Asyouwish Bourdieu 4/8

While reading Bourdieu's piece there were a lot of sections that prompted me with ideas for a blog but the one that I thought would provide for the most interesting blog was influenced by a quote of his on pg 332. "The fact that a television news anchor can become the editor of a newspaper or news magazine from one day to the next makes you wonder just what the specific competence required of a journalist might be"(332). This quotation make me think of Oprah, while she is clearly not an anchor or journalist she does have the same influence over our culture as if she were. Oprah is a household name, a woman who influences many women and a few men in the American culture. She has a daily television talk show that was the source for her stardom. However after the success of her talkshow she furthered her influences by producing a magazine called O (for Oprah) which gives the same advice and stories as one would find on the episodes of her show. If a show and a magazine dedicated to her were not enough she also has her own category of must read books, the Oprah book club. Oprah is like her own media giant, she distributes written and visual forms of information which her devout followers. However what makes Oprah the person to go to, she does not have any real experience in all these things herself, she finds her information from sociologists and researchers who present her with information on topics she is interested in. Yet people still follow her advice because she tells us what to think or what we should be doing. Bourdieu states that talkshow hosts "are always telling us what we "should think"(329), and in my opinion he is 100% correct. Oprah tells us to do things because they are her personal thoughts on something and what she wants to do. They pressure us with these decisions whether they are good or bad for us because it is the decision they want us to make.