Not to be too girlie-girl or anything and defend Oprah but whatever, I love her, so here goes: I will NEVER forget Oprah's behavior following Sept. 11. It was markedly different than many of her colleagues who had similar shows.

She did shows on every aspect of terrorism, and every aspect of that day LONG after everybody else was trying to move on. She kept saying, "We are not done, as a nation, talking about this - I am going to keep focusing on this - I won't stop." I'm a big Oprah fan anyway, but - it's almost like: In that circumstance, she used her show like a town-hall meeting. Blatantly. She had on air traffic controllers, and cops, and firemen, and the widows - she talked to experts on Islam ... day after day after day after day.

I really admired her for that. Perhaps it seems like no big deal - but if you recall those days ... Life was already getting "back to normal" by November. She refused to cave ... she refused to go back to her old programming - and when she DID decide to focus on other topics again, she did a whole show acknowledging how hard it was to move on, how hard it was to keep going - but that we had to. As a country.

Sorry to ramble, Mitch. Especially about Oprah. I feel a bit of a fool. :)

Don't feel bad - it's interesting! You have license to ramble as much as you want in my comments... ;-]

I don't see much Oprah these days; I watched a lot of daytime TV back when I was a stay at home dad, back in about '91-'92, but that was a while ago. I know Oprah kinda makes the mold as she goes along.

But I had very little sense of how Oprah's covered this, or much of any other, issue since 9/11. It's interesting to hear...

...as it was, indeed, interesting to hear the sound bites of yesterday's show.

Never knew that about her show. I cannot emhphasize how much 9/11 shaped my interest in politics, it drew me in like no other issue. I really wish I could have watched those shows...you could easily call me partisian now, and at this point reading blogs or watching crossfire you name it...leaves you knowing the talking points before the first guy gets done talking.

I'll try and sum it up this way. If you talk politics at all, 90% chance you are talking with someone who has long ago made up their mind. This country imo needs more town hall type meetings or what have you where normal people try and hash things out without the spin or talking points you find all too often. It would make sense that if Opera did this type of thing for so long...it could only help strengthen the will of people on the fence that the war on terrorism is worth fighting.