Her 50th birthday celebration became a case study in conspicuous consumption while this week's star-drenched parade to the finish line affords her repeated chances to react with amazement while a wealth of A-list celebrities testify to all the good she's done for the world with her charities and causes. Winfrey also is not hesitant to throw parties for herself. That particular moment, as well as her audience's jump up-and-down histrionics, were duly parodied on "Saturday Night Live" and other venues. "The Oprah Winfrey Show" also was the place where a giddy Tom Cruise famously jumped up and down on her couch in celebration of his newfound love match with Katie Holmes. Or for her many and varied struggles with gaining and losing weight, which she once dramatized by pulling a wagon load of lard onstage to symbolize all the fat she'd shed. Then again, many devoted viewers, or even casual observers, might remember Winfrey more for gifting entire studio audiences with cars, vacation trips and so on. Her name - the "Oprah brand" - was attached to the titles of several award-winning and life-affirming ABC movies and miniseries. She has both a magazine, O, and a fledgling cable network, OWN, both of which would have been impossible dreams without all that fame and fortune from her day job. Whether she, in effect, got him elected is a serious enough question to be tossed around in classroom history books of the future. Oz" shows, and in 2008 threw her considerable influence behind the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama. ![]() Winfrey also coined the "Aha Moment," used her show as a launch pad for the "Dr. And she'd no doubt prefer to be remembered as a person of color from humble origins who empowered women of all ages and races, who enticed millions of viewers to read the books she chose for them and who took her show to a higher aspirational plane, while competitors such as Geraldo Rivera, Sally Jessy Raphael and Jerry Springer (who's still going) went the carnival midway route. Her staying power - and the power base she built - have been extraordinary accomplishments. Having basked in the two-part, star-studded "Oprah's Farewell Surprise Spectacular," the 57-year-old self-made mega-celebrity signs off on Wednesday with the last original hour of "The Oprah Winfrey Show." But what are the takeaways as Oprah Winfrey grandly winds down her 25-year run on daytime television? (CNN) - Most of America, and for that matter much of the globe, knows all about her show's many-splendored giveaways. Bark: There won't be another Oprah when she leaves the stage, she takes it with herĮditor's note: Ed Bark, former longtime TV critic of The Dallas Morning News, launched the TV website in September 2006.Oprah was not the first (there was Phil Donahue), but she took the talk genre to another plane. ![]() The influential show empowered women, spawned phrases, launched careers, Ed Bark says.Oprah signs off Wednesday with last original hour of "The Oprah Winfrey Show.".
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