The Oprah Experience, Part 1

We got a call from an Oprah producer inviting us to be featured on The Oprah Show. I was long a great admirer of Oprah. I discussed this with Cindy's Mom, my wife, and others. The consensus was, Oprah is a good person. She won't blind side you like 48 Hours. She would be fair and balanced. Remind you of anyone?

I am no expert on the television industry, but I sense that when you get really big you probably have an agenda. Oprah has been an advocate for many types of people, so the idea for Oprah to be there to protect Cindy is not a stretch. To be realistic, if you were to launch a PR campaign to lock in your viewers, create the perception that you were a selfless champion for those who can't defend themselves, what would you do? Well, heroes make a lot more scratch than us non-heroes. My opinions about Oprah are my own, arrived at by pure speculation. One should not take on my opinions, but search for the truth and come to one's own conclusions.

I really believe that Oprah has a good heart and that she really believes she is doing the world a lot of good. Her massive introduction of Eckhart Tolle, whom I believe to be the most effective voice of reason and self-improvement. I personally have used Tolle's philosophy (The Power of Now and A New Earth) and applications with great results. I consider Tolle the most realistic voice for self-improvement and achievement. Hia points of view are easy to apply and don't require training or long term study. It's kinda like Nike: Just do it.

When you have many people working for you, the people that are not in the "inner circle" are left with this kind of thinking: I know the policy so I will shape the story this way. If you believe that investigative reporters will not form an opion until they gather all the facts, I have 1996 Suburu that runs great and will likely last 30 more years. Practically all big budget "investigative reporting" is totally skewed towards the agenda of it's originator.

The television networks are in major competition with the Internet. Most of the viewers are housewives and their children. The attempt to change this by having more programs slanted towards women, like Lifetime, is very evident. They don't do shows on how evil Teen Modeling on the Internet is because, like the Oprah show, which quadrupeled Cindymodel.com memberships, these shows drive hordes of memberships to these sites. The network have wised up in this regard. You won't see any of these kind of shows for some time I suspect.

Ok, so the Oprah crew comes to my house. The producer a lovely woman of oriental decent makes it clear that my wife and I are to clean up our act by me wearing slacks instead of blue jeans and cut-offs for the tapings. They had us do a family portrait so we could be depicted as a very family oriented business. They filmed Cindy with her mother, no tough questions. They interviewed Cindy in a very soft way, me very sympathetically to our cause. Funny, they never used this footage on TV which they spent three days making. The Mafia defines "birdseed" as a food that a hunter spreads out in order to attract the birds to a place where the hunter can easily shoot them.

We were given a wonderful hotel accommadations, Cindy and her mom Tracy occupying one delicious suite and me in another suite on a different floor.

The big day finally was here. Ever see a Rocky movie where Apollo Creed makes the most spectacular entrance ever seen. Whether intentional or not, this show of force can be very intimitating to an opponent. Loud music of the 2001 Space Oddity kind blared through the speakers. The audience, I would guess to be 95% women rise obediently their feet. In comes Oprah high-fiving audience members in the higher section. The loudness was deafening, not from the music as much as the screaming throngs of Oprah supporters.

After the audience finally settled down. Oprah began explaining what this show was going to entail, the Teen Internet Modeling scene, featuring the most successful model in this field. To illustrate her point, had probably 8-12 large screen where






The producer of this show