7) She treats celebrities as medical experts
Giving celebrities a platform to express their fringe medical ideas as fact is not only irresponsible, but dangerous. When Jenny McCarthy took to Oprah's stage to talk about her belief that a vaccine caused her son's autism, Oprah fueled a dangerous anti-vaccine conspiracy theory that had been building in the United States. And when Suzanne Somers raved about how a quite possibly dangerous hormone treatment helped her with menopause, millions of American women began inquiring about how they could receive the same treatment.
When Oprah became enamored with The Secret, so, of course, did everyone else. Its central idea — that you're solely responsible for your own happiness — aligns with Oprah's ethos, but it's a dressed-up version of blaming the victim. When you believe that the universe rewards positive thinking, you must also believe the converse — that the universe punishes those who have negative thoughts. Negative thinking isn't responsible for poverty, illness, abuse, or misfortune. Oprah didn't rise to fame by wanting it more than anyone else — she worked hard and had a lot of help. To insinuate that success is based on sending good thoughts into the universe is junk science and offensive to anyone who has suffered a tragedy.
---SPSmith
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