What The Term 'Oprahfication' Means to Us

By changing the alphabet of her original name Orpah to Oprah, she becomes in real term a mix of Ruth and Orpah -
- in photo Oprah Winfrey

The term 'Oprahfication' was first coined by The Wall Street Journal and it is widely used to mean public confession as a form of therapy. Oprah Winfrey was born on January 29, 1954 in rural Mississippi to a teenage single mother Vernita Lee, a working housemaid. Vernita named her daughter 'Orpah' after a character in the Biblical Book of Ruth. However most people mispronounced Orpah as Oprah and eventually which was how mother and child came to pronounce it as well And she became Oprah. 

Naomi, Ruth and Orpah

 
The Book of Ruth begins with a tale of famine in the Holy Land. Elimelech of Bethlehem leaves the country for Moab with his wife Naomi and two sons. He dies in Moab. Naomi and her sons stay on and the sons marry non-Jewish women - Moabite princesses Ruth and Orpah. The sons too perish and at last Naomi decides and resolves to return to Israel. widowed, childless and impoverished.

Ruth and Orpah accompany Naomi her along the road. Over their years of marriage, both Ruth and Orpah had become attached and attracted to Judaism and they too wanted to reside Israel, the Holy Land. Naomi attempts to dissuade them three times. On the third attempt Orpah weakens and returns but Ruth is unconvinced and stays with Naomi.

Tale of Orpah

Orpah, by contrast disappears from the story of Book of Ruth and is forgotten.
But Orpah has fascinating post script story for the Jewish History on the other side of the fence.

As soon as Orpah parted company with Naomi and Ruth, she went to the absolute opposite extreme. Upon leaving Naomi, Orpah ran into a battalion of 100 soldiers. She willingly submitted herself to them all. From lot of them she became pregnant and bore the giant Goliath, whom the young David would later meet in battle.

It is a very big question that how did a woman with such potential greatness go to such wild extremes?

 

The Contrast

Instead of becoming a spiritual giant, she became a mother of physical giants.
Orpah’s arch nemesis was Ruth – the one who did hold on, and who turned her commitment to achieve into a lifetime of greatness. Ruth became a mother in Israel, great-grandmother to the spiritual giant David. Goliath fell to David in battle- in what was in essence a battle between two worldviews - physical versus spiritual.

The Moral of the Story

The story of Ruth and Orpah is thus a tale of mankind's enormous potential for accomplishment- and incredibly high stakes involved how she/he uses that potential.
With lofty goals in mind set before us, the stakes of life become very high, but God gives us sense to direct our energies towards goodness and meaningful achievement. We are to take our energies. strongest feelings and emotions and direct them towards God. If we would properly do so, there would be no limit to what we could achieve. and to how meaningful our relationship with God would become. Having seen God in our inspiration, we become alive, possessed - driven to make a difference. And the story of Ruth and Orpah taught us just how to channel that drive.

Oprah Winfrey - The Extraordinary 

By changing the alphabet of her original name Orpah to Oprah, she becomes in real term a mix of Ruth and Orpah - the wisdom minus negativity, which eventually puts her on top of the hill where God resides. 

Her father and stepmother provided her good support. When she was 17, Oprah won a beauty pageant sponsored by a local radio station.  - in photo Oprah

She was only four and a half years old, or may may be little more, when she decided, she was not going to have the life expected of her. She was raised in a small Mississippi farm by her grandmother, whose highest hope for her granddaughter was that when she became someone's domestic help, she would be treated kindly by her employers. Winfrey told in one of her interviews :

I just hope you get some good white folks when you grow up, treat you right, treat you nice.

In the years 2016 and 2017 there had been fevered speculation that Winfrey might run for president of the US and a poll find that she might win with, a data showed 48% voters choosed to vote Oprah over 39% of Trump.   

This is what aspire in the name of her.

Oprah Winfrey can achieve anything she wants to achieve.

says her friend Richard Sher, the man she shared a sofa with on her first talk show in 1976.  

At six she was sent to live with her mother who worked long hours as a cleaner.  When she was nine she was sexually abused and raped by her cousin and over the years she was abused by other men also. She went to live with her father in Nashville, at the age of 14, hiding the fact that she was pregnant and gave a premature birth of a son. The baby died soon afterwards.     

Her father and stepmother provided her good support. When she was 17, Oprah won a beauty pageant sponsored by a local radio station. Noticing her presence of mind and performance they offered her a part-time job at the radio station.

With some ups and downs she was recruited to join Richard Sher as co-host of Baltimore WJZ-TV's talk show People Are Talking which premiered on 14th August, 1976. She also hosted the local version of Dialing for Dollars.

In his account Kher recalls :

It became a sensation,. Winfrey was  'terrific'. The word I would use to describe her is: compassionate. One of the reasons she gave up news and went into talk was whenever she did a story of children killed in a fire, or children murdered and abused, she would cry and cry. She would try to remain objective but she wore her heart on her sleeve, and people really loved that about her. She could relate, and still does, to the person who doesn’t have a penny to their name and a person who has billions.

Her talk-show pioneered the public therapeutic confessional - guests and their empathetic host talked about everything from divorce to body image to childhood abuse to addiction and later morphed into a vehicle for self-development and triumph over adversity.

The movie critique Roger Ebert persuaded her to sign a syndication deal with King World. His prediction was that she would generate 40% more revenue of his television show 'At The Movies'. It was renamed The Oprah Winfrey Show, expanded to a full hour and broadcast nationally beginning September 8, 1986. And it became history. Time magazine wrote :

Few people would have bet on Oprah Winfrey's swift rise to host of the most popular talk show on TV. In a field dominated by white males, she is a black female of ample bulk. As interviewers go, she is no match for, say, Phil Donahue ... What she lacks in journalistic toughness, she makes up for in plainspoken curiosity, robust humor and, above all empathy. Guests with sad stories to tell are apt to rouse a tear in Oprah's eye ... They, in turn, often find themselves revealing things they would not imagine telling anyone, much less a national TV audience. It is the talk show as a group therapy session

It was as a very young child in Mississippi that she began her lifelong interest in reading, which shaped her worldview and also set her apart. She'd later say :

Books were my pass to personal freedom. I learned to read at age three, and soon discovered there was a whole world to conquer that went beyond our farm in Mississippi.

In addition to her talk-shows, she produced and co-starred drama, short-films and starred number of films which were released worldwide.

In her Golden Globe Speech, Oprah talked about abuse suffered by generations of women and touched on what kept them down, particularly poor women and women of colour. Wright Rigueur says

What was big about that moment was she said this is about structure, I think Oprah does understand the idea of inequalities that are built into the system. You can see that, she says, through her work in providing girls with access to education in South Africa, and through her sponsorship, particularly women of colour – her mentorship of [Selma director] Ava DuVernay comes to mind.

The Law of Attraction

Winfrey's message has always been that positive and hard work. Her endorsement to Law of Attraction however is critically acclaimed by Wright Rigueur : 

will get you rewards and if you don’t get those rewards, it’s because you haven’t worked hard enough or you weren’t deserving. Look at Oprah’s endorsement of The Secret [the pseudo-science “law of attraction” book] – if you believe it, it will come true. It doesn’t work for a poor working-class mom from Appalachia or the Bronx, they can wish all they want but if the systems around them don’t allow for mobility or opportunity or access, they’re not going to do anything.

Oprah advocates her 10 Rules titled You Become What You #Believe. Believing is the matter of fact that brings idea close to object of manifestation.

Oprahfication

Well after tuning in to her talk-show for decades, she talked her way out of kindergarten. Two days in she wrote a letter to her teacher

I don't think, I belong here .cause I know a lot of big words. 

And she skipped to the first grade. The story is fitting, given Winfrey's no-holds-barred hosting style. By confessing intimate details of her life  and tearing up alongside her guests Winfrey is credited

This is what Oprah does in her shows, helping her guests to unlid the vapor from the subconscious container. The viewers also make themselves acquainted with the guests as if they are also releasing their pain mentally may be to the Universe.  - in photo Oprah

with popularizing the form of communication known as rapport talk and what The Wall Street Journal called "Orphafication" meaning

public confession as a form of therapy.

In the spirit of full disclosure of report talk of  Phil Donahue

Winfrey saw television's power to blend public and private; while it links strangers and conveys information over public airwaves, TV is most often viewed in the privacy of our homes. Like a family member, it sits down to meals with us and talks to us in the lonely afternoons. Grasping this paradox, ... She makes people care because she cares. That is Winfrey's genius, and will be her legacy, as the changes she has wrought in the talk show continue to permeate our culture and shape our live     

Orphafication is also been discussed as Oprah-Style-Debates in politics . For instance Bill Clinton was described as

the man who brought Oprah-style psychobabble and misty confessions to politics

Newsweek also stated

Every time a politician lets his lip quiver or a cable anchor 'emotes on TV, they nod to the cult of confession that Oprah helped create.  

Oprah's opinions and endorsement plays significant role in consumers segment for their purchasing choices which also dubbed by media as "The Oprah Effect". This effect has been felt in book sales, beef market to election voting. Kathleen Rooney rightly described Oprah as

a serious American intellectual who pioneered the use of electronic media, specifically television and the Internet, to take reading – a decidedly non-technological and highly individual act – and highlight its social elements and uses in such a way to motivate millions of erstwhile non-readers to pick up books.     

When we do something wrong or something wrong had happened to us, make a significant impact in our subconscious space. In these types of situation there are two typical reactions that pull in opposite directions.

On the one hand, we might want to hide what we have done or done on us  If nobody finds out, then it may feel like we didn’t do it at all or not happened to us at all - which in turn we burden our subconscious mind .

On the other hand, we might just want to confess what we have done wrong or done by others on us. That gets the problem out into the open and helps people to move forward - which does the opposite of the above, means we are able to unload our subconscious burden and feel free.

This is what Oprah does in her shows, helping her guests to unlid the vapor from the subconscious container. The viewers also make themselves acquainted with the guests as if they are also releasing their pain mentally may be to the Universe.