the kicker

Warning: Endorsing Obama May Cause Serious Weight Gain

December 10, 2008

Maybe you’ve heard? That other news out of Chicago this week? “Oprah says she weighs 200 pounds?

And she’s “saying” so on the cover of her magazine’s January issue (as well as in an essay inside). She’s also going to be “saying” so frequently on her TV show starting in January. Her best friend, Gayle King, was “saying” so on Good Morning America this morning. And, Winfrey will guest on King’s radio show in January to “say” so some more.

And, of course, the media (beyond Oprah’s own) are also doing their part. “Oprah Says She’s O-bese,” reports the (New York) Daily News, for example.

How? How did this happen? Fox News’s Steve Doocy was working through that very question this morning on Fox & Friends and came up with this:

I wonder if part of it — you know, it’s funny because any time there’s a story like this, suddenly the newspapers talk to clinical psychologists, talking about depression and stuff like that. But you have to wonder if Oprah, after she endorsed Obama, she got lambasted in a lot of the right-leaning blogs and stuff like that. I can’t believe that she’s gone political. You’ve got to wonder whether or not that took its toll, and she’s thinking, “I wonder if I’ve done something politically that could damage my reputation in the industry?” And one thing leads to another…

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Liz Cox Barrett is a writer at CJR.