An excerpt from the New York Times -
What Politicians Could Learn from Oprah Winfrey
By JAMES PONIEWOZIK
But to argue that Ms. Winfrey should run for president — or shouldn’t — simply because she’s a celebrity oversimplifies the issue. Most celebrities would make terrible candidates. (No offense, Kid Rock.) The real consideration here is why Ms. Winfrey is a celebrity, and all those qualifications were on display in that speech.
It’s a master’s stage performance. It builds from kitchen confession to mountaintop thunder. It shifts perspective cinematically — close in on young Ms. Winfrey sitting on the linoleum floor, pull back to a panorama of America. It uses preacherly rhythms and even cliffhangers (“a young worker by the name of … Rosa Parks”).
But above all, it’s a story. And it’s a story about stories. It moves from the personal (young Ms. Winfrey watching Sidney Poitier win an Oscar) to the communal (women in Hollywood, and women working on farms and even “some pretty phenomenal men”). It links “your truth” and “absolute truth.” It tells the audience: I have my struggle, and I know you have yours, and that connects us all in the sweep of a global struggle.
Conventional politicians can do that too, though it’s not easy or common. Barack Obama was no one’s idea of a shoo-in when he announced his campaign. But he synthesized his biography (as the “kid with a funny name”), his country’s current struggles and an idea of generational social progress into one evocative narrative — change.
People are drawn to stories for a reason: In politics as in art, they say more than a list of bullet points.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/08/arts/television/oprah-winfrey-president-television.html?hpw&rref=television&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region®ion=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well
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