by Kitty Kelley
The critic for the Chicago Sun-Times wrote, “So does all this soul-searching mean Oprah will finally quit subjecting herself to such indignities for the sake of ratings? Don’t bet on it.”
Booking bigots, self-proclaimed porn addicts, and witches as guests gave Oprah, then thirty-four, soaring ratings over fifty-two-year-old Phil Donahue, whose talk show the writer David Halberstam once described as “the most important graduate school in America,” informing millions about changes in society and modern mores. For over twenty years Donahue had treated his female audience like intelligent women, and had reigned as the number one talk show host in the country. Having paved the way for a competitor who was now tromping him, he, too, began dipping into tabloid sleaze. “I don’t want to die a hero,” he said, explaining why he cross-dressed as a woman to do a show on transvestites. He later acknowledged that as a white male, he lacked Oprah’s ability to get cozy with a female audience about finding a good man, a foolproof diet, or a bra that fit. While Oprah was besting Donahue at every turn, The Wall Street Journal reported on critics who called her show “Nuts ’n’ Sluts” and “Freak of the Week.” Her executive producer defended the tabloid programs, saying when viewers complained about a show on sex, it was only after they’d watched every minute of it. When she was asked about a show on child murderers, Debra DiMaio asked for clarification: “Are you talking about kids who kill kids, or kids who kill their parents?” Oprah had done shows on both.
She said she would never do another show with white supremacists, but she resented being criticized for doing tabloid television. “It bleeps me off when you guys write as if I do shows about how to dress your parakeet,” Oprah told one critic. “I was uncomfortable doing ‘Women Who Have Obnoxious Husbands,’ but I turned down [televangelists] Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker. Won’t talk to them. And I won’t do ‘Is Elvis Alive?’ ”
During the May sweeps of 1988, she stunned everyone when she chose to air a show on teenage boys who’d died of autoerotic asphyxia, a sexual practice that sometimes involves tying a noose around the neck during masturbation. By then she was not just competing against Phil Donahue, but also contending with the talk shows of Sally Jessy Raphael, Geraldo Rivera, Morton Downey, Jr., and Regis Philbin and Kathie Lee Gifford, with Joan Rivers, Jenny Jones, Jerry Springer, Maury Povich, Ricki Lake, and Montel Williams waiting in the wings. The pressure to top previous sweeps ratings and trounce the competition led Oprah to present a controversial show featuring the parents of two young boys who had accidentally strangled themselves as a result of the extreme sexual practice.
Dr. Harvey Resnik, a clinical psychiatrist, also appeared on the show. As former chief of the National Institute of Mental Health’s Center for Studies of Suicide Prevention, he had published a paper on erotized repetitive sex hangings in which men bind their necks, or cover their heads in a plastic bag pulled tight with a drawstring, and achieve an intense high through masturbation while reducing the supply of oxygen to the brain. “When oxygen is depleted, more carbon dioxide is retained, causing an altered state of consciousness. The result is a light-headed giddiness known as a head rush, something that skin divers and pilots who lose oxygen also report. This altered state can affect the sexual pleasure center of the brain. The risk is that with diminished blood flow, the person passes out, slumps forward, and completely obstructs the airway, which results in death from asphyxiation. The behavior is well known to medical examiners.”
As a consultant to survivors of victims of autoerotic asphyxia, Dr. Resnik understood the shame attached to that particular kind of death. “Just as with other problems we have in mental health, we know that self-help groups and the ability to share grief and to share information is quite helpful,” he said.
The day before the show aired, Oprah’s executive producer, Debra DiMaio, called Dr. Park Dietz, a forensic psychiatrist, criminologist, and professor of biobehavioral sciences at the UCLA School of Medicine. He warned her about broadcasting such a graphic subject. “I had a heated discussion with the producer. I argued that television is not a suitable medium for discussing this subject, because the risk of people imitating it is too high,” he said. “I told her that if the show were aired, it would foreseeably result in one or more deaths.” Dr. Dietz added that if anyone sued Oprah for reckless and negligent conduct, he would testify to a jury that he had warned the producer against airing the show. Oprah later said she had “meditated” on the matter and concluded that they should proceed. Months later DiMaio regretted the decision. “It was a dangerous thing to do,” she said. “You never want to give that one kid the idea to go ahead and try it.”
At the time, Dr. Resnik said the producer agreed to issue a parental warning before the show to restrict TV access to children. “Still, I don’t think she or Oprah was prepared for such a powerful subject,” he said, “but I applaud them for having the courage to bring the issue to the public.”
That afternoon, May 11, 1988, after watching the show, thirty-eight-year-old John Holm retreated to the garage of his father’s house in Thousand Oaks, California. When his father returned home hours later from an Elks meeting he could not find his son. “The television was still on Channel 7—the channel he’d watched Oprah on,” said Robert Holm. “The garage lights were on, but the door was locked from the inside. I banged on the door, but there was no answer. I had to break in. That’s when I found his body. It was horrible. I thought John had killed himself. But when the rescue squad came, one of the workers said he knew how my son had died because he’d seen the Oprah show that afternoon. I blame the Oprah show for my boy’s death. I lost my son and my best friend in the world.”
Mr. Holm hired a lawyer to investigate suing Oprah. “Her show led to John’s death—and I will never forgive her for that,” he said. In the end he decided not to put his wife through the pain of a lawsuit. “He was our only son and a beautiful person. We can’t bring him back.”
Publicly, Oprah defended her show. “What I got afterward were responses from grieving parents: ‘Thank you for explaining to us what happened to our boy.’ They felt a lot better knowing, they said. Before, they had been torturing themselves that they were to blame.” Privately, she worried about the possibility of having to defend a wrongful-death suit.
“I got a call after the show from her producer, saying parents might sue and asking if I would serve as a witness for Oprah,” recalled Dr. Resnik. “I said I would because I believe that having information about such risky behavior is better than not having any information at all.”
Oprah was accused of triggering another death when she hosted a show called “Bad Influence Friends,” featuring a marriage therapist, an engaged couple having difficulties with their relationship, and a twenty-eight-year-old electronics technician branded by the engaged man’s fiancée as the cause of the couple’s problems. The engaged woman said that “Mike,” her fiancé’s best friend, was an ex–drug user and a big drinker who flirted with other women even though he was married. The camera zoomed in on Mike with the words Bad Influence under his face. Oprah told the audience, “Mike is married, but it doesn’t stop him from being Tom’s bad influence and keeping him out late—drinking and dancing and a little flirting, which Mike believes is all harmless fun.” Mike said he enjoyed going out with his friends without his wife. Oprah looked at her predominantly female audience, who hissed and booed. One angry woman called him a “major nightmare,” and the audience applauded. A shouting match erupted when Oprah asked Mike why he’d gotten married.
“Because I like the security. I like to come home. I like to have someone there.”
Thoroughly incensed, one woman shouted, “You can’t have both worlds, Mike.”
“Yes, I can,” he shot back.
“No, you can’t.”
Less than two weeks later, Mike’s father found him hanging from a ceiling fan in his Northlake, Illinois, home. “I know in my heart that Oprah’s show killed my son,” said Michael LaCalamita, Sr. “I believe he killed hi
mself because he couldn’t take the humiliation [of how he came across] and the pressure [of the comments from friends and strangers after the show]….Oprah didn’t give him a chance to defend himself. She kept egging him on and on. When the crowd stopped getting at him, she would start another round of attack. It wasn’t fair. Oprah’s a TV star and he’s just a young kid. He didn’t know what he was getting into.”
The marriage therapist on the show, Dr. Donna Rankin, an associate professor at Loyola University in Chicago, told a writer she was surprised that Oprah had even aired the show. “From the things Mike was saying it was clear that he had severe emotional problems,” she said. “Obviously, he needed help.”
The only public statement Oprah made about the suicide came through her publicist, Colleen Raleigh: “Only Mike LaCalamita or perhaps a psychiatrist would know why he took his own life. Our deepest sympathies are extended to his family and friends.”
Despite growing criticism over her tabloid programming, Oprah said her shows “just give people a voyeuristic look at other people’s lives. It’s not to shock.” Still, she continued to demand what she called “bang, bang, shoot-’em-up shows,” especially during sweeps, but when she did a highly controversial show on devil worship, she almost shot herself in the foot.
Broadcast on May 1, 1989, the show was titled “Mexican Satanic Cult Murders,” and during one segment Oprah presented a woman under the pseudonym of “Rachel” who was undergoing long-term psychiatric treatment for multiple personality disorder.
“As a child my next guest was also used in worshipping the devil, participated in human sacrifice rituals and cannibalism,” Oprah told her audience. “She is currently in extensive therapy, suffers from multiple personality disorder, meaning she’s blocked out many of the terrifying and painful memories of her childhood. Meet ‘Rachel,’ who is also in disguise to protect her identity.”
“Rachel” said she had witnessed the ritual sacrifice of children and had been a victim of ritualistic abuse. “I was born into a family that believes in this.”
“And this is a—does everyone else think it’s a nice Jewish family?” asked Oprah, introducing “Rachel’s” religion. “From the outside you appear to be a nice Jewish girl….And you are all worshipping the devil inside the home?”
“Right,” said the disturbed “Rachel.” “There’s other Jewish families across the country. It’s not just my own family.”
“Really? And so who knows about it? Lots of people now.”
“I talked to a police detective in the Chicago area….”
“So when you were brought up in this kind of evilness did you just think it was normal?”
“Rachel” said she had blocked out a lot of the memories, but she remembered enough to say “there would be rituals in which babies would be sacrificed.” She later added, “Not all Jewish people sacrifice babies….It’s not a typical thing.”
“I think we all know that,” said Oprah.
“I just want to point that out.”
“This is the first time I heard of any Jewish people sacrificing babies, but anyway—so you witnessed the sacrifice?” said Oprah.
“Right. When I was very young I was forced to participate in that, and…I had to sacrifice an infant.”
The phones at Harpo started jangling with hundreds of irate callers objecting to Oprah’s blithe acceptance of “Rachel’s” claims about Jews practicing devil worship. Television stations across the country—New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Cleveland, Washington, D.C.—were inundated with furious calls. Within hours, Jewish groups rose up in condemnation, and Oprah’s show became a national news story. “We have grave concern about both the lack of judgment and the insensitive manipulation of this woman, who is clearly mentally ill, in a manner which can only inflame the basest prejudices of ignorant people,” Rabbi David Saperstein of the Religious Action Center of Reformed Judaism told The New York Times.
Arthur J. Kropp, president of People for the American Way, a leading civil liberties organization, met with his board of directors in Washington, D.C. “There’s been a lot of concern about so-called trash television,” he said after reviewing the transcript of Oprah’s show. “She was the one who introduced the religion. I don’t think she introduced it to convey any correlation between the woman’s Jewishness and what she saw, but nevertheless Oprah did do it and that was careless.”
This wasn’t the first bad publicity Oprah had ever received, but it was brutal because she was being criticized for offending sensibilities of race and religion, which she had always appeared to champion. It was an especially sorry position for a woman who had put herself forward as a “poor little ole nappy-headed colored chile” from the lynching state of Mississippi as a not-so-subtle reminder of the viciousness of bigotry. She now felt misunderstood by her accusers, but she also recognized that her career was in jeopardy.
“We are aware that the show has struck a nerve,” said Jeff Jacobs, then COO of Harpo Productions. He pointed out to the press that Oprah had said on the air that “Rachel” was one particular person talking about her particular situation. “And she was identified at the top of the show as being mentally disturbed,” he added, not commenting on why such a person would be allowed on the show in the first place. Recognizing the danger of a national boycott of The Oprah Winfrey Show and the potential loss of sponsors, which could spell financial ruin for everyone, Jacobs quickly offered to meet with Jewish leaders in Chicago to try to salvage the situation, but neither he nor Oprah offered a public apology. When reporters called, Jacobs said Oprah was “traveling” and “unavailable for comment.”
The night after hosting her devil-worship show, she appeared on The David Letterman Show in Chicago and was unnerved by the comedian’s quirky manner. The interview was awkward throughout, especially when someone in the crowd yelled, “Rip her, Dave.” Letterman grinned his gleeful gap-toothed grin and said nothing. Years later he said, “I think she resented the fact that I didn’t rise to the occasion and, you know, beat up on the guy. Which I probably should have, but I was completely out of control and didn’t know what I was doing.” A couple of nights later, Letterman, doing his show from the Chicago Theater, told his audience that he felt ill because he had eaten four clams at Oprah’s restaurant, The Eccentric. That ripped it. Oprah closed the door on David Letterman and did not speak to him again for sixteen years.
Feeling battered by the bruising she was taking in the nation’s press over her devil-worship show, Oprah remained close to her condominium at Water Tower Place when she wasn’t working. Serendipitously, she happened to meet Harriet Brady (née Bookey), another resident, in the lobby. Mrs. Brady, then seventy-two, was well known in Chicago’s Jewish community as a philanthropist. She approached Oprah to introduce herself, and then said kindly, “I think I can help you.”
Within hours she was on the phone to her good friend Abraham Lincoln Marovitz, a federal judge whose contacts extended into every segment of society. He agreed to help, and for the next week Judge Marovitz and Mrs. Brady worked on Oprah’s behalf to assemble a group of representatives from the region’s Jewish community to meet at Harriet Brady’s condominium to try to quell the raging controversy.
Oprah arrived at the meeting on May 9, 1989, with Debra DiMaio and two Jewish members of her senior staff, Jeffrey Jacobs and Ellen Rakieten. They sat down with Michael Kotzin, director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Metropolitan Chicago; Jonathan Levine, midwest director of the American Jewish Committee; Barry Morrison, director of the Greater Chicago/Wisconsin Regional Office of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith; Rabbi Herman Schaalman, president of the Chicago Board of Rabbis; Maynard Wishner, president of the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago; Judge Marovitz; and Mrs. Brady.
Oprah was sufficiently contrite and vowed never again to broadcast a show on devil worship. She agreed to reach out to B’nai B’rith, which fights anti-Semitism and racism, whenever her show focused on those subjects, and she prom
ised to exercise better judgment in selecting guests. The two sides came together over the next three days to work out two statements to be delivered to the press, which had been covering the story nearly every day. Oprah and her executive producer said, “We recognize that The Oprah Winfrey Show on May 1 could have contributed to the perpetuation and historical misconceptions and canards about Jews, and we regret that any harm may have been done. We are aware of community and group sensibilities and will make every effort to ensure that our program will reflect that concern.”
Speaking on behalf of the Jewish community leaders, ADL representative Barry Morrison said, “We were all satisfied that Oprah Winfrey and her staff did not intend to offend anyone and that Oprah was genuinely sorry for any offense or misunderstanding. During the meeting, constructive recommendations were made and there was an extensive exchange of information which led to a greater understanding of Jewish perspective on the part of Oprah and her staff.”
Not everyone was pleased with the outcome. “It’s an inadequate response to the harm that may have been done on that broadcast,” said Phil Baum, associate executive director of the American Jewish Congress. “It’s not our sensitivities she ought to be concerned about. It’s a question of the integrity of her show. This apology cannot possibly reach anything like the people [7,680,000 homes, according to the A.C. Nielsen Company] who were exposed to these statements.”
Oprah refused to make an apology on her show or publicly comment on the program or the statements, but privately she embraced her two major defenders and kept Mrs. Brady and Judge Marovitz close to her for the rest of their lives. Both were invited to all her parties, and because of them she became more involved in Jewish causes.