Religiosity

I was sitting by my 91 year old mother's bed in the nursing home where she is now in hospice care. As my mother dozed, I put on Oprah, a show my mother watched regularly and skeptically. It was Oprah's "finale show". This in itself was a mixed message, I felt, since the whole week has been finale shows, which I have been watching with astonishment by my mother's bedside, as my mother occasionally chimed in weakly, "What a phony that Oprah is!"

Toward the end of yesterday's show, interrupted by the cheesy commercialism that made Oprah her fortune, Oprah crossed the line between religiosity and delusional grandiosity to the cheers and tears  of her minions. It was true cult worship. I have checked her official Web site this morning to read the transcript of the show. I found that her Web editor had wisely omitted her grandiose ramblings, delivered with the outstretched hands of a high priestess.

Oprah had explained that God had ordained her to be rich and famous. She explained that the finding of her mother's egg by her father's seed during intercourse "under a tree in Mississippi"...I am not elaborating here...had been a miracle ordained by God to produce her, a Messianic figure with raised palms and a swing of her ample hips. She went on in this babbling vein. Perhaps she was speaking in tongues. The basic message: God loves me and made me rich and famous, so I can tell you all what to do to be just like me.

The subliminal message is ages old. It is not Liberation Theology by any means. Its is simple: If you have problems and are poor, you are not blessed by (her) God. In other words: Pray harder and buy my products, stupid!

I looked over at my mother as she dozed. She is a woman who has survived and persisted through growing up an impoverished, first-generation American through The Great Depression and World War II. She worked for pennies from the age of eleven. She scrubbed floors and changed diapers for middle-class women who treated her like a slave. Her immigrant family was tortured by alcoholism and violence in response to the stress of trying to survive in an alien culture. And, even in her sick bed, my mother tries to humbly maintain her composure and dignity to the best of her ability. In Oprah World, however, my mother most likely would be seen as not trying hard enough or not praying loud enough, because she did not gain a cult following or live ostentatiously.

The foundation of any humanism, in my opinion, is the equal worth of all human beings, despite their material or psychological circumstances. In a world where worth is measured in dollars, this is not true. Religion is often a justification for this materialism. Look to the Papacy for example. The hypocrite preaches the holiness of prosperity as a justification for her own greed and egomania, while pandering to the poor with lip-service to keep them coming back with their money. The truly good human being lives responsibly to the best of her ability without exploiting other human beings and seeking their adulation.

Oprah has learned the way of those who have exploited religion for centuries. By exploiting her own troubles and seducing others to exploit theirs for profit, she has built an empire on being the resurrected, redeemed victim. She has poisoned modern feminist culture with self-entitled materialism and self-entitled hedonism. Appropriately, in the glossy final hours of her reign over her cult, she has taken on the mantle of holy priestess. She has become the perfect embodiment of popular American religion.