It’s Oprah’s America

Oprah has finally come out of the real closet. She is, at long last, ready to speak the truth about her private life. And that truth is one that America might not be ready for. Here it is: Oprah Winfrey, once and for all and make no mistake about it, can be kind of a grump. And not one single bit like you. Or me. Or anyone else you know. Unless you’re John Travolta or Julia Roberts. And then you know Oprah.

Anyway, this announcement was made on Monday, during the 21st season’s first episode, the one called “Oprah & Gayle’s Big Adventure,” in which our heroines decide to see the U.S.A. in a Chevrolet. So they begin driving cross-country.

And that is when we learn, in word and in deed, that Oprah prefers not to be near us — her fans and our lesser diners and our gas stations and cheap motels and noisy hysteria when we glimpse her in the rare moments she’s out amongst us — much at all.

Because, really, lesbian schmesbian: All that chat this summer about how Oprah and Gayle were going to finally “address the rumors” about being longtime companions with benefits in the August issue of O magazine, rumors that have become as much a part of our national urban mythology as that story about the Coke and Pop Rocks? That silliness pales in comparison to the shredding of the “I’m Just Like You” veil.

It was a pretty flimsy veil, to be sure, and she’s alluded to it coming down for good more and more of late, with offhand comments like “Y’all know I have some money, right?” and “Yes, I have celebrity friends.” But she’s always said these things with a smile that told us, “But don’t worry, I’m still down with y’all and your barely-making-ends-meet lives. I used to be you and I haven’t forgotten what it’s like. We’re still the same.”

She was so good at it that we bought it even as she passed out Burberry sweaters to the audience on a “Favorite Things” episode and talked about owning one in every color or, during an episode on household cleanliness, to having her bed sheets washed, pressed and changed every three days. When the cleanliness expert said, “Well, that’s not realistic for most people,” Oprah just smiled and shrugged and laughed, like Oh silly me. I forgot. I’m crazy rich!

But no more. In what is to be a multi-episode tracking odyssey, her adoring fans are soon to be systematically stripped of their belief that Oprah is anything less than the Queen of the United States of America.

The season opener and its subsequent installments are meant to do a few things: put Oprah in touch with her fans in a real-time setting, solidify the O magazine “Seriously, We’re Just Best Friends” interview, freak out unsuspecting highway motorists, shill for Chevrolet and Kodak — the words “I love this camera” were heard no fewer than three times Monday — and give the woman a chance to check out real estate that might be up for grabs.

But something happens when Oprah is taken away from her carefully constructed comfort zone. She gets surly. After two days in a car with Gayle you realize once and for all that they couldn't possibly be in a lesbian relationship. Oprah would have Gayle killed, stuffed and mounted and put in a foyer somewhere if they had to spend long stretches of time together. Steadman must have his own wing of their Chicago home and have “Yes, dear,” on the autospeak function of his programming chip.

Gayle, however, has no such chip. She is, in fact, Oprah’s best asset, her one link to something resembling normal life: the best friend-as-thorn-in-side, providing comic relief and genuine annoyance.

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