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Does Oprah Owe Rihanna An Apology?

July 13, 2009 ι Jarett Wieselman

Various bits and bobbles are popping up all over the interweb today that Oprah Winfrey reached out and touched someone -- Rihanna. According to the stories, Oprah called up the pop princess to check in and see how she was doing in light of her "incident" with Chris Brown.

A rep for "The Oprah Winfrey Show" tells PopWrap no such call was made, but one has to wonder if perhaps the Queen of Daytime might want to contact the pop princess in light of last Friday's show.

During a discussion of newsworthy items, a panel consisting of Oprah, Gayle King, actress Alexandra Wentworth and actor Mark Consuelos were talking about TMZ.com's leaked photo of a bruised Rihanna and a lot of viewers felt that Oprah and Gayle were too sympathetic to Chris. While both ladies agree that Chris does need to undergo counseling, neither openly condemned his actions and they used the opportunity to talk about how kind Chris had been when he visited Oprah's school in Africa.

"He was so lovely," Gayle said in regards to the trip. "He was such a wonderful, kind, generous guy," Oprah continued before Alexandra chimed in that the singer might simply have a dark side.

Commenters on the show's message boards shockingly turned on Oprah and Gayle following the show. "I was absolutely appalled and downright disgusted at the reaction," kikimo wrote. "I was also soooooo disappointed," khaleyo, another poster, seconded.

"Oprah was brought to fame by stories of women abused...15 years ago she would have cried seeing that picture and would not have condoned it but now she's being politically correct. If I was Rihanna I would be disappointed after watching that 'show,' it was just Oprah n Gayle's Chris Brown fan club." In fact almost everyone who took the time to leave a comment agreed that Oprah should readdress the topic on an upcoming show. A show rep tells PopWrap there are no plans to devote a new episode to Rihanna or Chris Brown.

So perhaps any future call would be more about smoothing things over with Rihanna than trying to book her on the show. To those of you who caught the episode -- what did you make of Oprah and Gayle's handling of the topic?

Photo: INFphoto.com

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