SALON

Monday, Jan 24, 2005 6:42 PM UTC

The Oprah way

To change people's minds on issues like gay marriage, liberals need to learn to tug at their heartstrings.

By

Topics: Democratic Party, Gay Marriage, Oprah Winfrey, LGBT, Liberalism

In his book “Collapse,” Jared Diamond writes that “perhaps the crux of success or failure as a society is to know which core values to hold on to, and which ones to discard and replace with new values, when times change.” He wrote this statement in discussing national security and environmental devastation, but it’s also applicable to individuals. In the recent presidential election, progressives hoped to persuade Americans to change their minds about certain core beliefs — including accepting the legitimacy of gay marriage — but failed.

What makes someone reverse a long-held opinion about a touchy political issue? What’s the thing that convinces an otherwise apolitical Midwestern churchgoer that gay rights are a good idea or that racial inequality needs to be immediately addressed?

Last spring, Salon published my article about concerns among the gay community that the marriage issue would be red meat for the right during the election. Clearly it was. And a good part of the problem — the reason many Americans weren’t convinced — is that there was no strong sense among voters of an injustice perpetrated. Once the San Francisco courthouse became the center of the issue, the public face of the gay marriage debate was predominantly one of celebration, not of a right wronged.

On right-wing media outlets like Fox News, personal tales of victimization — by “liberal elites,” professional academics and Hollywood libertines — abound. Witness the many network news segments that have profiled Christian teens “shut out” of their high schools, unable to conduct public prayer meetings. Consider also the inevitable framing of stories about the pagans who tried to cut Christmas out of the holidays. The right spins these stories, making big agenda issues absolutely personal, and garnering empathy for presumed victims. It does this even though — as Jon Stewart pointed out on his talk show recently — the right already controls all wings of government and is powerful in the most classic sense. The right uses these stories because they are effective.

One public figure understands the power of a sympathetic story. And while many lefties reading this are likely to roll their eyes at the mention of Oprah Winfrey, there’s no question that she gets results — she changes minds, skillfully encouraging her viewers to root for the underdog. In one recent example, a charismatic, eminently likable gay man had just experienced unfathomable loss. In relating his ongoing story, Winfrey made gay relationships understandable to the kinds of Middle Americans who voted against gay marriage initiatives.

The show was about Nate Berkus. (For blue-staters unfamiliar with Berkus, he’s a telegenic designer with all-American good looks who appears regularly on Winfrey’s home design segments. Her viewers love him — and his window treatments.) Berkus had been vacationing in Sri Lanka when the tsunami struck, and his partner, Fernando Bengoechea, has been missing since the event and is presumed dead.

Winfrey introduced Berkus, speaking directly to the camera. “For the millions of you at home who’ve come to know Nate as the sweet, talented cutie-pie with the great big heart,” she said, “you should know that he and I have read your letters … You will never know the depth of comfort those prayers and letters have brought to him and his partner Fernando, who is still missing. [They] are literally lifting Nate up.”

As the show went on, Winfrey talked with Berkus about the couple’s last minutes together and about how Berkus had managed to survive. She brought others onstage who had met him in the disaster’s immediate aftermath, and interviewed his mother and his partner’s brother and sister-in-law. Winfrey then urged viewers to give to her Angel Network on behalf of tsunami relief organizations.

Stories like this can convince red-state America that gay and lesbian relationships are equal to straight ones — the central concept in the argument for gay marriage. Such stories do cause people, in Diamond’s words, to replace their previously held values with new ones. Consider these sympathetic responses posted on Oprah’s message board regarding Berkus:

Sharon C. of Carrollton, Texas, wrote, “Nate, may God be with you at this hard time. I pray that you will find your friend.” Another post said, “You are in my thoughts daily and I pray for the return of Fernando.”

DeJane Stephenson, from Kansas City, Mo., wrote, “I know there is no room for joyfulness now, and I pray deeply that God will give you his grace and return Fernando to you. I pray for you and all with you. I pray for your parents and family, and for the Bengoechea family as well. I am so very sorry for your suffering and waiting. God bless to you Nate. God bless to all the children who have lost all of those they love. May angels wait beside you.”

Postings like these may be uncomfortable for some on the left to read because of the religiosity. (It’s easy to dismiss the use of the euphemism “friend,” for example.) But consider this: At last check, there were 4,568 similar messages of support for this man and his partner. Has any story in the media about gay marriage accomplished nearly as much?

With the Republicans in charge, it now becomes the work of the left to frame the social issues it wants to influence — for example, homophobia, racism, war and xenophobia — by telling stories that are easy to relate to and enable people (of all kinds) to root for the oppressed, the wounded and the underdog. This “Oprah approach” — giving people an immediate connection to social issues by making them personal — can change people’s minds about deeply held beliefs.

These stories — unlike those that the right crafts, such as the embellished tale of Iraq veteran Jessica Lynch, or the Swift Boat group’s attack ads about John Kerry’s Vietnam service — don’t need to be manipulated or created. They exist already. Progressives just need to be willing to tell them, and by doing so express which core values they think people need to hold on to and which ones they must discard and replace with new values.

While some advocates tried to sell gay marriage as an issue of victimization — families denied access and legitimacy — that idea never really took hold. Unlike the AIDS crisis, gay marriage posed no clear life-and-death injustice for Americans to come to understand.

In a recent New York Times article, Walter Kirn writes that even red-state Montana had a blue-state success story during the election: passing a medical marijuana bill. Kirn says that the marijuana legislation in Montana was a product of the leave-us-alone frontier mentality and a byproduct of an age in which the Marlboro Man now has cancer. It’s easy to picture the Oprah factor at work here: The inevitable local news broadcasts about people suffering from illness whose lives would be made bearable by this drug. Stories like this can’t help sparking a reasonable response in people. In this case, the response was the successful passage of a medical marijuana bill.

Isn’t this the kind of success progressives crave? Not just a fleeting piece of legislation that might be reversed in a year or two, but the ability to change people’s minds by tapping into true compassion for the repressed, the beaten-down and the marginalized. It’s not just a matter of making a better argument; it’s about telling a better story, often one of loss. But those stories can result in real, lasting rights as people — witnessing blatant unfairness — reevaluate their beliefs.

Jennifer Buckendorffis a freelance writer and editor living in Seattle, Washington. More Jennifer Buckendorff.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 0 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: Chekhov's story mirrors Russia's own

Recommendations