Oprah Opens Up About Ending Her Show

Oprah's Friends Assemble for OWN
As details roll out about the Oprah Winfrey Network (launching on Discovery Health January 1), it's clear that, more than ever, it pays to be one of Oprah's friends. The Oprah Effect, which was the subject of its own CNBC special, can be credited with the rise of many media stars, like Drs. Phil, Oz and Laura, but not before the lucky few are vetted on Wifnrey's couch and groomed by her in-house production company, Harpo Productions. What Winfrey calls "friends" most of us would probably call ...

The Roger and Hammerstein classic South Pacific appearing at the Kennedy Center
What better way to chase away the winter blues than to relax under coconut palms on a south sea island? That's what the Kennedy Center offers in its stunning national tour of Lincoln Center's "South Pacific," by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein. Not that "South Pacific" is about a lighthearted frolic. It takes a serious look at love and racial mistrust against a background of war, as it takes place on a Navy base on a South Pacific island during World War II. The love theme is displayed i...

Anderson Cooper Pegged By Local Stations As The Next Oprah?
In the last ten days, 40 local Television Stations have opted to sign contracts to carry Anderson Cooper’s new daytime Talk Show, Anderson, according to a report this morning in The Hollywood Reporter. That rush of of signings pushes Anderson to 80 stations across the country, meaning about 70 percent of television viewers will be able to watch the show when it debuts in the fall. That kind of solid performance-for an untested show-indicates a strong belief among local televisi...

Your Opinions
In response to the Journal Sentinel's heart-wrenching stories concerning emergency detentions, we must emphasize that difficult or catastrophic behaviors in persons with dementia are not inevitable consequences of this disease. In Dane County, we have developed a model program to deal with this issue by utilizing a small team of experts, who, within days, assess the individual's situation, make recommendations, such as a more definitive diagnosis, medication changes and individualized daily ro...

Crowder scores 22 as Marquette tops MVSU 102-77
Mississippi Valley State's Terrence Joyner (3) loses the ball as he tries to drive between Marquette's Jae Crowder (32), Darius Johnson-Odom and Dwight Buycks (23) during the first half of an NCAA college Basketball game Tuesday, Dec. 21, 2010, in Milwaukee. Junior college transfer Jae Crowder scored a season-high 22 points and Darius Johnson-Odom added 19 to lead Marquette to a 102-77 victory over Mississippi Valley State on Tuesday night. The Golden Eagles (9-3) shot 50 percent to cap a five-...

Barbour, the Citizens' Councils, and the GOP
Every few years it seems the public is treated to an unguarded moment by a southern Republican of a certain age expressing admiration for his political forebears. The latest is Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour's celebration of the Citizens' Councils as a bulwark against racial violence during southern Desegregation struggles. "You heard of the Citizens Councils?" He asked Andrew Ferguson of the Weekly Standard. "Up north they think it was like the KKK. Where I come from it was an organizatio...

The Working Poor
Felix Salmon shows us a bar chart illustrating how the percentage of Working Families making less than 200% of the Poverty level (that’s $44,100 for a family of four) has grown over the last seven years. The obvious observations are that the scale of the graph hides the fact that number has grown by 10% over the period and that the statistics is meaningless unless normed by cost of living in various parts of the country. $44,100 for a family of four isn’t much in New York City. It&...

My take: Why my church rebelled against the American Dream
Editor’s Note : David Platt, Ph.D., is the author of the New York Times bestseller Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream and is senior pastor of the 4,000-member Church at Brook Hills in Birmingham, Alabama. By David Platt , Special to CNN We American Christians have a way of taking the Jesus of The Bible and twisting him into a version of Jesus that we are more comfortable with. A nice middle-class American Jesus. A Jesus who doesn’t mind materialism and would never call...

Daniel Rubin: Philly will find a house for struggling newspaper bootjack
Olaniyan Adefumi arrived at Fern Rock to hawk Newspapers at the usual time, 4:30 a.m. Wednesday, and between trains he talked about physics. And statistics. And poetry, lots of poetry. "Away from the music box of noise," begins a new composition about a trip to the Shore. "With dancing little Children. . . ." The 52-year-old works for The Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News in a program that provides piecework for those down on their luck. His luck is about to change. Fo...

Poor, abandoned Detroit neighborhoods key targets for Bing's plan
In northeast and northwest Detroit, for example, the median household income of many neighborhoods is $20,000, compared with $29,000 citywide and $49,777 in the U.S., according to 2009 Census estimates. Those who want to leave can't -- not in a market with nose-diving housing values and few buyers. "You couldn't get anything for these houses," said Eddie Holmes, 55, who lives in a block dominated by vacancies on the city's far west side. For sale signs...

Childhood Poverty's Low-Hanging Fruit
What if there was a proven way to instantly and dramatically reduce the the statistic of 1-in-5 American Children now living under the federal Poverty line, as reported in the September 2010 U.S. Census figures? Better still, what if this economic remedy cost Taxpayers zero dollars and simultaneously curbed generational Poverty to boot? Surely people of all ideological stripes could agree that such “low-hanging fruit” ought be plucked for the betterment of those who have little say ...

Oprah talks Palin, 2012
Washington (CNN) - Oprah Winfrey says America may "fall in love" with Sarah Palin as a TV star, but is dismissing the idea that the country would vote for the former Alaska Governor in the future. Asked in an interview with Parade magazine if the thought of Palin's running for office scares her, Winfrey responded, "It does not scare me because I believe in the intelligence of the American public." Winfrey, who interviewed Palin shortly after her first book was released, said she was not sure if...

2010 was a 'Perfect Gift' for Canadian Tenors
In this Oct. 8, 2010 photo, the Canadian Tenors, from left, Fraser Walters, Clifton Murray, Victor Micallef and Remigio Pereira pose for a photo in Los Angeles. A year after releasing their first hit album, the Canadian Tenors are delivering "The Perfect Gift," a compilation of traditional and contemporary holiday music. "You have the classics like 'O Holy Night' and 'Silent Night,' but there are songs that are not necessarily Christmas-specific," explained tenor Victor Micallef. "Some great pr...

Robin Meade Will Help Launch Oprahs New Network
HLN’s red-hot morning host Robin Meade will pick up an additional and ultra high profile gig in the New Year: she’s helping launch Oprah Winfrey’s OWN. The Oprah Winfrey Network debuts January 1 amid great secrecy-and some reports of last-minute shakeups behind the scenes-and the first big project is a series of “Ask Oprah’s All Stars” specials, beginning January 2 at 8 p.m. The specials, moderated by Meade and Oprah BFF Gayle King , will serve to ...

Oprah's book club picks falling short
Sales of Oprah's 2010 Book Club picks, Charles Dickens's 'A Tale of Two Cities' and 'Great Expectations,' are falling short of the the 'Oprah effect.'...

The Morning Fix: FCC moves on net neutrality. Another day, another Oprah story. MGM out of bankruptcy.
After the coffee. Before wondering if I need to look for deeper meaning in all this rain. The Skinny: Looks like Brett Favre's new consecutive-games streak may end at one. The FCC will unveil its rules for regulating Internet Traffic Tuesday and odds are everyone will find something to complain about. The media obsession with Oprah Winfrey's new Cable Network OWN continues. Rules of the road. The Federal Communications Commission detailed Monday its plans to monitor the flow of traffi...

Sarah Palin becomes a Cabbage Patch Kid
LOS ANGELES — Move over, Tina Fey, there's a new Sarah Palin impersonator in town. Four one-of-a-kind Cabbage Patch Kids dolls crafted in the likeness of Presidential Candidates Barack Obama and John McCain and vice Presidential Candidates Joe Biden and Palin will be auctioned on the eBay.com Web site. The dolls sport outfits inspired by their counterparts, with the Palin doll wearing the Republican Candidate's signature rimless eyeglasses, red suit and heels. Their faces were hand-p...

2010 was a 'Perfect Gift' for Canadian Tenors
In this Oct. 8, 2010 photo, the Canadian Tenors, from left, Fraser Walters,... Los Angeles (AP) - A year after releasing their first hit album, the Canadian Tenors are delivering "The Perfect Gift," a compilation of traditional and contemporary holiday music. "You have the classics like 'O Holy Night' and 'Silent Night,' but there are songs that are not necessarily Christmas-specific," explained tenor Victor Micallef. "Some great producers worked on that, as well," added band mate Clifton Murra...

Bill Mahers Christmas Message: Oprah, Tell Your Audience Stop Losing Your Sh*t Over Material Stuff
Bill Maher, host of HBO ’s Real Time, and notorious religious nonbeliever, taped a harsh and hilarious “Christmas message” for his website that served as a damning critique of all Americans and of the one media figure most are too scared to attack: Oprah Winfrey. Calling Oprah’s “Favorite Things” episode “one of the most deeply disturbing things I’ve ever seen on television” was just the beginning of Maher’s memorably “cheerful&#...

If You're Looking for a Good Time in Lame-Duck DC
Consider going to Capitol Hill and dropping in on the Senate during its marathon sessions in the frantic few days before it takes its Christmas break. During normal tourist times in Washington, getting into the Congressional galleries can be a huge pain. You wait in long lines, you're ushered in and out for a relatively short stay, you're amid busfuls of visiting tour groups, and unless you happen to be in one of those visiting groups, on the whole it's better just to watch things on C-Span. But...

Make the Most Out of 2011 Before It All Goes to Hell
Thanks to all the limbless gay Soldiers, 2011 could very well be the last full year our great earth exists. It’s a shame, really, considering how much we’ve invested in soldiers (even the gay ones) over the years. It’s also the year when D.C. will become One and we’ll have to say goodbye to dedicated bike lanes, wine bars, food trucks, et cetera, and so forth. It has Been Written that 2012 is The End, so we guess the only appropriate thing to do is make the...

Incoming Congress Spells Doom for D.C.
Get alerts when there is a new article that might interest you. Medical-marijuana legalization. Same-sex marriage. Needle-exchange programs to combat HIV. These are progressive civic choices that Washington has made. But no step forward comes without concern that Congress could step in and push the city onto a path backward. Keep in mind this was not an op-ed in the Outlook section but a reporting piece by Ann E. Marimow in Metro. And to be fair, Marimow does point out how the current administra...

Moving on, looking back
A 1997 summit on ways to control the city’s rat population attracted national media attention. R.I. Dept. of Health They witnessed the dark days of Operation Plunder Dome, the Corruption Probe of City Hall that brought down former Mayor Vincent A. Cianci Jr., and they believe they resurrected their city. They influenced many projects: Providence Place mall, Providence Performing Arts Center, mill buildings at Eagle Square. They helped clean up trash-strewn lots and establish community pol...

Online Dating: Apps and Laws Strive for Safer Matchmaking
Never mind whether your date is smart or good-looking. How do you know you aren’t flirting with a felon? For a small fee, a nascent crop of companies wants to help you find out by running Background Checks on the potential flames you encounter on Match.com, eHarmony or any of the nation’s nearly 1,500 dating Web sites. At the same time, at least two states, New York and New Jersey, have begun regulating Internet dating sites, and legal experts say they believe changes to the liabil...

Survivor of tragedy now on giving side of charity
Jessica Jamil would like to thank all the people who helped raise her - from the Probation officers to the social workers, Secret Santas and the charities, including Season of Sharing. Because living with her real family nearly killed her. When she was 13, her father raped her, stabbed her in the head and neck 32 times, and then left her for dead. Soon afterward, Jamil's mother abandoned her. "She checked out mentally," Jamil said. "I haven't talked to her since." Now 3o, the Single Mother fro...