Last night, two space aliens sat down on a couch and drooled at each other in a pantomime of human interaction on Oprah's Next Chapter. For an unilluminating hour Oprah Winfrey surrendered her usual alpha role probably because that was part of Beyoncé's intergalactic rider. With the big, timely but ultimately fluffy interviews, Oprah tends to endlessly ass kiss, but this was over the top even for her. She referred to Beyoncé as the "preeminent mistress of the universe"" praised Bey's small number of cell phones and unleashed a string of adjectives to praise Beyoncé's anti-exposé of an HBO documentary, Life Is But a Dream, which ran immediately after. In Oprah's estimation, the film is "familiar, unfamiliar, exciting, exhilarating, riveting and personal and intimate and empowering."
Oprah made only one vague reference to the backing-track/lip-synching Inauguration scandal, when really what we could have used was someone looking Beyoncé in the face and discussing whether it matters at all that she was singing if it wasn't what most of America (i.e. virtually everyone except for Beyoncé) heard. Whatever. Pop culture moves on, asses need kissing.