At the impressive California weekend rally for Obama, I think Oprah Winfrey’s talk was nevertheless odd to say the least–and entirely skipped by the media. She seemed to be mimicking, through a sort of mock-wimpy intonation, those (mostly white elite?) feminists who were shocked about her endorsement of Obama. And then she started rousing the crowd in a sort of loud faux-gospel mode, answering to her critics that she was “a free woman!” and then went more into the edgy Jesse Jackson type old-time campaigning style.

The problem with all that is that she created her $1 billion empire precisely by appealing to a mostly staid white suburban therapeutic audience, to whom she is used to talking in precisely the same flat-toned neutral manner that she was this weekend apparently mocking.

Oprah should remember that Bill Clinton’s desperate attempts to create a post-presidential image above the fray is now in shambles due to his finger-shaking partisanship. The Maria Shriver, Oprah, Mrs. Obama, et al rally certainly found an audience, but the subtext was that Obama offers the establishment (i.e., white majority) a second chance at redemption: that somehow not asking that he produce a platform or run on a record, and instead vote on his status as our first serious minority candidate is a way for all of us to at last get it right. Ever so insidiously his campaign rallies, ostensibly devoted to inclusion and not about race, are starting to devolve precisely into race by the assumption that voters have this chance to do something right and historic rather than compare his record, abilities, and agenda with those of others. Perhaps this is precisely what Bill Clinton wished Obama would do when he first played the race card.

As a footnote, I’m confused by Mrs. Obama’s assertion that she and the Sen. just recently paid off their student loans, proof positive, she implied, that the government is doing too little to enhance educational access. But the Obamas live comfortably, and like everyone make choices. Two tuitions to Harvard Law School, or two BAs from Harvard and Princeton are neither cheap nor an entitlement. A better example would be the working-class employed student who goes into debt to pay the cost at Cal State Turlock, and ends up not as a Senator, author, or Ivy League lawyer but an indebted government clerk or entry-level teacher.