Talk-show hosts do a thing when they want to appear sympathetic toward or awestruck by their guests. It is called the “hmm,” and Oprah Winfrey served up a master-class in “hmm” last night when she hosted a town hall for Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
As Kamala offered a notion of the American dream, Oprah nodded along. An inspired “hmm.” As Kamala described her view on illegal immigration, mainly that Donald Trump is to blame for the country’s crisis at the southern border, Oprah shook her head. A disappointed “hmm.” When Kamala gave a closing pitch, in which she said America’s founding ideals included the “freedom to just be,” Oprah smiled. A triumphant “hmm.”
A cut from the transcript:
Kamala Harris: “We love our country. We take pride in the privilege of being American. And this is a moment where we can and must come together, as Americans, understanding we have so much more in common than what separates us. Let’s come together with the character that we are so proud of about who we are, which is, we are an optimistic people. We are an optimistic people. Americans by character are people who have dreams, and ambitions, and aspirations, we believe in what is possible, we believe in what can be. And we believe in fighting for that. That’s how we came into being. Because the people before us understood that one of the greatest expressions for the love of our country, one of the greatest expressions of patriotism, is to fight for the ideals of who we are, which includes freedom to make decisions about your own body, freedom to be safe from gun violence, freedom to have access to the ballot box, freedom to be who you are, and just be, to love who you love openly and with pride, freedom to just be.”
Oprah: “Hmm.”
Oprah is good at her job, and that means deftly and unnoticeably performing damage control for the guests she wants to help seem better and smarter than they actually are. There were at least two moments during the evening in which Harris repeated her overused talking points. Both times, Oprah nudged Harris toward better answers. She asked follow-up questions to get Harris back on track when the vice president seemed to have forgotten the original question. In one painful interaction, Harris said that she owned a gun and that “if somebody breaks in my house, they’re gettin’ shot.” Oprah defused tension with a chummy “I did not know that!”
Last spring, Drew Barrymore had a girl-to-girl-style chat with Harris. Like Oprah, she attempted to manufacture a cool-girl status for the VP. Harris’s social-media campaign portrays her as a genial, motherly figure who’s also endearingly hip. But it’s impossible to manufacture honesty or authenticity. The vice president comes off as condescending, and speaks well only when she has scripted applause lines.
Through the Harris candidacy, Oprah said last night, hope and joy are “making a comeback.” But it’s hype created by the media team, celebrities, and talk-show hosts. We’ll find out if an appreciative “hmm” is the reaction of the voters.