Since I'm not a regular viewer of Oprah (scratch that, I'm not ever a viewer of Oprah), I was unaware that her show yesterday put a positive spin on open marriages.

Here's Family Fragments recounting the story,

Next, Oprah trots out the best of the breed Greg and Hollie, married with two children enjoying all the normal things that families do… and, oh yeah, practicing “open marriages”, read adultery. As Oprah recounts the story:

During a long car trip Gregg asked Hollie—who says she had never had sex with anyone besides Gregg—if she was curious about being with someone else. "And I said, 'Well, nothing's missing. I don't need it. I don't really think about it,'" Hollie says. "But sure, I mean, if you're curious, if you've only had one partner your whole life, I mean, sure, you'd wonder what it would be like with somebody else."

…

Eventually Hollie started dating and eventually sleeping with one of their mutual friends. Gregg says he's flirted with other women but hasn't started an outside relationship of his own.

"She just has more love in her life," Gregg says. "It doesn't take anything away from what the two of us have."

Oh yeah, Gregg, you keep believing that some other guy can wear your wife out tonight, but that it "doesn't take anything away from what the two of us have."

And she's sleeping with one of their mutual friends while Gregg isn't? Doesn't that sound like Gregg is just a gutless coward who found out his wife was having sex with one of his friends and would rather keep her in an "open" relationship than have her leave him if he put his foot down?

However you slice it, it's pathetic, it's perverse, it makes marriage into a joke...and why exactly is the patron saint of yentas and bored housewives promoting this sort of garbage? Are ratings getting bad?

Could this story, which I grabbed from the generally on-target about non-political stories, but not always reliable Wikipedia explain it?

According to Mair, when Kramar moved to NBC in New York Winfrey became involved with a man who friends had warned her to avoid. Winfrey would later recall:

“I'd had a relationship with a man for four years. I wasn't living with him. I'd never lived with anyone—and I thought I was worthless without him. The more he rejected me, the more I wanted him. I felt depleted, powerless. At the end I was down on the floor on my knees groveling and pleading with him.[41]”

According to Mair's reporting “the major problem with this intense love affair arose from her lover's being married, with no plans to leave his wife”. Winfrey became so depressed that on September 8, 1981, she wrote a suicide note to best friend Gayle King instructing King to water her plants.[41]

Whatever the case may be, Oprah shouldn't allow this sort of aberrant behavior to be cast in a positive light on her show.