Oprah Winfrey on running for president: ‘I don’t have the DNA for it’
January 26, 2018
Oprah’s Golden Globes speech sounded to many people – myself included – like a campaign speech. There was an uplifting, Obama-esque theme, a call to come together to make this world a better place, a thoughtful historical lesson and HOPE. It says a lot about our desperate straits under Bigly that we’re so hungry for anything resembling that. So after Oprah’s speech, of course people were like OPRAH 2020!! It was even said – by Steadman, no less – that she might really be considering it. But Oprah tells InStyle (in their new cover story) that it’s not going to happen.
On the current political and cultural climate: “Everything that’s happened has brought us to this point in time. We’ve been working our way through a lot of repressed pain, anger, shame, and disappointment. And we weren’t honoring our own voices. Now we’re here, and it took Harvey Weinstein to burst that door wide open. But Harvey wasn’t the first one. It was Bill Cosby before him, and Bill O’Reilly before him. It’s just fascinating to me because I always try to look at things from thousands of feet above…”
On women coming forward about sexism and assault: “It has seared into the consciousness a level of awareness that was not there before. That’s the most important thing to me. When Reese Witherspoon can tell her story at the same time as a farm worker in Iowa or a factory worked in Alabama, it says to a person, ‘Oh well, I’ve been putting up with that a==hole supervisor for all these years. Maybe it’s time for me to do something too.’”
On her candidacy for president: “I’ve always felt very secure and confident with myself in knowing what I could do and what I could not. And so it’s not something that interests me. I don’t have the DNA for it.”
On speaking out on Twitter: “I try not to lean into the hysteria. I’ve heard a lot of Twitter chatter where people have said, ‘Where are you? You should be speaking up on these things!’ But it makes no sense to speak when you cannot be heard. One hundred and forty characters – that is not how you want to make your mark in the world.”
On life in her 60s: “You take no sh-t. None. Not a bit. In your 40s you want to say you take no shit, but you still do. In your 60s you take none. There’s both a quickening and a calming – there’s a sense that you don’t have as much time on earth as you once did…people coming with anything less than what is the truth or authentic? Don’t even try.”
My mom said that when she turned 60 as well, that she has less tolerance for fools and nonsense and the everyday bullsh-t of life. Maybe in my heart I’m already 60-something. As for what Oprah says about running for president… I can see why she wouldn’t. I get it – why put yourself through that? But on the other hand, we need women to run for office. We need women to get fed up with the status quo and realize that they too could run for office and win and change things from the inside.
InStyle cover courtesy of Phil Poynter for InStyle.