Oprah: Out of the Closet

Not that closet, silly

A Media Shmedia column

by Scott Patrick Wagner

I have something to divulge, a secret I've kept for a long time. I thought it was nobody's business, and didn't want to deal with the judgment of the fundamentalist far-right. But Oprah has come out, and that has given me strength.

So here, on the designer coattails of The Big O, is my confession: I'm spiritual. Okay, I know — Oprah's been espousing spiritual books and factoids for several years, bringing Marianne Williamson onto her show, and even launching an ill-fated segment on spirituality. But the landscape is changing, my friends. Media saturation of this stuff is reaching critical mass, and yours truly, the King of all Media Shmedia, is aligning — or at least biorhythmically intersecting — with my heretofore closeted alter ego, ministerial Scott (hard to wrap your head around that one, ain't it?).

Oprah's has initiated a weekly, web-based book study of A New Earth, a New Thought book by Eckhart Tolle. Now, "New Thought" (for you Old Thinkers who hadn't heard the term) is an umbrella title for the largely nondogmatic and metaphysically oriented spiritual practices that don't have the lobbyists of the Big Religions. (Trying to give umbrella definitions makes me queasy — Google it if you want a better one.) Oprah has set up a ten-week series of "classes" that feature her and Tolle online every Monday evening. I wasn't available for the first one because I was doing my weekly New Thought lecture series (which has now moved to Tuesday evenings at 7:00 p.m., at the Ventura Center for Spiritual Living, details on my website — there is nothing inherently unspiritual about cross-promotion, as we learned two weeks ago when I guilelessly mentioned the Intermediate Playwriting class I'll be teaching at the Rubicon Theatre, starting on March 31, spots still open, amen).

To those who have been exploring this stuff for a while (and for me it's been over 20 years), the current state of the Arts is really quite extraordinary. The theatrical and DVD release of a little film called, What the Bleep Do We Know? back in 2004 seemed like a giant leap forward in visibility. That, however, was nothing compared to this Oprah thing, which apparently reached over 700,000 people on the first webcast (not counting those who downloaded or viewed it on-demand afterwards).

So what else, you might ask, is bursting onto the marketplace that epitomizes this Newness? Let's take a guerilla sampling of the other media: in print, there is the unassuming Gary Renard, whose book Disappearance of the Universe packs a major wallop; DVD has a two-set reissue of Mythos, the latter lectures of Joseph Campbell and his search for the deeper answers through mythology; on CD is an elfin troubador named Daniel Nahmod, whose song are both subtle and startling; in theater, of all places, is a musical revue called It's Only Life (scheduled to come to Ventura in June), by the inordinately talented John Bucchino; and on TV there's Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew. Okay, I'm kind of kidding about that last one (unless you find spiritual inspiration in seeing semi-celebrities sink to the depths). Television isn't exactly a hotbed for the kind of information we're talking about; Joan of Arcadia attempted it for a couple of seasons, and The Book of Daniel only lasted four episodes. But Eli Roth is venturing forth tentatively (albeit with lots of musical numbers and mixed results), and its lead-in show on ABC, the inscrutable Lost, has been toying more assiduously than ever before with spiritual trippiness in its fourth season.

I'm sure all of this visibility will not be without its backlash. Comedy Central has just premiered Root of All Evil, a new series starring the pugnacious Lewis Black. It proposes to determine which of two people or institutions is the "most evil," premiering last night with "Oprah vs. the Catholic Church." While giving some new meaning to the term irreverent, the ultimate "win" for Oprah was an unsurprising (and safe) choice — though a revealing one, in a Sinead-O'Connor-ripping-a-Pope-pic kind of way. While a few potshots were taken at the Catholic Church, it was clearly an intimidating subject to both writers and audience. Sacred-cow-tipping is a risky proposition, and religions have never been shy about speaking out against perceived opposition. Which, perhaps, makes the popping-up of all this New Thinking a little extra extraordinary.

It's easy to look at the world and decide that "things never change." Except that either a black guy or a woman is likely to be the next president. And a black woman and a German dude are webcasting nontraditional spirituality to more than half a million people weekly. And Brigitte Nielsen might actually kick the booze, with Dr. Drew's help. Well — two outta three.