Let's Find the Weird Stuff in Oprah Winfrey's 18-Minute Monologue About Dreams

Apparently Oprah Winfrey appreciated a reporter's question about her childhood dreams at Thursday's Television Critics Association panel in Pasadena; she cooed, "Nobody has ever asked me that!" before answering the question, and then monologuing about her life and network for another 18 minutes. It was a strange little oration. You can thank Alan Sepinwall at HitFix for transcribing the rant in its entirety, but let's sort through Oprah's speech-team gusto and pinpoint its strangest revelations.

She grew up wanting to replace Joan Whatshername.

I had an agent in Baltimore where I had given him a tape of myself on the show that I was doing. People were talking. And my biggest dream was I just wanted to be a guest host on "Good Morning America." "Could you just send my tape in to ABC so I could guest host?" when Joan somebody used to be on. What was her name? (Crowd calls out "Joan Lunden.") Joan Lunden. I wanted to be a substitute for Joan Lunden.

Thriller taught her much.

I had much trepidation about doing [the OWN Network], and then I read the Nancy Griffin article in July's Vanity Fair about Michael Jackson, and there was just one line where she said, "Michael Jackson's friends always said that his biggest mistake was he never understood that 'Thriller' was a phenomenon, and he spent his whole life chasing that phenomenon." I read that and just, like, whoosh. It was more than an aha moment. All of my fear, my anxiety, my sort of trepidation about what is this going to be and waking up in the middle of the night and did I make the right decision, all of that left in that moment. That was a gift to me. I don't know Nancy Griffin, but that was a gift to me because I realize, oh, that's what I'm doing.

TVs fill her with bad energy.

[Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor] had a sign made that said "Be responsible for the energy that you bring into this room" -- which I now have a sign that says that in my makeup room, "Be responsible for the energy that you bring into this room." And I am very much aware of the energy that the television is transmitting all of the time. That's why I don't allow -- up until now, I have never allowed it on in my house, unless there was something specific that I wanted to see, because I don't want all that energy coming into my space.

But wait, now she loves TV.

I know it will get stronger and it will get better. The truth is my fear as I watch it myself because I honestly don't watch television. Now I do. Now, I do. I have it on OWN all the time.

But wait, she also reads "message boards."

I've been reading the message boards and nothing is more -- I think I was saying this to -- saying in the "Wall Street Journal" a while back, that you're saying "What would be success to me," and I was saying that to me, it's knowing that the viewers heard what we were trying to do, that they got what we were trying to do. And they do. Some don't. Some are complaining about, you know, that they have to spend more money, and that's okay. You're not going to get everybody. But at this point in my life, I'm not trying to get everybody. I'm really not. I'm really not.

Press Tour: Oprah Winfrey Talks and Talks and Talks Some More [Hitfix]