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by Yvette Carnell
The “Queen of All Media” has walked a rocky road after leaving her daytime talk show. First came the ups and downs at her OWN network, and now comes the 
backlash from her special on India.
Oprah’s special on India aired in the U.S. back in April, but it only aired in India this past weekend, and most Indian critics didn’t like what they saw:
“It’s all the stereotypes and all the clichés the West has, between the elephants and the palaces and the snake charmers and cows,” Aseem Chhabra, a freelance journalist and columnist for the Mumbai Mirror, told ABC News. “That exists in India, but it’s this imagery of India that some people seem to have, and I think I expected a lot more from somebody like Oprah Winfrey.”
And the criticism didn’t stop there:
“Oprah, your comment about eating with the hand is really not that big a deal to us; we are used to gross Western ignorance regarding our ancient country,” according to “An open letter to Oprah Winfrey from an Indian who eats with her hand” on the CNN-IBN website
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Rachel
December 3, 2012 at 11:36 am
I’m coming to this late, but I really don’t think Oprah should “rise above” the criticsm. And if it matters, I’m an African-American female who used to like Oprah in the ’90s. Forget the lack of cultural knowledge, she just didn’t have basic good manners sometimes.
For example, she visited a happy, smiling, beautifully polite family – who happened to be dirt-poor and lived in a 1-room unit in a slum. Oprah was in voyeuristic, “poverty p**n” mode and kept saying things like, “So this is the entire space you live in? This little room?” and other things that went along the lines of, “OMG, YOU’RE POOR!”
Eventually she made the father actually cry.
Now imagine if Oprah visited a black family in the projects, and said the exact same things. Imagine if she made an African-American father cry with shame. People would have been inflamed and started calling her out on her rudeness. They wouldn’ve have said, “But it was educational! I didn’t know how black people in the projects live and she was just asking that black dude the same things I would have asked!”
And that whole “eating with the hands STILL?” comment was so embarrassing. Are you saying this rich woman hasn’t been exposed to Indian dining in all these years? Look, I’ve been to India and I was treated like a total princess by everyone…they were so hospitable and eager to show me a good time even though I didn’t know what was going on half the time. I was also very ignorant of the culture but at least I didn’t make faces when I was asked to eat with my hands, nor did I immediately seek out slums to gawk at.
Oprah is an idiot and an embarrassment.