Overdosing On Oprah

NRO: The Side Effects Of Empowerment

(National Review Online)  This column was written by Steve Salerno.

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Ever since America began to wean itself off the sociological junk-food of victimization and the much-maligned Culture of Blame, the landscape has been steadily overspread by an antithetical conceit -- loosely bracketed as "empowerment" -- whose preachments can be summarized as follows: Don't let anyone take away your dreams. Everything you need to succeed is right there inside you.Believe it, achieve it.

Today, Fortune 500 conglomerates draft optimistic business models in bullet points drawn from Stephen Covey's seven (highly effective) habits; families settle disputes using ameliorative diagnostics straight out of Dr. Phil; millions of everyday Americans owe their feelings of "personal power" to prow-jawed fire-walker Tony Robbins, the arguable father of today's mainstream brand of empowerment. And, of course, there is that daily dose of spiritual adrenaline from Oprah Winfrey, who is seldom categorized as a guru in her own right, but whose role as the movement's éminence grise cannot be discounted: The road to self-help's promised land -- and a bite of its $8.56 billion-dollar fruit, as per the latest figures from Marketdata Enterprises -- goes right through the vast king-making machine that is Harpo Productions. The guiding nostrums delivered via sundry channels by these and other self-help celebrities form a cultural given, an uncontested (and, one is led to believe, incontestable) foundation for the present starry-eyed Zeitgeist.

Lost in all the adulation is the downside of this tireless effort to uplift. The overselling of personal empowerment -- the hyping of hope -- may in fact be the great unsung irony of latter-day American culture, destined to disappoint as surely as the pity party it was supposed to replace. And in a far more insidious fashion.