Attack on Oprah and "The Secret"

by Sharon - BEST NEWS CONTRIBUTOR (June 2008)
(New York)

Hi, I just read a scathing criticism of Oprah Winfrey and her endorsement of "The Secret" in one of your news articles. Here's the Oprah article being discussed I couldn't really tell where the author Peter Birkenhead was going with his diatrabe, because he seemed to be offering nothing but negative observations, but no solutions.

As you the know, "The Secret" is a philosophy recently packaged into both DVD and book and endorsed by a host of New Age metaphysical gurus, that says basically that you get in life what you think about most. This is the Law of Attraction at work that Oprah has featured on her show twice.

For Birkenhead to warn that "Oprah-isms" such as the Law of Attraction are taking over the spirit of America is so wrong I can't even express it strongly enough in words.

I live in America. Whenever I try to empower myself into believing that I have some control over my destiny, as Oprah tries to do in her show and as "The Secret" teaches, I am hit with so much disagreement from my friends and family that I actually get angry. I am so tired of the negativity that is the bread and butter of heartland America's mindset and culture. All that Birkenhead is doing is feeding into it.

Birkenhead thinks that we have to do away with these modes of positive thought and look to heros of the past for inspiration of the mighty. But lack of positive thinking is what has caused many of our worst historical social ills and the need for those heros to have to get us out of our horrible messes in the first place!

For Birkenhead to suggest that the Law of Attraction offends people by glossing over the reasons for The Holocaust, or how people get AIDS, I see that as a really sad example of attacking from the fringe a belief system that at its core could help so many people that Birkenhead might get to first. Oprah could just as easily have said, "well, if I endorse this theory, black people might think I'm suggesting they caused their own slavery."

In fact, why should Oprah have endorsed the Law of Attraction based on her own personal experiences? She's had a pretty hard life herself.

And if it is wrong to reconcile promising ideas that have some uneasy contradictions built into them in order to better our lives - then how is it that we got to believe a religion that says the world was created in 6 days, or that Eve was made from Adam's rib? I think that "The Secret" asks that we reconcile far less in our heads in order to believe.

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Sharon: I moved your comments to the main page because the article you refer to showed up in the network marketing news feed, but has much broader implications.

I agree with you that negative thinking is contagious and saps a lot of society's potential (some of my articles in the Creating Yourself Center touch on this point).

I also agree that the Birkenhead article needs to offer some solutions if "The Secret" and The Law of Attraction aren't getting it right!

Thanks very much for your thoughts.

Incidentally, here's where interested readers can pick up a copy of "The Secret" DVD and book.

B. Rene

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