Oprah Winfrey took the Golden Globes stage on Sunday night to accept the Cecil B. DeMille Award. She was the first black woman ever to win the award.
It was a moment that could have unified an industry and the Americans who were watching — most of whom have lost faith in Hollywood after a disastrous year full of revelations about sexual abuse and harassment by multiple people.
“A new day is on the horizon,” Winfrey promised to those in the Globes room.
She gave a powerful speech: It was a call to arms for women in Hollywood against people who have disgraced the industry. She even gave nods to the men standing with women against real and alleged sexual predators — including people like Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey.
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Her speech would have been really, really strong — had she not used her platform to go political.
As she spoke against abuse, Winfrey couldn’t help but take vague jabs at the current presidential administration — an action that no doubt immediately alienated conservative women whom she could also have addressed with her words. And no wonder there are already calls by liberals for “Oprah in 2020.”
“The press is under siege these days,” Winfrey said, noting the media are working hard to uncover “the absolute truth” to expose “tyrants.” It didn’t take a genius to know of whom the vocal Obama supporter was speaking.
“I value the press more than ever before,” she added, equating modern days to “complicated times.”
“A new day is on the horizon,” Winfrey promised to those in the Globes room.
Unfortunately, Winfrey later said the issues women face “transcend politics” — but that is a truth her speech seemed to partly overlook. By injecting politics, Winfrey immediately made her speech divisive instead of unifying. Her speech should have “transcended politics,” but instead she chose to use politics to give her speech a meaning it didn’t need.
Could it have been a promise to change the industry — or a promise by the media mogul to get more political in the future?
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