TV Talk Discussion Group -- Should Oprah unveiled Charla Nash on her show yesterday?

TV Talk Discussion Group

Topic: Should Oprah unveiled Charla Nash on her show yesterday?

Topic Posted by: Logan86121
Date Posted: Thu Nov 12 23:32:30 2009
Additional Comments: I don't know, I just don't know. I understand Oprah said the woman wanted to unveil in her terms. But I just don't how I feel about it yesterday? I don't know if this woman was even in the state of mind to make that decision? I have seen burn victems and people who have been disfigured when I was a CJ major in college, but I have never ever seen anything like that. That poor woman to have to endure something unimaginable, yet she is still positive and moving forward. I just feel like Oprah exploited this woman. Her pic will now be everwhere and I hate to see her gawked at like the Elephant Man back in the 1800's. I hope the wonders of modern medicine can give her some level of a normal life. I think Oprah should have had a warning before they unveiled her. That was way to shocking for any kids to see. What in the hell was that other woman thinking having a 200 lb chimpanzee for a pet?

Posted by: BoobTubeMandy
Date posted: Sun Nov 15 18:55:53 2009
Message:
Don't get me wrong, I like the Oprah Show about as much as anyone, but she gets it wrong all the time. In my undergrad and graduate level social work classes, they use footage from her shows about sex offenders to show us how NOT to do it. She says she's empathetic, etc., but really it's all about the ratings. Gotta have a train wreck every once in a while to get them up there on the Oprah scale.

Posted by: carmen
Date posted: Sun Nov 15 1:51:22 2009
Message:

i was confused about my feelings on this as well. after i saw her face my thoughts went to what she has endured since the attack..countless surgeries--ENDLESS surgeries! living with the pain, forget the disfigurement. the pain alone would do me in.

so the question that's been running thru my mind, would i have wanted to live after enduring that attack or just have told them to let me die?

she is a courageous woman. my heart and prayers go out to her for sure.

Posted by: Soapness
Date posted: Sat Nov 14 12:11:21 2009
Message:

She mentioned something about tabloids having a bounty for a picture of her face, and she wanted to do it on Oprah, on her terms, and so they wouldn't get the money...

And for warning people about the dangers of exotics as pets...

Posted by: SpellingAddict
Date posted: Fri Nov 13 20:01:13 2009
Message:

I guess I feel differently about it. Since ignorant, stupid people continue to "buy" these wild animals, if just one of them is influenced to think twice about doing so by seeing the actual result of this attack, I think the show and everything that was presented in it were worthwhile.

Kudos to the woman for being so brave. I admire her a lot.

Posted by: Hillary
Date posted: Fri Nov 13 14:10:23 2009
Message:
She definitely exploited this poor woman, all in the name of ratings and money. Oprah doesn't care about the person she is interviewing, she cares about sensationalism and getting her name anywhere and everywhere. The woman said early in the interview that she wears a veil because she does not want others to see her face. So what does Orca do? She pursuades this poor woman to take it off. Why? So people will remember that this woman was on HER show. I never have Oprah in my home, but I was in a nail salon, and they had their TV tuned to it, otherwise I would never have watched it. And in fact I avoided most of it by looking elsewhere.

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She didn't 'persuade' her to remove the veil. She asked if she wanted to remove it & the woman said 'yes'. That was HER decision, not Oprah's. She could easily have said 'no'. As far as Oprah removing the veil, the woman has almost no hands to speak of & couldn't have removed it herself. It isn't as though Oprah ripped it off the woman! The woman came to Oprah, not the other way around. She also didn't sit outside the woman's hospital room, waiting for a moment to ambush her! I rarely watch Oprah & I didn't watch all of the episode, but saw enough to know that it was the woman's decision, which is her choice to make. She isn't mentally deficient. eom

And how do you know that? Are you a doctor on her case? She was in a coma not that long ago.- Logan

Logan: They talked about it! Yes, she was in a coma, but that was some time ago & it doesn't mean that she wasn't capable of making up her own mind. Someone was going to get that interview. You don't need to be her doctor to know that people respond differently to trauma, there is no one response. I don't think that anyone would have held it against the woman if she had just locked herself away & never went out in public again. However, that isn't what SHE wants for her own life. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to see that this was NOT an ambush interview. eom

Posted by: Helena
Date posted: Fri Nov 13 10:14:07 2009
Message:
I had no interest in watching it. I knew it would be squirm material and unpleasant. Oprah goes tabloid again.

Posted by: Rosebud1
Date posted: Fri Nov 13 9:58:42 2009
Message:
Just because she is blind doesn't mean that she doesn't know how disfigured she is. There was a reason why she wanted to show herself to the public--to demonstrate how dangerous it can be to keep wild animals as 'pets' in a home. The chimp who did this was past sexual maturity, which means that he had the strength of 8-10 men & was no longer a 'cuddly, cute' animal. He was not capable of being controlled by a person, any person. Mature chimps are known to be unpredictable & even kill members of their own troupes in the wild! This chimp was no different.

The woman did say that she is hoping to get a face transplant in the future & she recognizes that she isn't going to ever look as she did before. But honestly, there are lots of people out there who think that they CAN handle wild animals in their homes, when they should never be 'pets'.

Sadly, there are still people buying chimps (& other wild animals) on the black market, falsely believing that something like this will never happen to them. As long as they never see the results of what CAN happen, they will continue perpetuating an industry that makes it okay for people in Africa to kill the parents to tear the traumatized babies away from their mothers for the pet trade.

One of the news magazines (20/20?) did a piece not long after this chimp attack, where they interviewed a woman who bought two on the black market, for $100,000 ea., & believes that this kind of thing will never happen to her. The interviewer was terribly nervous sitting next to the chimps on the woman's couch, but these were still immature chimps. Give them a few yrs & they will no longer be those cuddly 'little boys', but mature chimps that are capable of tearing her limbs off--nothing personal.

Posted by: Thalia
Date posted: Fri Nov 13 9:20:02 2009
Message:

Apparently the poor woman is blind and does not know what she looks like. Oprah, on the other hand can see. I personally can see and see absolutely no worthwhile reason to expose this woman in this way because I do not have a TV show and do not need to do really disgusting things to get ratings. Oprah ... and those who do ... on the other hand ...

What digusted me about this was that all the newscasts that also used the poor woman to get ratings did caution the viewer what we were about to see was disturbing, so rather than rushing to gape as the TV people hoped I would, I turned my head and hit the FF button. Sadly, my Yahoo home page was not so thoughtful ... guess web sites need to get viewers in this way too ... so I caught a brief, small glimpse. Oprah should be ashamed of herself for exploiting this poor woman. Really ashamed. I stopped watching her long ago when she seemed to have stepped over some sensitivity line. Now it looks like she has leapt over it.

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Oh wow - yahoo put a photo of her on their home page?? I'm a yahoo too but missed that. Now THAT'S really over the line, I think. Oprah had lots of warnings, and obviously had the woman's permission to do what she did. -Spell

She knows that her face is gone, her eyes are gone & that other parts of her body were used to close up her wounds. She has also said that she is hoping for a face transplant. She has a good idea of what she looks like. eom

Posted by: Melissa
Date posted: Fri Nov 13 8:02:09 2009
Message:
Definitely it was too traumatic and probably she should not have done it. I feel horrible for this poor woman, but I have to say, first, the woman who was her friend and had this gorilla must have had a screw loose, and she should never have been allowed to have such an animal in her home. Next, I don't think I would have gone to ever visit a person who had such an animal in her home, friend or not! Not saying it was the woman's fault she got mauled, but I don't think anyone should put themselves in a position like that to begin with.

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'Allowed'? Most chimps (it wasn't a gorilla) that are in private homes as pets aren't bought legally. They are illegally purchased & kept. There are lions & tigers being kept as pets, more live as pets than in the wild, without the owners having the legal licences and training. A lot of them aren't kept as 'pets' but by drug dealers who are keeping them for 'protection' and intimidation. In a recently aired interview w/Tippy Hedren (Shambala), she was talking about people who have kept these animals in deplorable conditions. In the interview I sited, the woman that was interviewed admitted that she purchased her two chimps on the black market, for $100,000 each. She didn't care that they were ripped from their mothers (who were probably killed in the process) so that she could have her 'boys'. Her 'boys' weren't sexually mature males--yet. But eventually that will happen & then there will be nowhere to keep them. She won't be equipped to handle them either, much as she thinks she will. eom