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“You Are What You Eat”: Oprah, Amarillo, and Food Politics

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Veg(etari)an Arguments in Culture, History, and Practice

Part of the book series: The Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series ((PMAES))

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Abstract

Texas Beef Group v. Oprah Winfrey (1998) was both a referendum on Oprah and a backlash to her on-air rejection of beef. Following Oprah’s proclamation that “[the threat of mad cow disease] has just stopped me cold from eating another burger,” members of the cattle industry sued, blaming Oprah for violating the newly minted “veggie libel” law. The trial offered important insights into how concepts of food are connected to race, gender, and power dynamics. Oprah defended her free-speech rights, tactically affiliating with the local community through subversive and embodied moves, while the lead plaintiff stated, “We cleaned up her act,” a gendered and patriarchal response. Mapping the rhetorics of the trial uncovers complex social intersections, poignant points of reflection for the current vegan awakening.

Food, eaten and digested is not rhetorical. But in the meaning of food there is much rhetoric, the meaning being persuasive enough for the idea of food to be used, like the ideas of religion, as a rhetorical device of statesmen (173).

—Kenneth Burke, Rhetoric of Motives

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The term “foodie” originated in the early 1980s in both the United States and Great Britain. Food writer Gael Greene used the term in a 1980 restaurant review for New York Magazine (Greene 1980, 33). In 1981, Ann Barr issued an editorial call in Harper’s & Queen Magazine for readers to respond to the changing food word. Subsequently, in an August 1982 anonymous article, edited by food writer Paul Levy, readers, in Levy’s words, “derided [me] in the anonymous article (edited, as it happens, by me) as the ghastly, his-stomach-is-bigger-than-his-eyes, original, appetite-unsuppressed, lip-smacking ‘king foodie’” (Levy 2007). Barr and Levy popularized the term two years later with their publication The Official Foodie Handbook: Be Modern-Worship Food (Barr and Levy 1984). While the term originated in both contexts in reference to opulent diners with, in Levy’s example, less than flattering food obsessions, the term gained traction following Barr and Levy’s handbook and continues to be a popular descriptor, though with conflicting connotations.

  2. 2.

    While Burke referenced “statesmen” (1969, 173), we prefer the term “statespeople” for gender inclusivity. The term “statesmen” historically harkens to those with political power (e.g., Plato’s Statesmen); however, we extend the term to include individuals, such as Oprah, who have significant cultural power that often leads to political power, even if the person, such as Oprah, is not a politician. While Oprah is not a statesperson in the traditionally-political sense, she has the capital to persuade the public and to influence not only what people think but how they act, including, for the purposes of this article, what people eat and why.

  3. 3.

    In the London Review of Books, Angela Carter describes the essence of foodie culture in the 1980s: “One of the ironies resulting from the North/South dichotomy of our planet is the appearance of this odd little book [The Official Foodie Handbook], a vade mecum to a widespread and unashamed cult of conspicuous gluttony in the advanced industrialised countries, at just the time when Ethiopia is struck by a widely publicised famine, and the rest of Africa is suffering a less widely publicised one… At a conservative estimate, eight hundred million people in the world live in constant fear of starvation. Under the circumstances, it might indeed make good 20th-century sense to worship food, but punters of ‘foodism’ (as Ann Barr and Paul Levy jokily dub this phenomenon) are evidently not about to drop to their knees because they are starving” (Carter 1985, 22). In this sense, foodie culture in the 1980s was steeped in opulence and culinary conquests with little to no regard for issues of food justice and distribution, sustainable agricultural practices, or other food-related concerns.

  4. 4.

    Across platforms, Ms. Winfrey’s brand simply refers to her as “Oprah,” for her influence is so great that she has reached the pinnacle of pop culture recognition: to be known solely on a first-name basis (Lowe 1998; Harris and Watson 2009).

  5. 5.

    The “veggie libel laws” came into law following the conflict between Washington state apple growers and the CBS broadcast, 60 Minutes, in 1989. Apple growers filed suit following a segment that discussed the connection between Alar chemical, a product used on apples, and its potential to cause cancer when ingested. The suit was eventually dismissed, with the judge ruling that food could not be defamed. Thus, in reaction, “veggie libel laws” became popular to prevent false statements about food (Epstein 1998, 16). The first 13 states to enact veggie libel laws were Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Texas (Jonna 2012).

  6. 6.

    The guests on the “Dangerous Food” segment included Dr. William Hueston, USDA expert on mad cow disease; Howard Lyman, animal rights activist and lobbyist for the American Humane Society; and Dr. Gary Weber, National Cattlemen’s Beef Association spokesperson (Hayenga 1998, 14).

  7. 7.

    See Loroz and Braig’s “Consumer Attachments to Human Brands: The ‘Oprah Effect’” (2015) for an analysis of brand personality appeals and marketplace responses.

  8. 8.

    For additional factors that contributed to the downward turn in the cattle market, see Hayenga (1998, 19–20).

  9. 9.

    Texas Beef Group et al., Paul Engler and Cactus Feeders, et al. v. Oprah Winfrey, Harpo Productions, Inc., Howard Lyman and King World Productions, Inc., Case No. 2-96-CV-208 and 233, District Court, Northern District of Texas, Amarillo Division.

  10. 10.

    For existing scholarship on the trial, see Margot Fell’s (1999) “Agricultural Disparagement Statutes: Tainted Beef, Tainted Speech, and Tainted Law” and Jennifer Richardson’s (2003) “Cowboys and Celebrities: Reading Rhetorics at the Texas Beef v. Oprah Winfrey Trial.”

  11. 11.

    Hollandsworth and Colloff (1998) note that “within 150 miles of Amarillo, six million head of cattle, a third of the nation’s cattle supply, are fattened in feedlots,” a point that underscores the dominance of beef in this region.

  12. 12.

    For example, during a taping of The Oprah Winfrey Show in Amarillo, country singer Clint Black commented about a fellow guest and wife Lisa Hartman Black’s purple leather pants, and she responded: “I think this is the mad cow. I mean I’d be pretty mad if I turned purple.” Immediately, Oprah reminded her guests that they could not speak “a word” about mad cow (“#11: Oprah on Taking the Show to Texas During Her Trial” 2012). A YouTube clip of the “Texas Celebrities” Episode 18 from Season 10 is used as reference since the authors were unsuccessful in locating the original episode from the Oprah Winfrey Network.

  13. 13.

    The jury was all white and included “a woman who had been involved in cattle feeding 25 years ago and a descendant of one of Amarillo’s oldest ranching families” (Hollandsworth and Colloff 1998).

  14. 14.

    In 2018, Oprah’s attorney, Charles Babcock, told Aman Batheja with The Texas Tribune that the False Disparagement of Perishable Food Products Act is “still on the books but to my knowledge, nobody has used it since that [Oprah’s] case” (Batheja 2018).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX, USA

    Callie F. Kostelich

  2. Midwestern State University, Wichita Falls, TX, USA

    Heidi Hakimi-Hood

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  1. Callie F. Kostelich
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  2. Heidi Hakimi-Hood
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Correspondence to Callie F. Kostelich .

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  1. University of the Sciences, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Cristina Hanganu-Bresch

  2. West Chester University of Pennsylvania, West Chester, PA, USA

    Kristin Kondrlik

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Kostelich, C.F., Hakimi-Hood, H. (2021). “You Are What You Eat”: Oprah, Amarillo, and Food Politics. In: Hanganu-Bresch, C., Kondrlik, K. (eds) Veg(etari)an Arguments in Culture, History, and Practice. The Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53280-2_7

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