In something of a coup for Tourism Australia, the entourage of Oprah Winfrey is due to arrive in Sydney today to record some shows.
A few people have done their best to become outraged by the idea that Winfrey might be getting special treatment with security but I don't think anyone's heart is really in it.
Compared to the $45 million Australian taxpayers just flushed down the loo in a failed and ill-justified World Cup bid, the reported $3 million cost for the Oprah visit is a bargain, and a credit to some creative thinking from Tourism Australia.
In the absence of anything real to complain about, there has been some reaction in Australia to an item aired on the Oprah Show by Carrie Bickmore, which was an ill-concealed advertisement for McDonalds. Annoying? Yes. A big deal? No. In the process, I hope McDonalds may just have picked up some of the tab for the visit.
Jonathan Green over at ABC online just knows he has to be critical in some way about it, but is not exactly sure how to do it without suggesting he knows something about popular culture. So what does Green have to say about the only person to have appeared in Time magazine's list of most influential people from 2004 -2010, the richest self-made woman and African American, and the person described by USA Today as the most influential black American in the last 25 years?
"Oprah Winfrey (no, I've never watched her either, but it's apparently pronounced "win free" as in Rigoletto)"
Bizarrely, he asserts of the Bickmore item:
“…it does feed into a busy little corner of the current zeitgeist, that corner now debating in often heated terms the interplay between mainstream media and the new voices of the independent online.”
