It was stunning to watch the great Oprah Winfrey and her celebrity correspondent Lisa Ling groveling at the feet of FLDS spokesman Willie Jessop on television the other night.
It is amazing what t.v. types will do and say just so they can make some hyperbolic claims about "exclusive access" and "exclusive interviews."
Judging by Winfrey and Ling's fawning and sycophantic demeanors, you would have thought that Willie Jessop was some sort of Nelson Mandela as he was talking about the "persecution" of his people.
Give me a flippin' break!

I have always maintained that to report this story accurately, you have to know it's history and based on their recent broadcast, it's pretty clear that Ms. Winfrey, Ms. Ling and their army of young producers don't have a clue.
Even worse, on the very powerful platform of Winfrey's show, they allowed FLDS apologists, people who have elevated lying to the level of a sacred art form, to present a staged and fanciful image of FLDS life that flies in the face of well-documented history and fact.
In so doing, Winfrey and company have now also helped significantly in what has become a very well-orchestrated media and court room campaign on the part of Warren Jeffs and his over-paid lawyers to roll back many of the hard fought victories that have been achieved over the last decade in behalf of the women and children of polygamy.
Honestly I didn't know whether to laugh or throw a book at the t.v., when Ms. Ling stood there among a handful of FLDS men doing what she of course hyped on t.v. as an "exclusive" interview, talking about underage marriages and let those men, unchallenged, act as if the practice was just some sort of groundless, scurrilous insinuation or at most a minor footnote in their culture.
Ms. Ling if you knew anything about the FLDS faithful, you'd know that they fled to that isolated compound down in Texas where you were granted your "exclusive access" because, after fifty years of neglect and indifference, the states of Arizona and Utah finally stepped up and began busting these very same polygamous men and throw them in jail because of underage forced marriages.
Their prophet and still undisputed leader, Warren Jeffs, is behind bars because of forced underage marriages.
Not innuendo or insinuation-- adjudicated fact!
And what did the big bad Texas Rangers find on the Yearning for Zion compound when they raided it last year, photos of the notorious Mr. Jeffs, a guy who already has well over 100 wives, snuggling and kissing a 12-year-old girl who he had just made his newest plural bride.
And for you, Ms. Ling, to allow these lying bastards to stand there and pull their "Oh schucks, we don't really do that kind of stuff" routine is beyond irresponsible.
For well over a decade a handful of very courageous people have been in the trenches fighting a difficult and dangerous human rights revolution. Your simple minded coverage and your zeal for the "exclusives" have set that back....mw

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