Marie Dressler and Oprah Winfrey

So Oprah is going to stop doing the Oprah Winfrey Show.

Ok, it’s not like I sit around the house and watch Oprah every afternoon, and I have to admit I’ve become a bit snotty about her. But that is just because I’ve gotten older and snottier not because I don’t like Oprah and not because I didn’t watch her announcement and cry. I did. Oprah is a strange social compass for me. If Oprah talks about it, it’s fun, enlightening, slightly indulgent, sympathetic, but most of all very very ….normal. Where am I going to turn to in this current media environment to find a rational meeting place. Ellen? Meh. Don’t get me wrong, I like Ellen, but Oprah…

I grew up in the Chicago area. Let me be more accurate. The Chicago broadcasting area. I grew up in Wisconsin. But Oprah, I remember watching her on a show called AM Chicago. I’d watch her when I came home from school. She started conversations about stuff we weren’t supposed to talk about, started dialogues about hatchets that were far from buried and struggled along the way with all of us.

Who will be our cheerleader? Who will stare us in the face and say, “You can do it!”?

Well, while we are trying to figure that out, here’s a bit of comfort. Before Oprah, there was Marie Dressler. You could go to the movies and see someone who was you. Or who you wanted your mother to be. Who bonded with the audiences in such a deep way.

Here’s a excerpt from the blog ” The Well Rounded Mama-Size-Acceptance Warrior, Birth Activist, and One Fierce Mama.”

“She was the top draw at the box office for most of the early 1930s, and the highest-paid star in Hollywood for several years. She was so famous and so popular that she was the cover of Time Magazine in its August 7, 1933 issue.

She was nominated as Best Actress for two years, and won it in 1931, despite being an older woman (in her 60s) in Hollywood, which, as today, worshipped mostly the young and beautiful.

Oh yes, and she was a woman of size.”

I think Oprah would like Marie and Marie would like Oprah. So for those of you out there who need a little guidance and a positive female role model or hell, just a great role model, take a night off, watch a little Oprah and then take a look at “Min and Bill”.

I’m sure Oprah would approve. I guess what I’m saying is, there is no replacement for Oprah, or Marie for that matter. But every once in a while someone comes along that can bring us together and has a unifying entertainment value that transcends religion, race, gender, age and makes us cry whether we want to or not.

So go ahead and be sad. I know I am. But just know, someone will understand us again. I hope.