What Does Oprah Really Believe?

Oprah Winfrey, the soon-to-retire diva of daytime, has made quite a lot of money over the years with her self-named television program and self-named magazine and self-named Web-site and other self-named hooks meant to rake in the advertising dollars while giving consumers a breadbasket full of mixed messages. She talks the talk, then walks away …

Case in point: When Michael Pollan showed up on her show to promote a philosophy that is nothing short of a sustained attack on modern production agriculture and the contemporary food industry, the Guru of Granola received quite the warm welcome from the Big O.

And then, she unveiled a new studio set for her TV show … made entirely of Godiva chocolate, and allegedly completely edible. Did her staff carve the set up afterwards and feed it to Chicago’s homeless? It was quite a shrine to gluttony that Pollan the Food Prude would not care for.

In working on this post, I popped on over to Oprah’s Web site, where this banner ad greeted me, even on the page that featured Pollan’s puffery:

Oprah's Web site, Feb. 25

Now, we in farming may be upset when Oprah interviews Pollan one day, but we should relax a little when she sits on her Godiva Chocolate throne the next day and pops Peanut M&Ms into her mouth. After all, it’s just business as usual for a woman who treats her audience like a Yo-Yo diet.