Oprah Winfrey: Sobbing Over Sexuality

What’s with all the waterworks on TV lately?

Oprah Winfrey and John Boehner each produced salt-water rivulets for the cameras last week in separate network interviews – Winfrey on a Barbara Walters special on ABC and Boehner on CBS’s 60 Minutes.

Winfrey’s tear ducts opened as she rhapsodized about her Close Personal Friend, Gayle King, labeling her as “the mother I never had; the sister everybody would want and the friend that everybody deserves. I don’t know a better person.”

Oh, and she denied, yet again, that the two are lovers.

Republican Speaker of the House-to-be Boehner, cursed with a surname that will forever be pronounced by giggly adolescents as slang for an erection, choked up at least twice – most notably during his recitation of how he achieved the American Dream.

Boehner has long been known as a cry baby. Winfrey’s tears were unexpected.

“I’m not a lesbian,” she said. “I’m not even kind of a lesbian.” (Is there more than one kind? I missed that memo.)

The perpetual buzz harshes Winfrey’s mellow because “it means somebody must think I’m lying. Why would you want to hide it? That is not the way I run my life.”

And God said, “Let there be tears.”

Color me cynical, but after all these years, why does the mere suggestion of the L-word turn Oprah into a sob sister? Instead of getting all serious and defensive, she should have some fun with it.

Here is the exchange I’d like to see:

Barbara Walters: We hate to even ask, O, but is it true that you and Gayle are, shall we say, more than friends?

Oprah Winfrey: Why yes, Barbara. We have sex almost every night, and sometimes we let Stedman watch. Every year on his birthday, we tape a three-way. I’m thinking of giving a DVD to everyone in the audience on my last show.

BW: I’m speechless, O. Do you mind if I smoke?

OW: Follow your bliss, Barbara. Did I mention that Gayle and I have identical labia rings? I’m thinking of giving one to everyone in the audience on my last show.

BW: Sorry to do this, but I’m getting mad signals from my producer that we have to end our interview.

OW: Bummer, B. I was just getting to the good part. Want to continue this over dinner tonight at my place? Stedman’s out of town.