Opinion: Ticket Replay: A double O moment -- Oprah and Obama at the same inaugural

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The Ticket is republishing this weekend some of our favorite items from recent campaign months. This one looking toward the Obama inauguration on Jan. 20 originally appeared in this space on Dec. 5, 2008:

Shortly before the Nov. 4 presidential voting closed, noted Obama-backer Oprah Winfrey announced that she’d already picked out her inaugural ball gown, a sign of overconfidence that she did not have to pay for in the end.

Now that Barack Obama’s inauguration is virtually certain (unless the Supreme Court’s ponderings lead it to get involved), Oprah has announced she’s taking her Chicago talk show to Washington, which is also famous for lotsa talk. (And that’ll allow her to write off the gown cost as a business expense.)

She’s rented the 2,300-seat Kennedy Center to do two shows there right around Jan. 20.

You may remember Oprah came out early for her fellow Chicagoan. She held a huge celebrity fundraiser for him at her Montecito house.

And she emceed giant primary rallies for him in Iowa and North Carolina, which he won, and New Hampshire, which he lost to Hillary Clinton, the first serious female presidential candidate who many former Oprah fans thought she should support. Winfrey’s ratings took a hit.

We don’t want to let anything out of the bag and spoil the screaming.

But wouldn’t it just be a perfect television moment if, while Oprah is talking to the excited Kennedy Center audience in January at inauguration time, a certain someone who’s about to become president and maybe his wife too walked out on the stage behind the show host?

Everyone would cry, except those execs watching the ratings.

--Andrew Malcolm

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