O To O: Thanks For Nothing!

Oprah and Obama, the yum-yum couple of the early campaign season! Oprah herself said her unprecedented engagement in politics would be worth millions to Obama, and it may have helped him get a strong campaign start in Iowa and South Carolina, without which he may well have been a well-spoken also-ran. (Sigh.)

But what was the cost to Oprah?

The Top of the Ticket blog at the LATimes has the score, with help from Politico:

In one 1999 survey of the most admired and respected 20th-century women, Oprah (26%) came in only second to Mother Teresa (33%), who didn't have her own TV show. And in 2003 a Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll found that 60% thought Oprah was a more powerful woman than someone named Hillary Clinton, a former first lady and senator, who drew only 28%.

Fourteen months ago, a Gallup/USA Today poll found 74% of
Americans had a favorable view of the television personality.

And now, after first campaigning with Obama, and then having the Rev. Wright fiasco illumination? Ten days after the Wright story broke, Oprah's favorables were down to 55% and her unfavorables were about 33%. And:

A December ABC/Washington Post poll of Democrats found 8% were persuaded by her Obama endorsement, 82% said it wouldn't matter either way and 10% said her recommendation had turned them off Obama.

Now, [Costas] Panagopoulos has discovered an AOL TV popularity survey of 1.35 million Americans that found 46% said the daytime TV host who "made their day" was Ellen DeGeneres while only 19% chose Winfrey. Forty-seven percent said they'd like to have dinner with Ellen, while only 14% chose Oprah.

There's more to Oprah than Obama. We have to ask how her show's doing -- are her guests good, are the topics mainstream and comfy? Clearly, having a pregnant "man" on the show hurt her -- but too late for these numbers. However, if she's covering that sort of sensationalistic tripe routinely, she should expect her numbers to drop.

But more interesting: If Obama dragged down the popularity of an icon like Oprah -- and it appears he was very much a factor in doing just that -- what would he, as president, do to the popularity of the presidency and the nation?

Sometimes It's Hard To Be A Woman

Just when you've found a cute guy who is respectful, clean and says all the right things oh so nicely ...

The absence of Oprah Winfrey from the frantic four last days of the New Hampshire primary campaign after her heavy schedule in Iowa backing Sen. Barack Obama may be traced to heavy, unaccustomed post-Iowa abuse of the popular entertainment superstar by women.

Winfrey did not publicize it, but her Website was swamped with complaints after she went to Iowa. The principal complaint was that she betrayed women by not supporting Sen. Hillary Clinton. The criticism was described as personal.

Several of these critics identified themselves as African-Americans, indicating that gender is more important than race for many people.

So reports Robert Novak at RCP.

If we're not careful here, we might draw the conclusion that women are an emotional bunch, putting symbolism ahead of substance ... but that would require saying "Obama" and "substance" in the same sentence.

As a white man who always has voted for white men because that's pretty much all our system has offered up for me to vote for (except Babs Boxer and DiFi ... eech), I'm not much on gender/race symbolism. If I were black, a woman or most confusing of all, a black woman, it might be different, but I'd like to think I would be intelligent enough to look at what's in the candidate's head and heart, not what's in his or her pants.