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O, how I Love You, Oprah: Oprah''s politics are sometimes O-dious. Still, Charlotte Allen finds her A-O-kay.

Article Excerpt
SURE, YOU CAN get really tired of Oprah Winfrey fast. There's the saturation factor: the TV show five times a week (ten if you count the late-night reprise), with Oprah always front and center; the appalling movies (did anyone actually see Beloved?); the me-magazine, O, always with Oprah on the cover and always at the checkout stand in every supermarket in America; and finally, the website, titled Oprah.com (what else?), which reprises both 'zine and show.

So: "O" is for omnipresence--Oprah's. "O" is also for oval, her perfect, polished oval of a face framed by another oval, the hard, wide, high helmet of jet-black hair that adds height and formidability, for Oprah is short, and also balance against her pillow-shaped figure, for "O" is also for overweight. Her battles against food and fat are famous, and check her clothes: always a jacket or an overblouse or a vest or a shawl to cover, or at least distract, from the mighty hips and thighs, because Oprah always loses her weight battles over the long run. "O" is also for orthodontia and opalescence, because some dentist has worked long and hard to create that bright, dentures-in-a-glass smile of which every pearly tooth is visible and which Oprah is never without--always the same smile, all thirty-two snowy teeth framed by a lipstick Cupid's bow--wherever a camera is looking. And "O" is for--uh oh--Oxygen Media, the little-watched, fast-tanking cable network for women that Oprah helped launch two years ago to the tune of millions of dollars likely never to be seen again. But that's chump-change. Oprah makes $150 million a year from her other ventures, according to Forbes magazine, and her media empire grosses a cool $1 billion, with the sixteen-year-old Oprah Winfrey Show as its flagship with 22 million viewers.

Yes,...