Oprah (49 page)

Although Oprah was unable to coax anything out of the dashing young man, his mere presence gave her record-breaking ratings, which were not topped until Barbra Streisand appeared two months later. Streisand returned in 2003 and topped her previous ratings by singing on daytime television for the first time in forty years. Still, Oprah was
most ecstatic about the Kennedy interview. “I thought I loved him,” she said after the taping. “Now I know I do.”

Oprah was at the top of her game in 1996, making more than $97 million a year and stacking up Daytime Emmys like firewood. She ruled talk show television then because she gave her viewers compulsively watchable programming. It was not all celebrities all the time but a combination of pop culture and dramatic first-person stories of abuse and survival intermixed with books, movies, music videos, beauty makeovers, fad diets, and psychics, plus pressing issues of the day.

Shortly after the outbreak of mad cow disease (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) in Britain was linked to a neurological disease afflicting humans, Oprah presented a show on April 16, 1996, titled “Dangerous Foods” in which she asked if the fatal incurable disease that attacks the brain and leads to a slow excruciating death could spread to the United States. The first guest was a British woman who said that her dying eighteen-year-old granddaughter had fallen into a coma after eating hamburger tainted by a mad cow. Film footage showed stumbling, disease-ridden cattle in Britain. The second guest was a woman whose mother-in-law had died from the debilitating disease, which she felt was contracted from eating beef in England. The next two guests were Gary Weber from the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, who said government regulations ensured that U.S. beef is safe, and Howard Lyman from the U.S. Humane Society, who said the human form of the disease could make AIDS look like the common cold. The reason, he said, is because each year in the United States one hundred thousand sick cows are slaughtered, ground up, and used for feed.

“Howard, how do you know for sure that the cows are ground up and fed back to the other cows?” asked Oprah.

“Oh, I’ve seen it,” said Lyman. “These are USDA [U.S. Department of Agriculture] statistics.”

Looking sick, Oprah turned to her audience. “Now, doesn’t that concern y’all a little bit right here, hearing that? It has just stopped me cold from eating another burger. I’m stuck….Dr. Gary Weber says we don’t have a reason to be concerned. But that in itself is disturbing to
me. Cows should not be eating other cows….They should be eating grass.” The audience roared their approval.

The next day cattle prices dropped on the trading floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, and the cattlemen blamed Oprah, although a livestock analyst with Alaron Trading Corporation said, “The program [only] exacerbated what was already a negative situation in the market.” Oprah defended herself, saying, “I am speaking as one concerned consumer for millions of others. Cows eating cows is alarming. Americans needed and wanted to know that. I certainly did. We think we were fair. I asked questions that I think that the American people deserve to have answered in light of what is happening in Britain.”

The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association objected to the “unbalanced” editing of the show, pulled $600,000 in network advertising, and threatened to sue Oprah under a Texas statute that outlaws making bad and untruthful statements about perishable food products. Cowed, Oprah aired a second “Dangerous Foods” show the following week (April 23, 1996) and pointedly did not include Howard Lyman, who had said the U.S. livestock industry was feeding “roadkill” to cattle. An angry rancher later said the second show was “too little too late” because Oprah “didn’t go on the program and eat a hamburger before the world.”

Within six weeks, various cattle groups had banded together to sue her, King World Productions, Harpo, and Howard Lyman, seeking $12 million in damages. For the next year Oprah geared up to defend herself, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on lawyers and jury consultants, in addition to the expense of moving her show to Amarillo, Texas, for a six-week trial in federal court. In the past when she had skirted the line between responsible and irresponsible comments, she had not been called to account, except for her show on devil worship, during which she introduced the suggestion of Jews sacrificing their children. After meeting with Jewish leaders and apologizing, she was allowed to move on. This time was different: the cattlemen, seeking revenge, wanted to go to court, despite efforts made on Oprah’s behalf to settle the case.

Phil McGraw (later known as Dr. Phil, when he became a talk show host) was working as a trial consultant and had been retained by
Oprah’s lawyers to help plan their courtroom strategy and prepare the defendants for trial. He recalled meeting with Oprah and her attorneys to discuss settling the case instead of going to trial. When Oprah asked what he thought, McGraw said, “If you fight this to the bitter end, the line at the Sue Oprah window is going to get a lot shorter.” Actually, that line was never long, because Oprah’s wealth had protected her from serious litigation: few people wanted to go up against her bottomless purse and crushing teams of lawyers. Other than a few pesky lawsuits here and there, including one from former Harpo photographers Paul Natkin and Stephen Green, who sued Oprah (and settled) over a copyright infringement, she had been fairly lucky. In a deposition during the photographers’ case, she said, “My intent always is to own myself and every part of myself that I can, including photographs, a building, everything in the building. I have, you know, created a culture…at Harpo of ownership.” The attorneys representing the photographers recalled Tim Bennett testifying that Oprah did not know the difference between a W2 form and a 1099, which they found “totally unbelievable.”

Hardly litigious, she had filed suit only once before, in 1992, when she and Stedman sued a Canadian tabloid that had published an interview purporting to be with Stedman’s male cousin under the headline “I Had Gay Affair with Oprah’s Fiancé.” She and Stedman won that suit by default when the publisher went out of business rather than defend the claim. She instigated one other lawsuit in 1995 by prompting her former decorator Bruce Gregga to sue the
National Enquirer
after the tabloid published color photos of her Chicago condominium, showing shiny gold-fringed chairs, satin damask couches strewn with velvet pillows, red silk wall coverings, and a marble bathtub with gold-plated faucets. “Her place was awful, so ornate and rococo, she should’ve sued the decorator for bad taste!” said one of the
Enquirer
’s attorneys from Williams and Connolly in Washington, D.C. Gregga was represented by Oprah’s attorneys from Winston and Strawn, and Shearman and Sterling.

“I remember seeing her minutes after she had seen the pictures,” said Bill Zwecker of the
Chicago Sun-Times.
“She had just flown back from Rancho La Puerta to attend Stedman’s book party on the top
floor of Michael Jordan’s restaurant, and she was livid. ‘I am so furious,’ she said. ‘I just got off the plane and saw a picture of my bathroom in the
National Enquirer.
’ She fired Bruce, even though she knew he had nothing to do with publishing those pictures. He had a guy working for him who sold the photos for twenty-five thousand dollars to the tabs…but Oprah said they should have been locked in a safe….She felt totally violated.” In the end, Oprah and Gregga opted not to go to trial and settled with the tabloid.

She would say later that she never considered settling the “Dangerous Foods” lawsuit out of court, but her codefendant, Howard Lyman, claimed otherwise. “If they could have found a way to feed me to the cattlemen and gotten her out of the lawsuit, I would have been down in a heartbeat,” he said. “I have the highest regard in the world for Oprah, but I can’t say the same for her people at Harpo….After the trial was over they contacted my attorney and told him they wanted me to pay Oprah’s legal costs [approximately $5 million].” Lyman also said there was great fear resulting from the lawsuit. “The toughest thing for me was when my wife looked me in the eye and asked, ‘If we lose, do we lose everything we have?’ I had to tell her yes.”

Oprah, too, was afraid. She told the
Amarillo Globe-News
that before the trial she sent a security team to the city to make sure she would be safe from a lunatic’s bullet and her dogs would be safe from being poisoned. She later told Diane Sawyer, “I was afraid, physically afraid for myself. Before I went to Amarillo there were…‘Ban Oprah’ buttons…and bumper stickers.” She said she wasn’t afraid of all the people in Amarillo, just a random fanatic who might get excited by all the controversy. Beyond concerns of bodily harm, Oprah realized that if she lost the case, she would lose more than money: she would forfeit the credibility that was the cornerstone of her career. Consequently, she spared no expense in defending herself.

A close reading of the depositions taken in the lawsuit indicates quite a bit of rancor and staff dissension within Harpo, underscoring what one of Oprah’s former publicists described as “a snake pit.” Employees testified to workplace problems of drugs, sexual addiction, and anger management. An anonymous letter sent to plaintiffs’ attorneys on Harpo stationery was introduced as an exhibit at the deposition of a
former employee. The letter directed the plaintiffs’ counsel to look into the drinking problems of one of Oprah’s senior producers, and race and sex discrimination throughout Harpo. The letter was signed “A Big Beef Fan.”

In deposing one of Oprah’s former senior producers, her attorney Charles (“Chip”) Babcock discredited the producer by exposing his past police record, plus an outstanding arrest warrant, which may have been the reason why all future employees of Harpo began with a thirty-day probation period while they were investigated by Kroll Associates, the international detective agency, before being hired full-time.

Oprah gave her first deposition on June 14, 1997, and two days later she wrote that she was still “reeling” from what she felt was an indignity. “Crew cut. Southern, young snuff-spittin’ lawyer, asking me if I’d just use my ‘common sense.’ Humiliating. They loved it….First time I ever felt pinned down, my back against the wall. Looking into the eyes of those lawyers, I felt like when those mossy-toothed boys had Sethe [from
Beloved
] pinned down in the barn….I can’t shake the demeaning, gut-wrenching deposition.”

Q: What reasonable scientific basis do you have for saying that cows should not eat other cows?

A: No scientific basis. Common sense. I’ve never seen a cow eat meat.

Q: That’s the entire basis for the statement?

A: My common sense?

Q: Yes.

A: And knowledge that I’ve acquired over the years.

Q: What knowledge is that? That’s what I’m trying to get at….What’s the basis for the statement that they shouldn’t be eating other cows?

A: Because that’s the way God created them, to eat grass and hay.

The attorney then asked about her professional credentials.

A: I’m the CEO of Harpo.

Q: You are also the host of
The Oprah Winfrey Show
?

A: Uh-huh.

Q: Are you an entertainer or a journalist?

A: I’m a communicator.

Q: Could you identify for me the awards that you have won?

A: Well, the award that means the most to me is being named one of the ten most admired women in the world, number three behind Mother Teresa.

He pressed her on the number of viewers she had, suggesting she did sensational shows like “Dangerous Foods” to draw more viewers, get higher ratings, and further enhance her business opportunities. She disagreed.

Q: So you don’t care what your viewership is….

A: That’s not what I said.

Q: You do care?

A: I would like to have as many viewers as possible, but I don’t do shows just to get viewers. I do not. This isn’t Jerry Springer you’re talking to…okay?

Oprah said there had been some shows that she had taped but then decided not to air:

A: One was a serial killer, Mercer, Ohio, who had allegedly killed 80 different people and he spoke about how he did it. Another one was a show on kidnapping. Another one was a stalker.

Q: What was the show on kidnapping, what was wrong with that?

A: Well, I thought that the way the show was presented it would encourage or present the idea of kidnapping to somebody who didn’t have the idea. And since I’m a main target for kidnapping I thought it wouldn’t be a good idea.

Six months later, on December 19, 1997, she gave the second part of her deposition and became a little testy when the plaintiffs’ attorney suggested she did “sensationalist type of work.”

A: I object to the word sensational. I object to the word sensational. I don’t do sensational shows. Not from the beginning have I done sensational shows. My feeling is that life is
sensational and if it exists in life and you can report it, tell about it, inform and make people more aware then so be it, but I object to the term sensational.

The day before the trial began (January 20, 1998), Oprah arrived in Amarillo on her Gulfstream jet accompanied by her two cocker spaniels, her trainer, her bodyguards, her hairdresser, her chef, and her makeup man. Prior to her arrival, the Amarillo Chamber of Commerce had issued a staff memo saying there would not be “any red carpet rollouts, key to the city [or] flowers” for her. Instead, she was welcomed to town (population 164,000) by bumper stickers that read, “The Only Mad Cow in America Is Oprah.” She headed for the Adaberry Inn, a ten-suite bed-and-breakfast that she had taken over for herself and her personal entourage, which came to be known as Camp Oprah. The rest of the Harpo staff and production crew moved into the five-star Ambassador Hotel. She also rented the Amarillo Little Theatre to tape her shows in the evening after she attended the trial during the day. Oprah told the reporters gathered from around the country that she was in Amarillo to defend her “right to ask questions and hold a public debate on issues that impact the general public and my audience.” She later said the trial was the worst experience of her life.