The Oprah Town Hall Was Pretty Great

Created
Sat, 21/09/2024 - 06:30
Updated
Sat, 21/09/2024 - 06:30
Oprah Winfrey hosted a Kamala Harris online event last night that was surprisingly effective, I thought. I’m not usually much for town halls and tend to avoid them unless there’s a special reason to watch. But this one was quite good. maybe it’s the Oprah effect. She is a professional,after all, and very adept at evoking emotion. Here’s the lede in the Washington Post: A star-studded online rally designed to showcase the enthusiasm and energy behind Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign turned somber as host Oprah Winfrey introduced the mother of a woman who died after waiting for health care in a state that has banned most abortions. “You’re looking at a mother that is broken,” said Shanette Williams, whose daughter, Amber Thurman, died in what was deemed a “preventable” death stemming from Georgia’s abortion restrictions. “The worst pain ever that a mother, that a parent, could ever feel, for her father and myself and the family — you’re looking at it.” Several people in the live audience were wiping their eyes by the time Thurman’s family members, including two sisters, finished speaking. The emotional moment prompted Harris to deliver some of her most forceful lines of the event — which over nearly 100 minutes turned the vice president’s campaign into a modern-day version of Winfrey’s popular daytime talk show. “Amber’s story highlights the fact that, among everything that is wrong with these bans and what has happened in terms of the overturning of Roe v. Wade, it’s a health-care crisis,” Harris said after…