Opraholics
No More O-gasms!
Bertha Canal is a Middle America soccer mom complete with a middle management husband, 2 cats, 3 kids, an SUV, and a terrible secret. She’s a recovering Oprah addict.
Founder of the spiritual self-help group Opraholics Anonymous, Canal says her obsession started with a head cold. Home, sick, with nothing to do, she turned on the TV “for company,” when she heard a woman’s voice boldly pontificate, “The big secret in life is that there is no big secret. Whatever your goal, you can get there if you’re willing to work.”
Said a mesmerized Canal, “She was like Mother Theresa in Prada shoes.” As she tuned in, all she could finally say was the spontaneous mantra chanted by millions of Oprahphile women, “O-h.”
At first Canal would watch the show during her ironing ritual. Soon she began rearranging the kids’ sports and after school activity schedules in order to tune into Oprah. She began tuning out her frustrated husband who “just didn’t understand,” her. She finally abandoned ironing in favor of journaling Winfrey’s wise TV sayings, and began proselytizing other women to tune in. She shamelessly went after Montel’s audience, then Ricki Lake, and even Regis and Kelly. After the broadcast, they would watch Winfrey’s movie, The Color Purple.
They adopted Prada as their official footwear and the color purple as their official fashion color and the neighbor’s began joking about the Passion Fruit “cult” on 14th street.
“Is Oprah a cult leader?” asks Dr. Eve Ann-Jellical, founder of Babes In Christ, a support group for Christian women trying to live lives ‘without the voice of Oprah in their heads.’
Answering her own question, she said, “Oprah is a false spiritual leader who can touch the hearts and issues of everyday women yet she manages to leave the God of the Bible out of the picture. He offends her. She is a blend of humanism and Christless Christianity, offering counterfeit compassion without Christ, loving your neighbor without loving God. From an eternal perspective, she is a spiritual dead end but can sure make the broad path to destruction look mighty righteous.”
Dr. Ann-Jellical said, “Oprah preaches a pseudo-faith that says ‘Love yourself,’ fulfilling ancient Bible prophecy that warns that in the Last Days, men shall be ‘lovers of self…’ She is a false prophetesses who preaches another Jesus, not the Jesus of Scripture, but she at least dresses well.”
Bertha Canal actually tried to found a formal religion for Winfrey before the mighty O decided to start her own church. “Musicians John Coltrane and Elvis Presley have their own churches, so why not Oprah’s Witnesses? It all sounds bizarre now but she was my TV guru preaching a ‘spirituality’ that is really just New Age mumbo-jumbo spiced up with crass consumerism along with a Book of the Month club. Her cross to bear is occasional bad hair and an often unyielding waistline. Oprah’s gospel is not the way or the truth, and offers no life. She’s just another egocentric media preacher milking the masses for millions.”
How Canal finally broke from her new found faith was a crisis intervention by her father Erie and her mother Pana “Ma” Canal. Erie said, “When my little girl started claiming she had seen Oprah’s face appear on a tofu taco, I knew she needed help. I mean, tofu? We didn’t exactly deprogram her. I merely reprogrammed her remote control to NOT get Oprah.”
Bertha admits that the withdrawals were awful. No more stories about Oprah’s perpetual fiancée Stedman. Nothing more about her faithful friend Gayle. She even tried Dr. Phil as a kind of mantra methadone but found herself getting hooked on him so she went cold turkey – and no, that does not mean she started watching reruns of the father of talk show TV, Phil Donahue – she turned off the boob tube and started living her real life again.
Said Canal, “I discovered a simple 12 step program to freedom. The first 11 steps are to walk to the TV, turn it off, followed immediately by step 12 of kneeling before the Living God. I reclaimed my soul by surrendering my life to the Lord Jesus Christ,” said a sheepish Canal. “TV is a poor substitute for a life.”
Today Canal does not breathe in the rarified air of the Oxygen Network, but has opted for real air. Her new mantra? “O – No!” No more O-gasms. She takes her kids to their sporting events, loves quiet walks in the park, and spends time with her husband (who still doesn’t understand her but is at least trying), with friends, neighbors, and her family. She sold her collection of Prada shoes on e-Bay and donated the money to a crisis shelter for non-Billionaire women forced to live real lives.
“O – No!” indeed.
Bryan Hupperts © 2006 - 2009
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