In a new interview in withVogue, billionaire and business mogul Oprah Winfrey talked about her new role as a contributor to CBS’s 60 Minutes news magazine program.
Winfrey decided to make her return to broadcast TV after talking to female Trump and Clinton supporters after the election for her O magazine.
“By pressing the conversation in such a way that people could hear each other’s stories without them being politicized, I was able to get those women from different backgrounds to begin to actually hear and feel for each other,” Winfrey told Vogue. “By the end of that two and a half hours, I could have gotten them to sing ‘Kumbaya’ for real if I wanted to. I really could’ve! OK—everybody hold hands!”
Narrowing those sorts of divides is what 60 Minutes wants Winfrey to do on camera. Executive producer Jeffrey Fager told Vogue there’s a temptation to have Winfrey conduct the big-ticket interviews she’s known for, but “for us it’s about resisting that” and instead “[shedding] some light on” Americans’ differences.
In taking on that task, Winfrey will rely on what she learned from interviewing an estimated 37,000 people during the 25-year run of The Oprah Winfrey Show—a lesson that I found especially poignant. Despite their differences, all people want “to feel like they matter,” she said. “There’s not a human being alive who doesn’t want—in any conversation, encounter, experience with another human being” to get that kind of recognition.
“And you can resolve any issue if you could just get to what it is that they want,” she said. “[T]hey want to be heard.”
EUROPE/MIDDLE EAST/AFRICA
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| Grace under fire |
| Zimbabwe First Lady Grace Mugabe, who's considered a possible successor to her husband, is back home from South Africa after failing to turn herself into police in Johannesburg to face charges of assaulting a model who was meeting with Mugabe's sons in a hotel room. It's unclear whether Mugabe was in South Africa on a diplomatic passport that would give her legal immunity at the time of the encounter. |
| Washington Post |
THE AMERICAS
| Pepsi under pressure |
| Color of Change, a nonprofit racial-justice group, is pressuring PepsiCo Inc. CEO Indra Nooyi to step down from Donald Trump's business advisor council based on the president's response to violence in Charlottesville. (The president doubled down on his "both sides" response yesterday in comments that seemed to legitimize white supremacists.) PepsiCo is "a public-facing company that talks openly about diversity," said Color of Change executive director Rashad Robinson. "Their role on this business council is that of an enabler, and they are an enabler to Donald Trump—not just the policies but the practices that are putting folks in harm’s way.” PepsiCo has declined to comment on the demand. Robinson said the group will target Campbell Soup Co. CEO Denise Morrison too. |
| Bloomberg |
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| Looking through the gender lens |
| More details are emerging about the new North American Free Trade Agreement that the government of Canadian PM Justin Trudeau wants to strike with the U.S. Among its asks is a new chapter on gender rights. Canada made and received the same demand in its recent free trade deal with Chile; the agreement calls for both countries to apply a gender lens to trade. |
| New York Times |
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| Naming a Duke |
| Wells Fargo & Co. said Elizabeth Duke, a governor of the Federal Reserve from 2008 to 2013, would replace its chairman, Stephen Sanger, in January, making her the first woman to hold a top board role at one of the nation’s largest banks. She'll assume the post as Wells Fargo looks to recover from its fake-account scandal. |
| Wall Street Journal |
ASIA-PACIFIC
| Under the radar |
| Suzanne DiMaggio, a senior fellow at the think tank New America, is a regular participant in so-called Track II discussions with North Korea. She talked to NPR about facilitating the informal talks that take place outside of regular diplomatic channels: "You're trying to create an atmosphere that is informal, relaxed." |
| NPR |
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| Grandma's got game |
| Moon Lin, an 88-year-old grandma from southern Taiwan, has gained tens of thousands of Instagram followers to the account that features her sporty street style. She's dumbfounded by the attention. "I've just been doing what I've wanted to do all along," she says. |
| Buzzfeed |
IN BRIEF
| This English football club is blazing a trail for women over equal pay and funding |
| Guardian |
| Women kicked organized crime out of this Mexican town |
| Bloomberg |
| Intel is ahead of its 2020 diversity goals |
| Fortune |
| Federal prisons are finally required to provide women inmates with free tampons and pads |
| Quartz |
PARTING WORDS
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| —Actress Mindy Kaling on becoming a mother. |
