The American Isis OPRAH? - Yale Scholar Asks Her Own Answers

Oprah is Huge! No doubt. However, a Religious Icon?

A Yale Prof wrote a monograph -soon on bookshelves everywhere (but not at Borders on 95th Street, because it closed) - arguing that Oprah is a religious icon. Get this treacle:

Yale professor Kathryn Lofton has written a book about Oprah Winfrey as a religious icon. Lofton compares the media mogul's speech patterns to those of southern preachers and believes she employs a sermon-like structure to each show. She tells the New York Post: "Gospel is a word that means 'good news.' Oprah says that the good news is you."

My Turn!


Yale's Kathryn Lofton* -A Few Eggs Shy of an Easter Basket?

Ripped from Professor Kathryn Lofton's page at Yale - Prof Lofton's rigorous pedagogy.

Q. How does the scholar name the religious?

Me: A as Q. The Religious What?

How do scholars and students determine the history and meanings of religions within the political and social histories of the United States?

Me: A as Q. Badly?


Q.How do we understand these histories in the light of concepts of the secular, the modern West, or modernity?

Me: A as Q. In sweet words of the Apostles et al. to Jesus on Ascension Thursday, 'Come Again?'

Q. What are the relationships between consumer activity and religious identity or between sexual and religious practices?

Me: A as Q. Oprah? . . .Mother Earth? Wait, wait don't tell me!! Murial Abbot? No, Nancy Kulp! Oprah?

At Yale, Professor Lofton teaches courses that seek to answer these questions of history simultaneously with those of social science classification and cultural studies.

No box scores?


Oprah - Seat of Wisdom? Nah.

And yet Yale is a preeminent American Seat of Learning. Happy Easter!


*

KATHRYN LOFTON
Department of Religious Studies
P.O. Box 208287
New Haven, CT 06520-8287
(203) 432-0836
e-mail kathryn.lofton@yale.edu
EMPLOYMENT
2009 - Assistant Professor of American Studies and Religious Studies, Yale University
courtesy appointments in the Department of History and Yale Divinity School
2008 - 2009 Associate Research Scholar, Center for the Study of Religion, Princeton University
2006 - 2008 Assistant Professor of American Studies and Religious Studies, Indiana University

2005 - 2006 Visiting Professor of Religion and Humanities, Reed College
EDUCATION
2005 Ph.D., Religious Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Thesis: “Making the Modern in Religious America, 1870-1935”
2002 M.A., Religious Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Honors, U.S. Religious History and Religion and Culture
2000 A.B, University of Chicago
Honors, the Committee on Religion in the Humanities and the Department of History
PUBLICATIONS
Monograph
Oprah: The Gospel of an Icon (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011)
The Modernity in Mr. Shaw: Religion and Sexuality in America (in progress)
Edited Volumes
Women’s Work: An Anthology of African-American Women’s Historical Writings from Antebellum
America to the Harlem Renaissance, co-edited with Laurie Maffly-Kipp (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2010).
Indiana Magazine of History, 105: 2 (June 2009), “Special Issue: Thomas Hart Benton’s Indiana Murals at
75,” co-edited with Matthew Guterl.

Frat Boys at Yale, Hollywood Producers, TV Pilot Jockies, Clothing Industry Need to Meet Dad.

" I'm not a Yale Man, but I can Tell Time, Me Old Son. Midnight. Later is no option. Am I right, Son? Say, I'm right! That's a Good Boy! Have fun."

Dad is the guy, that I met on many occasions. He was the guy who allowed me to escort his daughter to the Beverly Theatre, Chuck Cavellini's Buffet in Midlothian, The Four Top with Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band at the Auditorium Theatre, various proms Longwood Academy of our Lady, Queen of Peace in Burbank, and my own at the Blackstone Hotel for Little Flower.

Dad was always politely appraising with eyes, and probing with nose to determine signs of sexual intent, or after odors of the great taste of Schlitz. " Be home by midnight or before, I gotta big tomorrow working the lock-up of Gresham - did Peggy tell you I was a cop?"

Once, I picked up a gorgeous Italian girl from River Forest, Illinois, with whom I shared a science lab bench at Loyola. Her dad was cleaning a Smith & Wesson of large caliber it appeared. " What's the Clancy Bothers? Why not catch a good show at the London House? Forget about it. Carla says you are from the south side. I got alotta cousins down there around 1755 W. 75th Place: phone number Stewart 3-1570, where Pat, Ginny, Kevin and sweet little Joanie live with you . . . and that great red bearded dog of your's Leroy. Have a great time, kids! See you soon." Now, that's a Dad what am a Dad!

I never had car trouble. Respect does not begin with Dad, but it should in the best of all possible worlds end with Dad, if decency, morality, common sense and fundamental honesty can not prevail. Respect begins with the human being who fundamently resembles your mother, sister, and aunts, but also signals a chemical and emotional reaction in males that filters sounds, words, images and impulses in an elemental and wonderful way. That is why sappy songs get sold.

Women are not at all like us thanks be to God. They are better. They are magnificent!

There have always been creeps and louses of my gender who abused and misused and frightened and threatened and deployed charm in order to have one's wicked way with a young lady.

Dad, my Dad, taught respect for women by displaying genuine affection for my mother with words, gestures, and by taking on the cooking, cleaning, diaper changing, laundry, as well as the plumbing, carpentry and furnace maintenance. Moreso, I caught the two of them 'making out' on any number of occasion, returning earlier than expected from my date.

I hate the sight of clothing ads that present young girls and boys as sexual predators, sexually ambiguous. I am no fan of TV sitcoms written by morons for imbeciles that make light of love. I am appalled by the news of the Yale Frat Boys: "No Means Yes, Yes Means Anal." that is the least objectionable chant by these privileged punks.



Sorry sweetheart, me and your Dad agree that Calvin needs a face-to-face with Dad. The ads are stupid and make perfect sense to stupid people.

Yale is getting close scrutiny by the Nanny Press and now the Nation of Cowards Justice Department. Yale is a great school that is the Alma Mater for several of my dearest friends - Vigorous and intelligent Dads themselves.

Boys are dogs, if they wish to be and the tolerant eyes of a society that bases all of its Hegalian assumptions upon " Who's to Say" as the 1st Commandment. The same society that valorizes Tupac as the new Andrew Marvell and places his idiotic utterances in the canon of literature at Yale, Brown, Harvard, Columbia and Princeton, because some loud mouth with an alphabet after his name plays the race card, is now huffing and puffing that Yale Men are sexists?

Many of those poor louts have been raised without Dads, or at best weekend Dads, I venture to say. Marriage is so . . .sexist and patriarchal and hard work.

I am blessed to live in a neighborhood that for a widower like me is a dating desert. Everyone is married and stays married - for better or worse, in sickness and in health, and until death do they part. The women are often tougher than the men, though they look like movie stars. They were Daddy's Girls and had brothers with hands like meat-hooks who started for Mt. Carmel, St. Rita, Leo and St. Lawrence. These women respected themselves and demanded the same from us knuckle-draggers. Several of those knuckle-draggers hold degrees from Yale, BTW. They sit next to their brides at Mass. At the kiss of Peace, after the Pater Noster, these men gently kiss the women who are their lives. These gentle men are Dads and not above giving a lout who speaks disrespectfully, much less lays hands on a daughter a thorough and pious tune-up.

Many of those poor Yale louts Tweet for Obama and about the MILF Sarah Palin in the most vile and unworthy ways possible. The same clown opera that is MSNBC and CNN and the networks is hand-wringing about the Yale boys, but calling Mrs. Palin and other women out of their political circles in the same manner as the Yale Men.

Louts are louts. Louts need clouts. Yet, the smarm merchants chant against violence. The Yale Men and Hollywood and the Music Industry and Calvin Klein and Snoop Yo'Dog Gangstah Sex Pimp and Abercrombie and Fitch need a good session with a Dad.

A gentle man similar in inclination to Carla's Pop . . .the huge knuckled second generation Italian-American with the comfortable home in River Forest, IL would be just the ticket.