Why is Everyone Hating on Auntie Oprah These Days? We Think We Know.

What’s really going on with Auntie Oprah Winfrey as of late?

There was a time not very long ago when she was infallible among Black folks – the unproblematic interviewer and entertainer behind so much of our beloved content. But her image has taken a bit of a nosedive in recent times.

For many, it happened for the first time a few weeks ago when Taraji P. Henson went viral over her statements about unequal pay for Black women in Hollywood and her insistence that it almost caused her to walk away from “The Color Purple” film, which Winfrey co-produced. There’s also that Empire State Building promo video that led the internet super sleuths to deduce that Henson hates the ground Winfrey walks on.

But the hatred for Winfrey was swirling before that: Search “Oprah” on TikTok and you’ll find videos with millions and hundreds of thousands of views dunking on her, including one suggesting that she took off with $100 million to Switzerland because of her (completely unfounded) connection to Jeffrey Epstein’s recently unsealed client list that has a lot of people wishing Olivia Pope were real.

A video with 2.3 million views has the text overlay “I NEVER TRUSTED OPRAH WINFREY” and features a guy spending under two minutes discussing the drama with the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa, including substantiated problems that are over a decade old as well as new, still unsubstantiated rumors.

Drop her name in the search of the erstwhile Twitter and you’ll see top tweets exploring what people assume was a deceitful relationship with the late Michael Jackson. Scroll down further and you’ll see several tweeting some version of “Oprah has always been an awful person” who is finally getting her “just desserts.”

Much of the criticism of Winfrey involves a retroactive look at her interview style, as she hails from a talk show era in which celebrities were grilled about topics most mainstream interviewers wouldn’t touch in 2024.

She went unfavorably viral in 2021 for an unearthed 2003 interview with Dolly Parton in which Winfrey asked her pointed questions about her plastic surgery. That moment prompted actress Rose McGowan, one of the progenitors of the #MeToo movement, to come at her neck in a now-deleted tweet.

McGowan referenced Winfrey’s relationship with disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein and her abandonment as producer of a high-profile documentary documenting Russell Simmons’ sexual abuse accusers.

“I am glad more are seeing the ugly truth of @Oprah. I wish she were real, but she isn’t. From being pals with Weinstein to abandoning & destroying Russell Simmon’s [sic] victims, she is about supporting a sick power structure for personal gain, she is as fake as they come. #lizard.”

Though she’s publicly denounced her former homie, Winfrey’s connection to Weinstein – who will likely die in prison for his host of sexual abuses – has dogged her for years: In 2018, singer Seal accused Winfrey of knowing about his misdeeds and doing nothing.

“Oh I forgot, that’s right…..you’d heard the rumours but you had no idea he was actually serially assaulting young stary-eyed actresses who in turn had no idea what they were getting into. My bad,” he wrote in a deleted post. “When you have been part of the problem for decades, but suddenly they all think you are the solution.”

Winfrey’s philanthropic efforts, and her general spirit of giving, are well documented. But even that caught a bit of static last September when she and the Rock — with their combined net worth of well north of $3 billion — asked the proletariat to contribute to the Maui wildfires while only (allegedly) kicking in $10 million of their own dough.

The comments section in their request video turned into such a dumpster fire of criticism that it was turned off.

Sure, TikTok videos should always be taken with the finest grain of salt. But the sheer number of views connected to her unfavorable videos and the comments within them suggest that folks have been tired of Winfrey for years and have been looking for their moment to express it.

Unlike many of her 1980s and 1990s talk show contemporaries – many of whom we no longer discuss – Winfrey has only grown in influence and wealth throughout the years: Her billionaire-with-a-B status puts her in a rarefied air – one that might allow her to deviously pull some behind-the-scenes strings that the public will never know about. There’s a reason that a search for “Oprah Winfrey Illuminati” produces a healthy number of results.

Secret societies aside, Katt Williams said it best on his explosive Club Shay Shay interview: When you’re a billionaire, you can do what you want. Winfrey might just be a billionaire before she’s a Black woman – and folks are finally catching up.