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Kelley cold-shouldered by US media over Oprah book
Larry King, Letterman - no one wants to risk upsetting the queen of American TV
The American writer Kitty Kelley, famous for her dirt-dishing biographies of Jackie Onassis, George Bush, Nancy Reagan and Frank Sinatra, may have met her match in Oprah Winfrey. She claims the chat show hostess's influence is so great that no TV channel in the States, with the exception of NBC, is giving any publicity to her rags-to riches biography of the most powerful woman in television, due to be published today.
Kelley blames a collective paranoia for the refusal of virtually every well known American talk show host, from Larry King to David Letterman, to do anything that risks upsetting Oprah. As a result, her book will have to rely on word-of-mouth if it is to make the bestseller lists.
As for the content, Oprah has "locked up tight" the people who know and understand her according to the New Yorker, with the result that "Kelley's pen is not dripping poison so much as slightly curdled milk".
Among the revelations Kelley is promising is that Oprah doesn't even give her personal phone number to her own mother - she has to ring her PA and ask for a call-back.
The book also goes into the sensitive issue of Oprah's childhood in Mississippi where she was sexually molested and made pregnant at the age of 14. The son she bore as a result died in infancy and she has never had other children.
"This book names the boy that she gave birth to, presents the birth certificate and tries to show how these secrets controlled Oprah for most of her life," says Kelley.
And she wonders why Oprah might not be happy with the book! ·
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Good article. Ms Taylor captures the essence of what's going on. What I sense and see is a groundswell of what the media is calling 'rolling thunder' publicity for the very fact that KK is so effectively being denied publicity. There is a sizeable Pandora's Box of pay-back awaiting Oprah and many among the Big Beast media are using the behind-doors opportunity such as here to fuel the flames. Famous for being un-famous will be the watchword here.
What's also good is the way the pusillanimous interviewers are actually being named among the weeds and wets who are running scared. The next stage must be public pressure to not so much plug the book but explain to viewer/readers why they're falling down on the job by denying their public coverage of this very hot item. Oprah is such an odd bod anyway that there must be several angles to give the public what it wants. I love the bit about not giving even her mother her phone number: does that not just perfectly encapsulate the whole bizarre creation that makes up 'Brand Oprah'?