The Opara Experience

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 (my words), featuring the most successful model in this field. To illustrate her point, had probably 8-12 large screen TV's. As Oprah told about Cindy's involvement in this activity, the tv screens lit up.

The pictures they showed on the screens wer pictures of 12 year old girls, some of them in wet underwear, the kind of pictures we never would have done. The audience began to boo loudly. Oprah put her hand to her ear a la hulk hogan pushing the audience to jeer and boo more and more loudly. We had been had.

The rest of the show involved Investigative reporters trying to make a name for themselves. One said we had endangered Cindy because stalkers could find out where she lived. The "reporter" also gave a 3 minute lesson on how this could be done. Cindy's safety was put in jeopardy by the ambitious one who ostensibly was there to help her. Ambition makes for strange choices...

There were several commercial breaks. This taping took about 2 hours which would be edited to a one hour show. It was shot in March to be aired in the May Sweeps, the time when TV shows were given ratings which determined advertising rates.

During one of the breaks I asked Oprah to help Cindy get an acting role in a movie or TV show. Oprah told us that if Cndy took acting lessons, she would recommend her.
A week later we enrolled Cindy in a commercial acting school, the most prestigious in area. Telling Oprah about this yielded no fruit.

All the "experts" that spoke were strategically seated in the audience where Oprah could direct them easily. Of, course we were not told about these
"experts" in advace. There was a bent psychologist, the investigative reporter, a currently popular Internet model, 18+ who did a lot of bear breasted and thong work. She said "Well, this is the age of masturbation, isn't it?

During another break, the producer, who when in Dallas, kept telling us that Oprah was going to like us and that this would be a very positive show, was literally in tears over the horrible way this whole show was going. Back in the green room, she weepingly hugged Cindy and apologized for this debacle and how her word had been totally compromised.

After the show, Oprah took Cindy to her office where she advised her that Internet modeling was something she should give up. She gave Cindy some cheap trinkes, like chocolates and useless brick-a-brack.

After getting back to Dallas, a "friend" of Cindy's brother Zack, called Cindy some bad names, which resulted in a black eye for Zack.

On the bright side....

When the show finally aired in May, there were so many people logging on to see what this Cindy thing was all about that we could not log on to the site for four days. Our membership quadrupled. What a way to "arrive."

We were asked to go on Maury Povitch. I agreed that we would do the show as long as Maury would let us re-enact the CBS show with Maury in drag as Erin Moriarity. Sadly, Maury declined. We were also approached by the America's Most Wanted outfit. By then Cindy and I decided that we just needed to move on and not do these shows.

Our conclusion was that "Investigative Reporting" was just an excuse to wreck somone's life to suit a pre-ordained agenda. There was no ethics or news involved. That would be pretty boring.

What encapsulated this event was the Oprah's Asian producer coming up to Cindy and her mome in tears saying "I'm so sorry."

Next blog, The current Teen Modeling Scene