Oprah talks about anxiety, Maya Angelou and the exact spot she was conceived
WASHINGTON: Oprah was feeling it on Thursday night. The love. The praise. The honour. And perhaps even the open bar.
But who could blame her? Nearly 700 people had convened at the National Museum of African American History and Culture to toast the media giant (and the museum’s biggest donor) as the institution celebrated the opening of “Watching Oprah,” its new exhibit about Winfrey’s life and career. So she deserved to strut a little, and preach a little and tell a dirty little joke (more on that later).
In a speech that lasted just over 15 minutes, Winfrey told the crowd gathered in the museum’s grand foyer about her recurring anxiety dream. (Yes, Oprah has them). She quoted her mentor, poet Maya Angelou. She actually said the words “hashtag goals” when referring to her exhibit. And she went back, like way back.
“You know my parents never married and according to my father, they only had sex one time,” said Winfrey as the room burst into laughter. In perhaps the most TMI Oprah moment on record, we know now that she was conceived underneath “a big ol’ oak tree.” According to Winfrey her father says that when he drove her mother home, “she still had leaves on the back of her poodle skirt.” There’s a point to all this obviously. This is Oprah after all.
“Clearly, I was no accident,” she said.
Oprah also made sure to pay homage to “the ten thousand” — the men and women on whose shoulders she stood.
“I stand here tonight with the ten thousand to the tenth power,” said Winfrey drawing up like a preacher at a pulpit. “I stand here tonight with Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass and all the ancestors and all the slaves whose names never made a history book, who never would have made it into a museum but whose contributions made us.”
“Most excitingly I’m aliiive,” she declared in that signature Oprah style, “to see it and to claim it.” After walking the exhibit for the first time alongside the NMAAHC’s founding director Lonnie Bunch and her BFF, “CBS This Morning” anchor Gayle King, Winfrey recalled Bunch turned to her and said, “Isn’t it wonderful you’re still alive to see all of this?”
And she turned to him and said, “Am I alive? Or is this a dream?”
The dream was real on Thursday as many in the crowd, which included Winfrey’s longtime partner Stedman Graham, her father, Vernon Winfrey, businessman Ken Chenault and former White House social secretary Deesha Dyer, lined up to get a first look at the exhibit before it opens to the public on Saturday.
“I just could not be more proud,” said former Obama staffer Kirby Bumpus, who is Gayle King’s daughter and Oprah’s goddaughter. “It’s not only about the impact she’s had but the impact the country has had on her and the context in which she was born in 1954.”
Activist DeRay Mckesson said it was the more intimate moments that got him the most. “I think about seeing her high school ID and the cheque that bounced, those are the things. ... We think we know Oprah,” he said, but there’s more to America’s talk show queen.
And the critics who say Winfrey’s role as a donor makes an exhibit about her life so soon after the museum opening appear like payola at the highest level of philanthropy?
“The museum is about honouring African-Americans who’ve made history. She was able to donate because she made history,” said Mckesson, ”and she still understands her role to push us forward and to make sure she gives back.”