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Oprah Oprah Oprah,

Not too long ago my little brother wrote a song called “Oprah is a Communist.” Albeit untrue, it is quite funny. You should hear it. It goes a little something like this: “She will live forever in her Soviet capsule… made by Stalin himself…. Stalin and Oprah… Lenin and… Mao Tse Tung…. in the…. Kremlin together…. Kremlin together…” It really is funny. I promise. He reminds me of a young Bruce Springstein. Anyway, I pointed out to him that you were too entrenched in the capitalist camp to ever be considered a communist. I reinforced, that, he, my little brother, didn’t stand a pig’s chance in Beijing of seeing you so much as step foot onto the no man’s land of socioeconomic class warfare. You were far too busy studying maps and drawing battle plans in your stately estate at the expense of the state of the state to give much thought to turning coats. He didn’t seem to mind that. He accused me of trying to undermine his individuality and freedom of speech. I guess he had a point. We shouldn’t try to undermine anyone’s individuality or freedom of speech even if we do think they’re total buffoons that exploit slow-minded members of middle-class America for their own economic gain. Speaking of gain, I heard in my Poetics of Everyday Life class that you’ve actually been making great gains in victory over fat cells. It is a sick, sad and sorry affair that we find ourselves needlessly engrossed in some women’s endless bout of insecurity. Normally I would just brush it off as some sort of symptom of a schizophrenic society, but I was really quite bothered the other day when some girl in my class interrupted the presentation of my thesis project in a vain attempt to correlate it to your recent weight loss. Yes, she ultimately related the culmination of eighteen years of education to the weight problem of some random television personality. And yes, she saw nothing wrong with this. I’m sorry, but my thesis project which consists of a networked area of environmental sensors designed to create a positive feedback loop really has nothing to do with the size of your bloomers. No offense, but I really do not understand as to why anyone would care in the slightest about your current measurements. What good does it really do them? All you are doing is applauding and promoting insecurity as being perfectly natural. This then just goes to reinforce the prevailing and quite suspect beauty standards. I won’t even get into the Oprah-brand lifestyle choice you so generously bestow upon us in “O.” Oh… give me a break. If you fell off the edge of the Earth tomorrow, you do realize the world would go on without you? I’m sorry for being so blunt, but it is true. A good portion of people would forget your waste size in three days time and a better portion of people would forget you completely within a week. In a month’s time you would be replaced, not because you really needed to be replaced, but simply because that’s what people do. They latch on to things. It comforts them to place all of their hopes, dreams, ambitions and failures on the efforts of someone else. Maybe you should start another magazine called “Better Vicarious Living.” And every month you can be on the cover sporting your new waste size. It would be great fun for the whole family. And the world would be a better place. Then we can all build giant paper mache statues of you in a variety waste sizes. Better yet, they will be made out of the pages of your magazine and constructed where the national forests used to stand. We will all be the better off in the long run I suppose. Really. Carry on the good work. Godspeed.

Sincerely,

Randy Sarafan

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