I can't decide if Newsweek's grotesque photo of Oprah demonstrates that she has finally hit a mainstream nerve or that Newsweek is far more frightened about its future than I suspected.
Either way, this week's cover story confirms for me the magnitude of the intellectual and cultural shift sweeping this country. And the sad irrelevance of traditional publications.
I could certainly offer contrary facts, statistics, and stories to counter Newsweek's indictments against Oprah and her messages. But I'll leave that to others who, I'm sure, will flood Newsweek's mailboxes.
Instead let me just say that despite the fact that I'm the magazine's primary market (48, advanced degreed, entrepreneur with substantial disposable income, an educated and prolific reader), this issue shows the desperation of an elite losing things far more fundamental than the value of their 401(k)s.
Here are some different truths: vast swaths of the world believe that our thoughts and intentions shape our reality, for example, and we no longer feel compelled to wait for the physics industry to catch up. In 2005 the Centers for Disease Control reported that 65% of us routinely access "alternative" healthcare; the Institute of Medicine then revealed that we spend more out-of-pocket on those alternatives than on visits to our primary physician. We recognize bioidentical hormones do not benefit from double-blind studies because they are unpatenable (ie unprofitable, ie unable to generate the revenue necessary to fund those studies), not because they are ineffective. So we're using them and experiencing life-changing improvements.
We're moving forward without Newsweek and its peers. In droves. And this issue suggests their fearful sense of abandonment is palpable.
Newsweek may gloat sardonically in its intellectual superiority, dutifully reporting facts, all perfectly checked, that demonstrate collapsing securities markets, melting polar ice caps, and clashing political enemies. But they miss the real story. They miss the fundamental demise of the paradigms and epistemologies that cause all those horrors.
That is the story Oprah bravely explores.
I do not always agree with her. I, too, bristle sometimes at what I believe is her misplaced enthusiasms. And I certainly regret that she must weave evocative material between banal celebrity interviews.
But the real secret is Oprah remains steadfastly relevant, and Newsweek does not. Unfortunately at a time when we most benefit from national dialog, Newsweek chooses to be a gasping periodical in a dying industry, regurgitating the same empty story week-after-week, with writers and editors -- no matter how skilled and well-intentioned -- increasingly talking only to the shrinking pool of people just like themselves.
There's a whole new world out here, far larger than Newsweek's antiquated universe. Maybe if they took some bioidentical hormones they'd finally feel well enough to find it, join it, and share that story.
