Oprah's Got Plenty of Money and Good Sense, and You Don't

By Joanna Miller in News on Jan 2, 2007 10:00PM

When the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls opens this week in Johannesburg, South Arica, a handful of 12- and 13-year-old girls will learn how good life with Oprah can be. The $40 million school includes huge fireplaces in every building, a yoga studio, indoor and outdoor theaters and a beauty salon. Not to mention oversized closets for the clothes the girls will soon have and comfy beds, each one tested by Oprah herself.

If some people don’t like the new school, they don’t seem to be going on the record to talk about it. The Tribune refers to “suggestions the school was elitist and unnecessarily luxurious” and CBS2 mentions “people” who “criticized her.” Newsweek quotes a South African school official who said Oprah is doing "too much,” but didn’t want to be named, for fear of insulting her. The South African government pulled out of the project, but hasn’t publicly said why.

Winfrey said people may think she’s going overboard, but this is what she wants to do, adding, “I'd like to think I have as much good sense as I have money, so that's a lot of good sense.” It’s certainly a whole lot of something.

Will the girls return home after their they turn 14? And we thought moving home after college was a drag.

Oprah at her 50th birthday party via alan.light.