Thomas Paine's Corner

http://www.bestcyrano.org/T HOMASPAINE/?p=277

"The other kids were all into black power," Oprah told the Tribune in the mid-1980s. But "I wasn't a dashiki kind of woman ... Excellence was the best deterrent to racism and that became my philosophy."

Excellence indeed. Few would deny that Oprah Winfrey has achieved an extraordinary degree of THAT, at least by our society's warped standards. Witty, articulate, attractive, beloved by tens of millions, and fabulously wealthy, she is the "I pulled myself up by my bootstraps" queen of a vast media empire. Oprah is a living embodiment of the American Dream. What is perhaps most inspiring to her genuflecting disciples is that Oprah rose to her stratospheric position of wealth and influence from an impoverished start in a socioeconomic hierarchy still largely dominated by white males.