Kid Rock Is Part Right About Oprah, but There’s More

by Roger L. Simon

Kid Rock called out Oprah Winfrey as a “fraud” for her late-in-the-race backing of stroke-challenged Lt. Gov. John Fetterman in the Pennsylvania Senate contest.

The Kid said she had helped Fetterman’s opponent, Dr. Mehmet Oz, with his career and such a recommendation demonstrated a considerable amount of hypocrisy.

I’m a big Kid Rock fan—very happy he’s here in Nashville, Tennessee—but I think The Kid only caught one part of what’s motivating Oprah.

Oprah is angry—very angry, uncontrollably angry—about what may be happening across our country on Nov. 8. Many of her beloved liberal candidates—not just the addled Fetterman—may be getting their walking papers.

And Oprah—a devoted liberal/progressive/whatever—doesn’t like that at all.

She is used to being obeyed.

She’s used to our country and a good part of the world taking her advice, even to the books we read, often the kind of liberal swill we also hear promoted on “The View.”

After all, Oprah Winfrey is the very embodiment of celebrity culture. Her main residence (of many) spans 70 acres in Montecito, California, and is said to be worth $100 million, not all that costly to someone with a net worth of $2.5 billion.

How dare we—hoi polloi—contradict her?

Of course, Oprah isn’t alone. Almost all the Democratic leadership, cultural or political, think of themselves as the ruling class: those who know better, who know best what is best for the rest of us.

They collectively—even Oprah, who regularly stresses integrity in her writing and on her shows—were able to overlook the obvious fact that Fetterman lied multiple times about fracking that he at first adamantly opposed and then suddenly supported with no explanation for the reason for his change.

That’s because the motivation is so obviously cynically electoral in a state so dependent on energy for economic survival.

Not to worry. Oprah and Co. probably think he’ll go back on his “new” word after he’s elected and return to his “green roots.”

And then there’s this from The Philadelphia Tribune of Sept. 15:

“As of Sept. 3, police statistics show, 386 people had been slain in homicides this year—3% higher than the same date last year, which ended with a record 562 homicides. The number of homicides in Philadelphia has more than doubled since 2013, when police reported 246 homicides.”

The vast majority of these murders take place in black communities. Almost everyone knows that, but few want to talk about it or do anything about it except for the morally courageous such as talk show host Larry Elder.

The Democratic Party doesn’t want to talk about this catastrophe, lest the finger of culpability be pointed back at them. One of the greatest lies of our times is that the Democrats are supportive of black people when their policies from Lyndon Johnson onwards have done nothing but hurt the black community in the most tragic ways, most notably through the destruction of the black family—the vast majority of them anyway.

Where is Oprah Winfrey—rated the world’s wealthiest black woman by Forbes—in all this? Well, she gives to charities here and in Africa, a good thing, but she also supports candidates, not just Fetterman, whose policies only contribute to the problem.

Fetterman is one of the worst in this regard because he virtue-signaled his way to the lieutenant governorship of Pennsylvania by advocating for the release of large numbers of prisoners at the very moment that violent crimes were drastically increasing—the victims be damned.

I like “The Shawshank Redemption” too, the film that Fetterman apparently touted as the inspiration for his advocacy, but it’s based on a work of fiction by Stephen King, not on reality. The largely sentimental story has little to do with people serving time in prison today.

Yes, we can all agree that the falsely convicted should be released, and as quickly as possible. But the escalating violence statics across the country tell us to be careful and not to do this in anything approaching a wholesale manner.

As for Oprah, although I think she is immensely talented in a large number of areas, I have never been a fan, as I am of Kid Rock.

Rock is the real deal, like him or not. I have always thought Oprah to be disingenuous.

Now, her support of John Fetterman could harm the future of our country. Or this particular instance of virtue signaling was a last gasp.

I hope it’s the latter.

First published in the Epoch Times.