American Politics Journal -- AN OPEN LETTER TO THE NEXT OPRAH

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE NEXT OPRAH
From A "Shaking In His Boots" Liberal
by Steve Young

May 9, 2002

Dear Bill,

I love ya guy, but please don't do it!

It's not that you don't have the right or the ability, just please don't give them any more material than they already have. Remember, they hammered you for a month when your dog Buddy was runover. You shake hands on a New York street and you're accused of trying to overshadow President Bush and therefore aiding and abetting the terrorists. Please, don't give them any more ammunition than they already have. Y'gotta be realistic, Bill. Just the possibility that you may turn up with your own television show is filling three hours of every AM radio talk show to the right of Michael Moore. This will surprise no one...they're not being very nice. This might amaze many...they're looking forward to it. It will add so much grist to the real and/or imagined VRWC (Vast Right Wing Conspiracy), Richard Mellon Scafe will probably buy up all the commercial time.

You'll be the lead story every day on the "Drudge Report." "American Spectator" will double its circulation. You know Fox News will create something like "Today's Sin From Bill," a nightly program pulling apart and analyzing every syllable for something they can turn into, "See, he is the devil." Think what they'll do to you if mispronounce the word "six" on your show. Rush'll be replaying that faux pas for a month. It would be a faux pas, right? Who needs it?! It's already hard enough for a proud, but constantly ducking, liberal to be heard above the Conservative din.

Do you remember 1992 when they decided that pinning a bull's-eye on your butt would be the best political target they would ever have? Do you remember what would become eight years of incessant hammering including but not limited to unsubstantiated charges of graft, drug-running and even murder? And they had nothing. As painful as it was, your two successful terms would have left the Right with a big fat "Take your 80 million dollar worth of Whitewater garbage and shove it where the sun don't shine." But then you had to open the Oval Office to one thong-revealing, pizza (and much more) delivering visitor that became the glue to attach every piece of unsupported allegation they could now shout out as if everything else had been the gospel.

Please don't take the risk again. There's too much at stake. There's no way they can run the "Tom Daschle will eat your children" campaign into the next election. He's not exciting enough to get anyone other than the angriest dittoheads really angry. You smile and they'll turn it into a Democratic "Anti-Family Value" crusade. They'll cook you like a left-winged goose at an Arkansas Project picnic.

So, my friend, if you must go public, play your sax on Conan, go to the Middle East and get those guys to kiss and make up, go on "Crossfire" and rip Novak or the guy with the bowtie a new one; anything, but please, no daily "Bubba's Place." Like Dick Morris might say..."They'll turn on you faster than...me."

Very truly yours,

A Nervous Friend

Steve Young, a Senior Fellow at the Extreme Far Centrist Think Tank, is also a Prism Award winner and Humanitas Prize nominee for his television writing, appears regularly as the lone liberal at the very conservative Newsandopinion.com and author of the forthcoming "Great Failures Of The Extremely Successful" (coming this fall from Tallfellow Press).
E-mail: theeothersteveyoung@juno.com