Confusion: Oprah, A Powerful Black Woman, Does Throwback 1960’s Episode

Sitting at the gym today almost paralyzed with fear that I wouldn’t be able to voice my nagging, unintelligent opinion. Sitting bored on the elliptical watching the deluge of sloppy bullshit that passes for news and entertainment. And then I saw Oprah was on, and she saw fit to wipe out both my fears and boredom. You see, Oprah was doing a fucking 1960’s episode in honor of Mad Men or some shit. She had both Mr. And Mrs. Draper on the show. She had some bullshit 1960’s barbershop boyband on all singing and being wonderful. The entire set was retro.

And I’m just sitting there wondering, what the fuck? I mean, it sounds counter-intuitive to me for a powerful black woman to be plugging the 1960’s, when both African Americans and women had it pretty rough back then. Sure, when she interviewed January Jones (Betty Draper), Jones spent four seconds like, poorly articulating the lack of rights for women. But besides that, the entire thing was a nostalgic orgasm. It wasn’t some critique, it was just like CHECK OUT HOW IDYLLIC SHIT WAS, ARE YOU PUMPED HOUSE WIVES!?

I find it doubly ironic, since Mad Men spends (from what I’ve seen, which is a season and some change) a significant amount of time exploding the myth that the 1960’s was some happy, Camelot-esque period. The whole thing screamed “Missing the Point!”, dedicating an entire episode to the sappy, syrupy illusion of the 1960’s in honor of Mad Men, a show which spends its entire time deconstructing that myth, spending time to highlight the inequalities of both women and African Americans.

Oh Oprah! You’re the bee’s knees.