Oprah Winfrey is excited about the election: “I see that we’re about to have a woman president,” she told talk-show host T.D. Jakes. And that’s important not just for the mundane matters of governance—for finding someone competent to sit in the big chair—but for the larger impact it has on society: “When you can look at somebody who has done something like what Hillary is about to do, that is extraordinary,” Oprah said. “She will stand forever as this beacon of possibility for all women.” With Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, the “glass ceiling has been shattered for all time for other women to rise.”
Oprah didn’t always put such an emphasis on the importance of breaking the “glass ceiling.” She took no little grief, it will be remembered, for choosing to back Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary. Some of the women in her (almost exclusively female) audience declared her to be a traitor to her sex. There’s no such clash of loyalties this time around, and Oprah has had no discomfort energetically backing Hillary.
