show in 1988. Oprah set the standard – anything for ratings. She was the original attention whore, influencing the Downey, Geraldo, and Springer copycats. I’ve never lent Oprah much credibility because of these early publicity stunts. So I must smack my ego and admit not only do I admire the woman today, I am going to defend her.

Since Oprah endorsed “The Secret” several credible websites (www.salon.com) have attacked her. The most popular attack piece is a superfluous rant by Peter Birkenhead.

This is his first sentence.

By continuing to hawk “The Secret,” a mishmash of offensive self-help clichés, Oprah Winfrey is squandering her goodwill and influence, and preaching to the world that mammon is queen.

Do you know what mammon is? It is a biblical term that implies wealth is evil, which is one of the 10 things I wish I had never believed and one of many beliefs that keep people poor.

Here is sample of Mr. Birkenhead’s page 1 word choice:

mammon, snake oil, clichés, partners-in-con, pyramid scheme, quacks, Amway…

Peter uses another biblical term to describe Oprah – “venality” – which is synonymous with “corrupt” and “dishonest.” So instead of saying, “Oprah is corrupt and dishonest”, he uses his thesaurus to soften his attack.

Why does Peter accuse Oprah of moral corruption (venality)?
Since victims of genocide, AIDS, rape, poverty, and other injustices exist – and “The Secret” teaches, “you become what you think about” – Peter concludes Oprah is blaming these victims.

Nothing could be further from the truth. This is what “The Secret” teaches:
Yes, you may be a victim of something in the past. But it is in the past and it cannot be changed, so do not dwell on the misfortunes of the past. Look to any past misfortune in the most positive possible way so that you may learn from it. Do not let past injustices lead to helplessness, hopelessness, victim hood, despair, negativity, depression, anger, guilt, shame, or revenge. These things perpetuate the cycle of misery and violence. Think positive optimistic thoughts because you cannot change the past; you can only change the future. Positive thoughts lead to positive emotions, which lead to positive actions eventually leading to positive experiences. This formula not only creates positive results for you, but it will infect everyone you meet. You are not to blame for everything bad that happens, but dwelling on negative past experiences leads to depression, anger, and violence. So change the way you think, feel, and act and change your future.

Another critic wrote “The Secret” isn’t about positive thinking, it’s about blowing rainbow colored unicorns out of your ass just by thinking about them. No it isn’t. It is about creating positive thoughts, feelings, and actions.

Mr. Birkenhead writes:

“Venality,” because Oprah, from a studio within walking distance of Chicago’s notorious Cabrini Green Projects, pitches a book that says, “The only reason any person does not have enough money is because they are blocking money from coming to them with their thoughts.”

First, Cabrini Green is being demolished and replaced with a much better system that disperses the poor throughout the city rather than have them concentrated in a giant government ghetto. This change was due in part to the thoughts, feelings, and actions of people like Ms. Winfrey.

Second, I don’t know Mr. Birkenhead’s background, so I don’t know if he’s ever been poor. But I assure you Oprah has been poor – very poor. She was born in the Deep South to unmarried teenage parents; her grandmother raised her in rural poverty until age six. She later moved with her mother to a Milwaukee ghetto, where starting at age 9, her uncle, cousin, and family friends sexually abused her. She was a teenage runaway that lived on the streets and had a baby who died as an infant.

I will not argue that folks living in ghettos like Cabrini Green are to blame for their situation, but I will argue that they will never escape poverty until they change the way they think. Oprah could take her billions and give it to the 15,000 former residents of Cabrini Green and it wouldn’t make a difference. In the long run, it would probably make it worse.

Why do I come to this conclusion? Because I’ve been poor and homeless. I’ve lived it from the inside. Many of my friends grew up in welfare projects raised by single mothers. I know the culture and I lived the belief system. There is a difference between looking at poverty from the outside (like many intellectuals) and actually experiencing it yourself. I know I need to be careful here – but the truth is – when I was poor, my thinking was extremely effed up. Every poor man around me had the same screwy thoughts and ideas. We had screwed up ideas about women, class, money, respect, work, violence, race, education, and sex. Some people believe poverty creates this ugly value system, but I disagree, this value system creates poverty. To reduce poverty, people need to change the way they think, especially young males, and “The Secret” tells people they have the power to change the way they think. Every positive change begins with a positive thought and nothing will change in your life unless you first take control of your thoughts.

People also believe poverty causes violence, but if this were true, eliminating violence would be easy, just give poor people stuff and violence would disappear. But we’ve tried that and it doesn’t work because the problem isn’t lack of money, it’s screwed up values, especially among young men. Poverty doesn’t create violence; violence creates poverty. You don’t believe me? What do you think will happen to your financial situation if you started using violence to solve your problems? What if your neighbors decided to use violence to solve problems? Would poverty increase or decrease in your neighborhood?

Mr. Birkenhead also states:

And worse than the idiocy and the bullshitting is its anti-intellectualism, because that’s at the root of the other two. Here’s “The Secret” on reading…”When I discovered ‘The Secret’ I made a decision that I would not watch the news or read newspapers anymore, because it did not make me feel good,”

Peter’s writing implies “The Secret” advocates “ignorance is bliss,” but again, nothing is further form the truth. Newspapers and TV promote ignorance and fear.

I could cite a hundred examples, but here’s just one:

Most parents don’t let their children ride bikes to the park or to school anymore. Why? They’re afraid of stranger abduction. When you ask them if they rode their bike to the park by themselves when they were children, they say, “yes, but things are different today, it’s more dangerous for children. There are more creeps walking the streets.” They’re right – things are different today – the incidence sex crime has dropped 70% in the last thirty years! Do you know what else changed? Mainstream TV and print media sensationalize every child abduction, which scares the sh!t out of parents even though it is the rarest of crimes.

Almost all news is negative. If you believe newspapers and television, you will believe the whole world is going to hell, but it isn’t, it’s getting better everyday. Could it be better? Yep. Should we think, feel, and act in a way that creates a better tomorrow for all of us? Sure. But allowing the news media to fill your mind with sensationalized fear might paralyze you. So step past the negativity and begin creating the world you know you are capable of creating. If you sit around complaining about the news, waiting for a politician to create a better tomorrow for you, you’ll complain until the day you die and nothing will change. If you really want to make the world a better place, turn off your TV and cancel your subscription to the newspaper and start visualizing the world you want, imagining every detail, making it so real you can feel it, and then go create it through positive action.

I challenge Peter Birkenhead or any other rich critic of Oprah and “The Secret” to give away all of his material wealth and move his family into a trailer park, welfare project, or homeless shelter. Don’t come sweeping in like a white knight giving freebies away, but become part of the culture, living the way they live and believing the things they believe. Get an apartment in a building where women are raped in the laundry room, where you walk past crack dealers to get in your front door. Watch your peers humiliate you for selling out when you take responsibility for your family and decide to get a minimum wage job. Endure the hoots from the young men who sit outside drinking beer and smoking dope when you leave for work every afternoon. Listen to your best friend brag, “Whadda doin’ working that sh!t job? I got it made. My girlfriend just got her section 8 voucher and I don’t gotta work no more.” Notice the women lying in the sun all day while their kids run wild but you never see the dads. The biggest male role model in the neighborhood is the guy that doesn’t even live there, he shows up every few days in a $100,000 sports car, says he’s self-employed, but spends all day giving little kids rides around the parking lot. Do that for three years – and then you’ve experienced it from the inside out – then you’ve lived it – and once you’ve done that Peter – I want you to tell me trying to change the way poor people think, feel, and act is bullsh!t snake-oil.

When you feel trapped in poverty and hopelessness, changing the way you think is critical to escaping. Changing the way you think will be one of the hardest things you ever do – even when you aren’t poor. So for all of you that are trying to create a better tomorrow, don’t listen to critics like Peter Birkenhead, listen to the people that have improved the world, the people like Oprah Winfrey who’s life is a personal testimony to beating the odds. Look to those that became the best they can be. They know “The Secret” and they know the power of thought. People like Peter Birkenhead must believe that changing your thoughts is easy, that’s why he ridicules Oprah and “The Secret.” But changing your thoughts isn’t easy, especially when you are poor, trapped, abused, or imprisoned. It’s difficult. Don’t let people like Peter Birkenhead discourage your growth. If you are working hard improving yourself, you are already making the world a better place.

“It doesn’t matter who you are, where you come from. The ability to triumph begins with you — always.” – Oprah Winfrey