Oprah also solicited ideas on her website, urging visitors to "Call Harpo Productions Anonymous Confession Hotline": Have you been keeping a secret that your family would be shocked to learn? Have you cheated, stolen, or covered up a secret that n.o.body knows about? Or have you uncovered a family secret that completely shocked you or your family? Have your parents, relatives, or ancestors tried to bury a shameful family secret?

Call Us Now!

Most of "the girls" from the early days who had launched Tabloid Oprah had burned out or been kicked out to make room for the coronation crew, who carried the crown and the ermine-trimmed robe. The Oprah Oprah shows on nudists, p.o.r.n stars, and shows on nudists, p.o.r.n stars, and prost.i.tutes now shared the spotlight with "uplifting shows" on G.o.d, giving, and giveaways. Some people marked this as the start of Saint Oprah; others saw it as the Dawn of the Diva. Whatever it was, it signaled a sharp departure from Down-Home Oprah, especially in the newsrooms of Chicago.

"I saw it coming in 1994 when Colleen Raleigh [Oprah's chief publicist for eight years] sued her," said Robert Feder, TV critic for the Chicago Sun-Times Chicago Sun-Times from 1980 to from 1980 to 2008. "When I reported that lawsuit, and I had to report it because it was in the public domain, Oprah froze me out. No more Christmas cards. No calls returned. Nothing. Up to that point I had seen her at least once a week and talked to her all the time....But as she got more powerful, she pulled back from the press and now she ignores all Chicago media because she doesn't need us anymore."

The change from girlfriend to G.o.ddess became obvious to those who covered television and noticed that Oprah no longer spent time with her audience after every show. In her early, eager days she shook hands with everyone as they left, hugged them, gave autographs, and posed for pictures. Now she considered such personal interaction a waste of her time and energy, and photographs were no longer permitted because she considered her image her brand. "No telling where those pictures might turn up later," she said. "I don't want to wind up selling Aunt Bessie's cookies somewhere in Minnesota."

Photojournalists also noted the change in Oprah. "I photographed her quite a few times--shot her first cover for People People--but I like this one because I'd never seen a picture like that," said Harry Benson, describing a candid shot of Oprah in 1996, wearing workout togs and looking very slim. "You can't do pictures like this of her anymore. She lets herself be shot only by her own photographers. She was fine back then, but other people around her were closing in....She wanted to buy my pictures so n.o.body would see them. Just a complete control freak. And this is not a mean picture! Now she's hiding all her fat."

Oprah was so adamant about protecting herself from enthusiastic fans that she insisted her studio audiences be searched by security guards before entering the building and give up their cameras, tape recorders, packages, and even pens and pencils before being seated.

In the old days it would never have occurred to her to put an R R with a circle with a circle around it next to "You go, girl," the phrase most a.s.sociated with her then, but once she became a brand, she began registering her utterances and applied for trademarks on "Aha! Moment" and "Give Big or Go Home." She also registered: Oprah The Oprah Winfrey Show Oprah Radio Make the Connection Oprah's Book Club Live Your Best Life Oprah's Favorite Things Oprah's Amba.s.sadors Wildest Dreams with Oprah Oprah Boutique Harpo The Oprah Store Oprah.com Oprah's Big Give Expert Minutes The "Oprah" signature The "O" design Oprah's Angel Network Angel Network Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls O, The Oprah Magazine O at Home Oprah Winfrey's Legends Ball Oprah and Friends The Oprah who had been open and accessible now seemed aloof and slightly haughty, especially to the press. Having appeared on twenty covers of national magazines by 1995, she was accustomed to demanding (and getting) complete control over what was written about her in exchange for being on the cover. Frequently, she was allowed to choose the writer, and she always dictated the photographer. Most of the media accommodated her, except in Chicago, where reporters sought unfettered access.

"I wrote a piece on 'The 100 Most Powerful Women in Chicago,' and of course Oprah was named number one," said Cheryl L. Reed, former editorial page editor of the Chicago Sun-Times. "I called Harpo, but she wouldn't give us an interview. I tried "I called Harpo, but she wouldn't give us an interview. I tried everything--phone calls, letters, emails, even flowers--but her publicist said she was too busy. Finally I asked if I might send some questions for her to answer. What came back to me was a bunch of regurgitated junk that had been printed a million times before. So I called back and asked, 'Why did you send answers that are computer-generated and published in previous interviews?'

" 'Well, Miss Winfrey says she is always asked the same questions and so she has put together answers that represent her thoughts on various subjects, and that's what she has to say in response to your questions.'

" 'I thought you said that my questions would be put before her and she would answer them.'

" 'I'm very sorry. That's how Miss Winfrey prefers to respond.' "

Reporters from the Chicago Tribune Chicago Tribune and and Chicago Chicago magazine ran into the same magazine ran into the same stone wall at Harpo. Only the gossip columnists thrived, because they dutifully printed items fed to them by Oprah's publicists about Oprah's charitable good works, the celebrities coming to town for Oprah's shows, and Oprah's splendid trips for her employees. To their credit, the city's reporters did not allow personal pique to surface in their stories, and while gossip columnists such as Bill Zwecker of the Chicago Sun-Times Chicago Sun-Times and WBBM-TV acknowledged that Oprah had "become impossible to deal with," he said her continuing presence in the city was a boon to Chicago.

"It was after the Raleigh lawsuit that she slammed the door on everyone," said Robert Feder. "She felt her employees would sell her out and she became paranoid and even more controlling, forcing people to sign contracts that tied them in knots forever."

Feder did not exaggerate. Oprah made all her employees, even those on probation for the first thirty days, sign confidentiality agreements that bound them to the grave. The contracts read, in part: 1. During your employment or business relationship with Harpo, and thereafter, to the fullest extent permitted by law, you are obligated to keep confidential and never disclose, use, misappropriate, or confirm or deny the veracity of any statement or comment concerning Oprah Winfrey, Harpo (which, as used herein, included all ent.i.ties related to Harpo, Inc., including Harpo Productions, Inc., Harpo Films, Inc.) or any of her/its Confidential Information. The phrase "Confidential Information" as used in this policy, includes but is not limited to, any and all information which is not generally known to the public, related to or concerning: (a) Ms. Winfrey and/or her business or private life; (b) the business activities, dealings or interests of Harpo and/or its officers, directors, affiliates, employees or contractors; and/or (c) Harpo's employment practices or policies applicable to its employees and/or contractors.

2. During your employment or business relationship with Harpo, and thereafter, you are obligated to refrain from giving or partic.i.p.ating in any interview(s) regarding or related to Ms. Winfrey, Harpo, your employment or business relationship with Harpo and/or any matter which concerns, relates to or involves any Confidential Information.

Most former employees admit that fear enforces Oprah's contract, even for those who have been out of her employ for years. "All you need to know is her net worth [$2.7 billion in 2009], which can buy more lawyers than anyone can afford," said one former producer. "That, plus Elizabeth Coady."

The Coady case is known to all Harpo employees. "I was producing shows, conceiving shows, supervising a team of other a.s.sistant producers, coming up with guest ideas, doing research on guests and topics," said Coady, former senior a.s.sociate producer who worked for Oprah for four years. She resigned in 1998 with the intention of writing a book about her experiences at Harpo. A trained journalist, Coady wrote an article in the Providence Journal t.i.tled "World-Cla.s.s Phoney Oprah Winfrey and Her Sycophants," t.i.tled "World-Cla.s.s Phoney Oprah Winfrey and Her Sycophants,"

about what it was like to work for "the high priestess of hype, a living laminated product that loses l.u.s.ter once the bright lights and makeup are off." Because of the confidentiality agreement Coady had signed, Oprah threatened to sue her if she proceeded to write the book. Instead, Coady sued Oprah and took her to court to challenge the confidentiality agreement as an unenforceable restrictive covenant.

"I wanted people to be able to talk freely," Coady said. "No one will talk at Harpo. People are afraid for their careers. I didn't want them to fear Oprah coming after them." Coady characterized Harpo as "a very cynical and narcissistic place," and said that Oprah fed off the narcissism.

"Oprah doesn't believe what she says. Everything she says is intended to promote herself, not her female fans. She loves that they worship her and she believes they do so rightfully....There's no sense of justice inside [Harpo], which is ironic in light of the public image of someone who touts herself as an advocate for business ethics and spirituality. This is not a spiritual place."

Describing Oprah as a master manipulator of the media, Coady said that her immense influence within ABC, Viacom (which owned CBS and King World), the Walt Disney Company, Hearst, and Oxygen immunized her against criticism and prevented anyone from stepping forward to reveal the "intrigue and deception" in her workplace.

Oprah realized that a book such as Coady's threatened to strip the bark off her carefully constructed public image while making her words during the "mad cow" trial look hypocritical when she said: "This is America. People are allowed to say things we don't like."

"There is an audience for a book [like mine]," said Coady, "but [Oprah] has a stranglehold on the publishing industry because of the popularity of her book club." The writer did acknowledge the good that Oprah had done and said she saw people whose lives had been positively affected by her. "She gives a lot of people the belief that there's some magic in the world." Yet, overall, Coady felt that Oprah held sway over her gullible audience because of her "constant references to a higher power and her pandering to stayat-home moms."

Elizabeth Coady never got the chance to write her book because the Illinois Appellate Court ruled against her and upheld Oprah's confidentiality agreement as "reasonable and enforceable." The court made its decision based on contract law, which left Coady, a free speech advocate, asking, "Why does a woman with unprecedented influence over so many communication companies have to silence her employees? Why does a woman who has made her millions telling people's stories deserve this level of protection from the courts?"

Scores of producers flocked to Harpo to work for Oprah, leaving network jobs in New York City to relocate to Chicago because, as one former employee said, "Her salaries are terrific." In a confidential interview another said, "As much as the money, I signed on because I believed in her message--to do uplifting television. I thought I would be working for the warm and fuzzy person I saw on television. But, G.o.d, was I conned....It's a cult at Harpo. So oppressive it's frightening...Oprah is ruthless about protecting her brand and she's so concerned--obsessed, really--about who she hires that she has Kroll a.s.sociates [worldwide detective agency] vet every potential employee, including a review of their financials. She's worried about moles in her company who might talk to the press about what goes on, and that would definitely damage her image.

If you pa.s.s Kroll, you are put on one month's probation and in that thirty-day period you are watched by the Harpo elders--the ones who long ago drank the Kool-Aid. If you disagree with a proposed show or express doubt about production values or story ideas, you're viewed as a possible troublemaker....I got so spooked that even after I was on staff, I began to believe the stories about our phones being tapped and our emails being read....If America really knew how this woman operated behind the scenes, they'd be shocked, but no one inside will tell you, because they'd be canned, and those who've escaped to the outside don't want to risk being sued. Oprah has lawyers straining at the leash like pit bulls to go after anyone who might diminish her brand."

The confidentiality agreements gave Oprah a sense of security about anyone stepping forward to sully the image she had created. Not that the image was totally fraudulent, but it was fragile to exposure, because as open as she appeared to be, Oprah shared herself only in the most measured ways, doling out dollops of what she called "the bad stuff" in settings that she controlled totally. Having been "sold out for $19,000" by her sister, Patricia, who had been paid by the tabloids to talk about Oprah's promiscuous childhood, her truancy, her teenage pregnancy, and the death of her baby boy, Oprah feared further tell-alls. Unable to put her trust in her Harpo "family," she a.s.sumed the worst of everyone and threw up the strongest defense she could devise. Realistically, there was no way for her to pursue every former employee who might talk, but the prospect that she could kept most of them in line. Fear directed traffic on both sides of the street: she was as terrified of their revelations as they were of her lawsuits.

In addition to her five hundred employees at Harpo, Oprah required everyone at O, The Oprah Magazine, to sign confidentiality agreements and swear never to reveal to sign confidentiality agreements and swear never to reveal anything about her, something few other publications required of their employees. When Oprah was asked why she imposed such imperial restrictions on those who worked for her, she again said it was all about "trust," but this time Chicago Tribune Chicago Tribune journalists Ellen journalists Ellen Warren and Terry Armour called her on it. "Actually, that's precisely what it's not about,"

they wrote. "It's about mistrust."

Oprah made the headhunters who helped recruit teachers for her leadership academy, and every member of the faculty and all the dorm matrons, sign nondisclosure agreements. Her visits to the school were always shrouded in secrecy, and she insisted that guests at functions she attended in South Africa sign agreements banning cameras and tape recorders. People who purchased her real estate also had to sign covenants not to reveal details about her ownership. Her caterers, florists, party planners, interior decorators, upholsterers, painters, electricians, plumbers, gardeners, pilots, security guards, and even the veterinarians who treated her dogs had to sign. She once sent a cease-and-desist order during the taping of a VH1 reality show about dating because one of Gayle King's ex-boyfriends was a contestant, and he had signed a confidentiality agreement not to talk about Oprah and Gayle.

"Everyone who works at Atlantic Aviation, the hangar where Oprah keeps her plane [the $47 million Bombardier BD-700 Global Express high-speed jet she purchased in 2006] has been signed to secrecy," said Laura Aye, a former airfield safety officer.

"They are not allowed to discuss her. If you ask about her, they say, 'We can't talk or we'll lose our jobs.' The girls there are very nervous. Before Oprah got her Global, she had a Gulfstream, and I had dealings with her at Midway....I saw her about twenty times in the years I worked there and I never once saw her with a man. She always traveled with women....She was cold, standoffish, and very difficult....She's not nice to the employees, except at Christmas, when she distributes gifts to everyone. I once had to yell at her when she took her dog out on the AOA [air operations area] to pee. No one is ever supposed to be there, because planes come in and out, and the jet blast could be fatal. I got a call from the tower that some woman was walking her dog and I had to get her out of there fast. I ran out and saw it was Oprah.

" 'Please, get out of the area right away, ma'am,' I said.

"She roared back, 'I beg your pardon?...'

" 'Right now, ma'am. That dog will get sucked up. We can't have you out here. It's regulations.' She was furious....I had to report the incident."

The sense of ent.i.tlement that accompanies the life of a billionaire celebrity seemed to surface shortly after Oprah purchased her first plane (a $40 million Gulfstream GIV). "She was going in and out of Signature then, a field-based operation for private jets, which is separate from the commercial airport," said Laura Aye, "and she did not want the fuelers around because she didn't like the smell of gas and grease. Her pilot would radio her arrival, and the fuelers would all be banned from the hangar. The guys inside quickly whipped up a batch of popcorn to cover the fumes. That way she wouldn't have to smell anything for the thirty feet she had to walk from her plane to her security van."

During her Gulfstream days she gave an interview to Harry Allen of Vibe, Vibe, who who asked how much her plane had cost. Oprah said, "I'm not going to discuss that. Jet etiquette means you never discuss how much the plane costs....But sometimes, and I get a kick out of this--there's all black people on the plane. Just the other day the flight attendant was pa.s.sing out some lobster and I said, 'We still black! It's not like we turned white! We still black, y'all. Oprah's still black.' It's like, who knew?"

The Vibe writer said, "Do you understand the effect of stories like these? You're writer said, "Do you understand the effect of stories like these? You're the richest black person in the universe."

Sounding disingenuous, Oprah said, "Am I? Let me think....I always think of other people as being rich. It's not a concept that I'm attuned to."

When she upgraded from her $40 million Gulfstream to her $47 million Global Express, she moved hangars and secured a new s.p.a.ce near the Sara Lee jets. "It was an old, dilapidated warehouse with sliding doors--imagine a garage for an airplane," said one airport employee. "She poured a million dollars into it, completely refurbishing the place. She carpeted the concrete floor, redid the walls and cuttings and doors. She even built offices upstairs with elaborate fittings and got the City of Chicago to put in a parking lot, and then she redid the parking lot....She tapes her shows in Chicago on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and flies to Santa Barbara every Thursday night, arriving back in Chicago on Sunday at nine P.M." If Oprah is asleep on either leg of the flight, her pilots are under orders not to disturb her until she's slept eight hours....They must sit and wait until she wakes up.

Oprah could not force celebrities to sign her confidentiality agreements, so she frequently isolated herself at galas and benefits. "When we performed The v.a.g.i.n.a The v.a.g.i.n.a Monologues at Madison Square Garden [February 2001], the one person with a private at Madison Square Garden [February 2001], the one person with a private entrance and a private dressing room was Oprah," recalled Erica Jong. "The rest of us-me, Jane Fonda, Glenn Close, Rita Wilson, Calista Flockhart, Shirley Knight, Amy Irving, all the rest--were girls together in our panty hose getting dressed and made up gratis by Bobbi Brown. No one was paid. No one had star privileges, except Oprah. She was separate and apart from all of us, and I think it was because she was afraid and not confident, but why, I don't know."

That evening Oprah had used the Garden's rock star entrance--with an elevator big enough to accommodate limousines--so that she could bypa.s.s fans and be driven from the street to her dressing room. A friend later suggested she might have removed herself from the rest of the cast because she felt self-conscious about her size. "Maybe she was uncomfortable being the only heavy black woman among all those skinny white girls."

Race was definitely the reason Oprah cited when she was barred from Hermes in Paris. She and Gayle arrived at the luxury retail store fifteen minutes after closing and expected to be admitted because they saw shoppers inside. Oprah said she wanted to buy a particular watch for Tina Turner, with whom she was having dinner that evening, but the salesclerk at the door would not let her in, and neither would the store manager. Later Hermes said the store was preparing for a special event that evening.

"I saw it," said Gayle King, "and it was really, really very bad. Oprah describes it herself as one of the most humiliating moments of her life....We are calling it her Crash Crash moment [referring to the film detailing racism]." She added, "If it had been Celine Dion or Britney Spears or Barbra Streisand, there is no way they would not be let in that store."

Some news reports said the Hermes salesclerk did not recognize Oprah ( The The Oprah Winfrey Show is not seen in France), and the store had been "having a problem is not seen in France), and the store had been "having a problem with North Africans." Oprah called the U.S. president of Hermes and said she had been publicly humiliated, and although she had recently bought twelve Hermes handbags ($6,500 apiece), she would no longer be spending her money on the firm's luxury goods.

The company immediately issued a statement of regret for "not having been able to welcome Madame Winfrey" to the store, saying that "a private public relations event was being prepared inside."

Je suis desolee, monsieur. Oprah issued her own statement, saying she would Oprah issued her own statement, saying she would address the matter on her season's opening show in the fall, giving people weeks to weigh in on the international furor.

"Had Winfrey been turned away in regular hours, the racism charge might have traction," wrote Anne Kingston in Canada's National Post. National Post. "But she wasn't, which "But she wasn't, which suggests other 'isms' might be at play. Maybe it was celebrity-ism."

An editorial in the Montreal Gazette Gazette accused Oprah of being quick to "play the accused Oprah of being quick to "play the race card," saying, "Everyone has endured something like this. Fortunately few of us fly into 'don't you know who I am?' mode. This is Paris, Madame Winfrey, not Chicago.

Even if they know who you are, they just don't care."

The conservative National Review said, "What she should have done, in our said, "What she should have done, in our opinion, is buy Hermes on the spot." The comic strip The Boondocks The Boondocks showed the tenyear-old black radical Huey Freeman watching television news and hearing: showed the tenyear-old black radical Huey Freeman watching television news and hearing: Oprah Winfrey is so convinced that her denial into the Paris Hermes store was race-related that she will be discussing it on her show.

In other news, Hermes has announced a huge "Going Out of Business" sale.

The comedian Rosie O'Donnell wrote in her blog: I cannot wait to hear all the details-- one of the most humiliating moments of her life...

oprah a poor overweight s.e.xually abused troubled black female child from a broken home--that oprah suffered ONE of the most HUMILIATING moments of HER life at hermes in paris.

hmmmmm.

Orlando Patterson, Harvard's eminent professor of sociology, later asked in The The New York Times, "Oprah may have been denied a prerogative of elite status in our new "Oprah may have been denied a prerogative of elite status in our new gilded age--being waited on in luxury stores after hours--but had she been the victim of racism?"

Richard Thompson Ford, a law professor at Stanford, answered the question in his provocative book The Race Card: How Bluffing About Bias Makes Race Relations The Race Card: How Bluffing About Bias Makes Race Relations Worse: "If the reason for Oprah's humiliation was that the incident at Hermes triggered "If the reason for Oprah's humiliation was that the incident at Hermes triggered memories of her past experiences with racism, then Oprah's race was the reason she felt humiliated. In that sense, Oprah was humiliated because of her race."

In the early part of her career Oprah maintained she had never experienced racism. "I transcend race, really," she said in 1986. Yet the following year she told People People she had been refused entrance to a Manhattan boutique. In 1995 she told The Times The Times Magazine (London) that she had been barred from "one of Chicago's ritziest department (London) that she had been barred from "one of Chicago's ritziest department stores." She laughed as she told the writer, "They didn't recognize me because I was wearing my hair all kind of [bouffant]. I was with my hairdresser, a black man. They hummed and they hummed and then they said that they'd been robbed the week before by two black transvest.i.tes. 'And we thought they'd come back.' 'Oh, thank you very much,' I said. 'I'm changing my hair-do.' Then I turned to my hairdresser and said, 'I think we are experiencing a racial moment....So this is what it's like. Oh, man!' "

Six years later she retold a similar version of that same story, but by 2001 it was a Madison Avenue boutique that had kept her out. She said she had seen a sweater in the window and rang to be buzzed in, but the door was not opened. Then she saw two white women entering the store. So she rang again, but still was not admitted. "I certainly didn't think, 'This is a racial moment!' " she said. She called from a pay phone to make sure the store was open. "We started banging on the windows." Nothing. Back in Chicago she called the store. "This is Oprah Winfrey. I was trying to get in your store the other day and..." She quoted the manager as saying, "I know you're going to find this hard to believe, but we were robbed last week by two black transs.e.xuals--and we thought they'd come back."

Whether these stories were real or rhetorical, Oprah certainly was accustomed to celebrity treatment from stores that opened their doors after hours so she could shop. In Chicago, Bloomingdale's had extended this courtesy and even accommodated her insistence that all nonessential employees be kept off the floor so they would not gawk or report what she had purchased. (She was irate when the National Enquirer National Enquirer revealed the revealed the Christmas presents she had bought for her employees at the studio and the magazine-fourteen-karat gold and diamond O O initial pendants.) initial pendants.) A few days before her season's opening show in September 2005, billed as "Oprah's 20th Anniversary Season Premiere," her publicist announced that Robert B.

Chavez, the president and CEO of Hermes USA, would be Oprah's guest, stirring speculation about a monumental slapdown on national television.

Oprah opened the show by joking about what she did on her summer vacation and later launched into her version of what had happened in Paris. She claimed that most of the press reports were "flat-out wrong," although her best friend had been the source of those reports. She scolded her audience for thinking she might have been upset for not being able to get into a closed store to shop. "Please," she said. "I didn't get to be this old to be that stupid. I was not upset about not getting to buy a bag--I was upset because one person at the store was so rude, not the whole company."

Mr. Chavez looked at Oprah as she continued to berate his company. "There were reports that I was turned away because the store was closed. The store was in the process of being closed--the store was very active....The doors were not locked. My friends and I were standing inside the doorway and there was much discussion among the staff about whether or not to let me in. That's what was embarra.s.sing....I know the difference between a store being closed and a store being closed to me.

"Everybody who has ever been snubbed because you were not chic enough or thin enough or the right cla.s.s or the right color or whatever...you know that it is very humiliating, and that is exactly what happened to me."

The whipping boy from Hermes sounded contrite: "I would like to say to you we're really sorry for all of those unfortunate circ.u.mstances that you encountered when you tried to visit our store in Paris," he said. "We really try to service all of our clients all over the world." Then he stubbed his toe. "The woman who turned you away did it because, honest to G.o.d, she didn't know who you were."

"This wasn't even about, 'Do you know who I am?' " Oprah snapped. "I wasn't trying to play that celebrity card."

Chavez quickly apologized. "You did meet up with one very, very rigid staff person."

"Rigid or rude?" asked Oprah.

"Rigid and rude, I'm sure," he said.

Having pilloried the firm's president, Oprah now pardoned him and commended his company for inst.i.tuting sensitivity training for its employees. She concluded the segment by hugging Chavez and urging her viewers to shop at the luxury goods emporium, where alligator Kelly bags cost $18,000 to $25,000. Oprah, too, resumed shopping there, and when she gave a "girlfriend" party for twelve at her Montecito estate in honor of Maria Shriver, she had the invitation st.i.tched on twelve Hermes scarves ($375 apiece).

Mr. Chavez was one of the few guests to get out of Harpo without having to sign a confidentiality agreement. Most who appear on Oprah's show are sworn to secrecy, but they are so grateful to be there that they willingly sign away their rights. "My publisher told me the difference between Oprah Oprah and other shows is the difference between a and other shows is the difference between a lightning bug and the sun," said a member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors, too scared to be quoted by name. "So, of course, I want to be in the sun."

Swallowing professional reservations, most writers sign Oprah's binding agreements, but one man objected on principle. "I just couldn't do it," said Chris Rose, a prizewinning columnist for New Orleans's Times-Picayune. Times-Picayune. "It struck me as wrong and "It struck me as wrong and ran counter to everything that I believe as a writer and a journalist and a human being."

Rose had written moving columns about the harrowing depression he suffered in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. His columns were nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and later published in a book t.i.tled 1 Dead in Attic. 1 Dead in Attic. On the second anniversary of the hurricane, he On the second anniversary of the hurricane, he was contacted by Oprah's show to discuss post-traumatic stress disorders among Katrina survivors. "They wanted my expertise, not as a book writer or even a newspaper columnist, but as the city's most famously depressed resident, by virtue of my columns about battling the disease," he said. "Yet they would not allow me to mention my book or even show a copy of it on the air, although the subject of their show and my book was the mental health crisis in New Orleans. At the end of a long and excruciating day--ten hours--revisiting the emotional wreckage of the hurricane, Oprah's producer pulled out a sheet of paper and said I had to sign it....Now, I was willing to give her the right to use my name, my image, my story, even footage of my youngest child, but I could not give her the right to void my experience for the last ten hours....I explained that writing is my life and writing about my experience is what I do for a living.

" 'If you don't sign, we don't run the segment,' " the producer said.

"They had just sucked out of me my inner darkness and were exposing my personal struggles to the entire country," Rose recalled. "As exhausted as I was I was not going to cave in to this kind of brinksmanship." The producer panicked, and for the next three hours Rose was peppered with calls from various producers up the chain of Oprah's command, insisting that he sign the confidentiality agreement, and threatening to cut his segment if he didn't.

"Trust us," they said. Rose held firm. That night he wrote a column about the experience of dealing with Oprah and her producers, which was posted on the newspaper's website.

"The next morning I found out what it meant to 'go viral,' " he said. "I had stuck my hand into a hornet's nest of anti-Oprah sentiment on the Internet that pushed my book from number eleven thousand on Amazon to number eighteen by the end of the day and then on to The New York Times The New York Times bestseller list. I was stunned because I had always bestseller list. I was stunned because I had always considered Oprah to be an engine for good....I had no idea there were negative feelings about her and her confidentiality agreements out there, but I received calls and emails from writers all over the country saying they were going to buy my book that day to send her a message....The irony is that my segment did run on Oprah Oprah ["Special Report: ["Special Report: Katrina--What Will It Take to Recover?"] and my book was posted on her website--at least for a while. But I guess I go down as the guy whose book became a bestseller for not having been seen on The Oprah Winfrey Show. The Oprah Winfrey Show. " "

Harpo producers consistently presented shows with quality production values-arresting visuals, fast-paced segments, and exclusive interviews tailored to a female audience looking for entertainment, diversion, and self-improvement. Because of Oprah's big-money bonuses for those who gave her high ratings, there was fierce compet.i.tion among her producers to get their stories on the air. Consequently, they took no prisoners in their negotiations.

"They are bullies," said Rachel Grady, who with her partner, Heidi Ewing, runs Loki Films, which produced The Boys of Bakara The Boys of Bakara and and Jesus Camp, Jesus Camp, the latter of which was the latter of which was nominated for an Academy Award. "Oprah and her producers feel like everyone owes them for the privilege of being on their show, and they expect you to work for free for the honor." Loki Films was called in the summer of 2006 to produce the ABC prime-time special on Oprah's school in South Africa. "We were to do the job but not be given credit for our work," said Grady. "So we asked for double the money. They [Harriet Seitler and Kate Murphy Davis] gave us a contract that said they could fire us without cause at any time. They also refused to speak with our lawyer because they said it was better for their budget that way. 'Besides,' they said, 'we usually end up firing everybody anyway and having to do it ourselves.' That's the way they put it....

"I think Oprah's school is a wonderful idea, but having worked in that poor country I think it's crazy to spend $40 million on one school when $75 million could probably eradicate poverty throughout all of South Africa. But Oprah lives in such a gilded cage she no longer has a grip on reality. We had to fly to Chicago three times at her request....

"When we realized that we would have to give up six months of our lives for her, get little money and no acknowledgement for our work, plus we had to sign a nondisclosure contract swearing that Oprah's name would never pa.s.s our lips--please!

That's when we said we could not accept the job on those terms. Harriet Seitler went off on us. 'You are just two little girls in a room in New York City,' she said. 'We are Oprah Winfrey. We are Harpo. You need us. We don't need you.' "

Liz Garbus, another doc.u.mentary filmmaker and daughter of famous First Amendment attorney Martin Garbus, also encountered problems when her film Girlhood Girlhood was featured on an Oprah show t.i.tled "Inside Prison: Why Women Murder." The two young women featured in the doc.u.mentary--Shanae and Megan--agreed to appear on condition that Oprah not mention the drug addiction of Megan's mother. Promises were made and then mauled. When Oprah asked Megan on-camera about her mother's addiction to drugs, Megan walked off the set, providing what one producer later called "good television"--the show's first priority.

"I'll say what I want to say," said Oprah in an unguarded on-camera moment, and with the exception of her celebrity friends like John Travolta and Tom Cruise--neither of whom she ever questioned about Scientology--she spared few others. She drilled Liberace about his palimony suit and how much he was worth, how many houses he owned, how many cars he drove, how many furs he bought, and how much he spent on jewelry. She quizzed Robin Givens about getting beaten up by her former husband, boxing heavyweight champion Mike Tyson: "Is it true that he would hit you until you would vomit?" She asked Kim Cattrall of s.e.x and the City, s.e.x and the City, "Are you dating? Is it hard "Are you dating? Is it hard because people expect you to put out?" Looking askance at Boy George, the crossdressing British pop star, she asked, "What does your mother say when you leave the house, honey?" To Jean Harris, who murdered her lover, Dr. Herman Tarnower, the creator of the Scarsdale Diet, Oprah asked, "Do you think that one of the things that hurt you [in the trial] was that you were perceived on the witness stand as being this cold b.i.t.c.h?" To Richard Gere, she said, "I...read that you live like a monk, except for the celibacy part." She interrogated Billy Joel about the drinking problem that had landed him in rehab: "What's with all the car crashes?" After Lance Armstrong had radiation therapy for testicular cancer, she asked, "You want more children? Got extra sperm?"

When Oscar de la Renta appeared on her show and introduced his adopted son, who was seated in the audience, Oprah looked at the young boy and then asked the designer, "How did you get a black son?"

Behind-the-scenes compet.i.tion became fierce when the talk show t.i.tans battled for exclusive "gets." In 2003, Oprah and Katie Couric went to the mat over Elizabeth Smart, the fourteen-year-old girl who was s.n.a.t.c.hed from her bed in Salt Lake City, hidden in a hole, chained to a tree, and not allowed to bathe for nine months. Upon Smart's rescue by police, her parents asked the media for privacy so that she might recover. Seven months later, Ed and Lois Smart had written a book, Bringing Elizabeth Bringing Elizabeth Home: A Journey of Faith and Hope, and sold television rights to CBS for a movie. and sold television rights to CBS for a movie.

Publication was set for October, to be followed by the movie in November. The promotion campaign set by the publisher (Doubleday) gave Katie Couric, then with NBC, the prime-time interview for Dateline, Dateline, to be followed by Oprah for daytime. The ground to be followed by Oprah for daytime. The ground rules, set by the Smarts for their interviews, prohibited any on-camera interview with their daughter, although silent footage of Elizabeth was allowed.

The book's publication created such a media frenzy that CBS decided to air the interview with the Smarts that was to accompany the movie as a network special before Katie or Oprah had aired their interviews. Oprah's producers flew to Utah to get footage of Elizabeth's bedroom, zooming in on the white patchwork quilt, ruffled pillows, and Raggedy Ann dolls, and also filmed the filthy hole where she was chained for nine months. Katie Couric accompanied her producers to Utah, and after interviewing the Smarts, she persuaded them to allow her verbal exchange with Elizabeth to be shown on the air, which gave NBC an exclusive no one else had. Couric tried to circle the subject of s.e.xual abuse with the youngster without getting explicit: COURIC: How do your friends treat you, Elizabeth? I mean, obviously, you know...

ELIZABETH:.

Regular.

COURIC: Do they ever ask you anything or...

ELIZABETH: No.

COURIC: You must have been frightened...

ELIZABETH: Yeah...

COURIC: Do you think you have changed?

ELIZABETH: No.

Oprah was enraged when she found out about the interview, but instead of calling Katie Couric to scream, she telephoned Suzanne Herz, then head of publicity for Doubleday. "Oprah reamed her," recalled a Doubleday employee. "Just laid her out...It was quite traumatic for Suzanne to be treated that way by Oprah Winfrey." Herz later said, "It was more bad behavior on the part of Katie Couric, not Oprah. Katie was the one who broke the rules to get the exclusive. Oprah was angry because she followed the rules and then got screwed....I don't blame her....In the end, both of them got huge ratings."

Couric's interview with Elizabeth Smart and her parents won the hour for NBC, with 12.3 million viewers, handily beating Barbara Walters's ABC 20/20 20/20 interview with interview with Princess Diana's butler. Oprah retaliated by releasing footage from her show before it aired, for two segments on ABC's Good Morning America, Good Morning America, the show that competed the show that competed directly with Katie Couric and The Today Show. The Today Show. "It wasn't vengeance," said Oprah's "It wasn't vengeance," said Oprah's publicist. "Just promotion."

Not everybody enjoyed being on The Oprah Winfrey Show. The Oprah Winfrey Show. "I represented Anne "I represented Anne Robinson, who wrote Memoir of an Unfit Mother Memoir of an Unfit Mother in 2001, when she got a call from in 2001, when she got a call from Oprah's producers four years later to go on the show," recalled literary agent Ed Victor.