Happy Birthday Oprah!  We’ve spent so much time this last week focussing on your half sister (See:  we’ll every other post on this site — it’s called Oprah’s half sister after all), that we almost forgot about your birthday.

So you’re 57 now Oprah… what’s next?  You’ve pretty much done it all, exploited everything possible for attention … and now you even have another human being who is destined to be known as “Oprah’s half sister”.  You’ve got a president, Obama, in your pocket, a TV and magazine empire and now your own network…

Honestly, I’m just not sure that my gift-card to JCPenny is going to cut it for you — you really do seem to have everything.

Oh well, I hope you’re enjoying your 57th birthday!  We all love you Ms. Oprah.

With the revelation of Oprah’s half sister, Patricia, last week, twitter has been a-buzz with many Oprahisms offering advice on alternative ways Oprah could have made the announcement.  Here’s are few of my favorites as well as some other great Oprah tweets.

“Look under your seat. You get a half sister! You get a half sister! You get a half sister! You get a half sister! Everybody gets a half sister!”

“Oprah plans on auctioning off her half sister for charity.”

“Oprah just made her half sister legally change her name to Oprah’s Half Sister”

“Oprah announces half sister! #oprahshalfsister releases one word statement..”Ka-ching!”"

“Oprah’s half sister once went on a Cruise and got yelled at by a guy named Tom Couch #oprahshalfsister“

There are so many more good Oprah’s half sister lines, but I just wanted to give everyone a little taste this morning!

Oprah’s revelation that she has a half-sister earned the talk diva her biggest ratings of the season – a 9.9 rating/23 share weighted metered market average for the show’s primary runs, according to Nielsen Media Research. When all telecasts are factored in, the episode did a still-large 6.9/17.

That’s the show’s highest ratings in almost six years, since Oprah’s post-Oscar episode on February 28, 2005.

On Monday, Jan. 24, Oprah Winfrey revealed on her talk show that she has a half-sister, Patricia. Apparently Winfrey’s mother, Vernita Lee, had the girl in Milwaukee, Wisc., and gave her up for adoption while Winfrey was living with her father in Tennessee. Patricia ended up in foster homes until she was 7 and then was lucky enough to find a new adoptive family.

Winfrey learned definitively about Patricia in October, although the process took years. Winfrey’s mother refused to acknowledge Patricia because she was ashamed about giving Patricia up, Lee said. DNA testing finally confirmed the truth.

Patricia has two children – Aquarius and Andre – so Winfrey also has suddenly gained a niece and nephew. Winfrey had two other half-siblings – another sister, Pat, and a brother, Jeffrey – but both are deceased.

YOU get a sister! YOU get a SISTER!! EVERY. BODY. GETS. A. (long lost adopted 1/2) SISTER!!!!!1!!!! #Oprah

RT @TheSistahChick: Why does everyone think that being related to #Oprah automically makes a person rich?

When #oprah met her sister did she say “miss Sophia home now!”

Who gives a crap about #Oprah and her half sister! #soannoying!

I would be HEATED if I just recently found out that I was related to #Oprah lol .. mad money missed out on lol

Ok-so #Oprah had a secret yesterday with a half sister. What’s today? The other half.

just found out im #oprah’s long lost brother!

see that’s why Oprah isn’t your auntie always begging & trying to get her to spend her good money #Oprah

Oprah – She is the Queen of All Media, a woman so successful she has her own TV show, her own magazine, $2.7 billion in the bank, a book club that can make any author a best seller and now her own TV network. And, conveniently, Oprah also has a “secret” she had to share with 6.7 billion close friends – just in time to promote her fledgling cable channel. Oprah’s secret was the sudden revealing of a long-lost half sister – truly a touching moment in anyone’s life. But, in this case, it was a moment more touched by ratings than reality.

Oprah billed the event as a “miracle.” “I was given some news that literally shook me to my core. This time, I’m the one being reunited,” reported the Associated Press. “I was keeping a family secret for months, and on Monday you’re going to hear it straight from me.” That might lack the sexiness of Geraldo’s “Mystery of Al Capone’s Vaults,” but it’s not exactly subtle either.

Clearly, Oprah had plenty of time to envision how she wanted to handle the family news and she just as clearly used it to promote the family business. According to a Reuters story, Oprah had been searching for lost family for years, but knew about the lost half-sister since October. The half-sister reportedly knew of the relationship for three years. Hardly breaking news. “Imagine my shock just a few months ago, at the end of October, when I found out I have another sister living just 90 minutes away,” Winfrey said. Ironically, Reuters claimed “Oprah ‘speechless’ on discovering she has half-sister.” Oprah speechless? Never.

What do you think?

Was it all about the ratings?

Was it genuine?

Is Oprah the devil in disguise?

Let us know what you think about Oprah’s latest revelation and whether or not you think Oprah was just being Oprah — ie. self-promoting.

Winfrey announced on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” that aired on Monday that a Milwaukee woman named Patricia discovered that the two were half-sisters.

The woman says she had been searching for years for the identity of the mother who gave her up for adoption in 1963. She says she learned in 2007 that Winfrey was her half-sister. On her program, Winfrey says she learned about Patricia last November.

Winfrey says she was 9 years old and living with her father when her mother had the daughter and gave her up for adoption. She says she never even knew her mother was pregnant.

Winfrey says the two met on Thanksgiving day.

Readers are saying:

What a wonderful happening for them both-fabulous show-looking forward to her ‘ OWN’ network show!!! Quite a lady- the most powerful woman in the world!!! Intelligence-hardwork what a success story she is!!!You go girl!!! Others eat your heart out!!! No one mentions her kindnesses-the schools she started-homes for poor-these only being small part of her charities!! Marc you need a couch but in a therapists office!!! Take your ativan man!!! You sound so ‘adorable’ !!!!

So Opra found her half sister… does she say everything twice too!!!

Since nothing seems to be private in Oprah’s life – she should install a camera
in her bathroom – so she can be viewed going to the toilet. She could tout
this show as her personal way of showing everyone, that she goes to the
bathroom just like everyone else.

After hearing all about Oprahs big suprise on the radio, internet and from so many of my facebook friends I was quite disappointed. Im not saying that her finding out she has a half sister isnt great, it is. Its just that there was so much hype that I was expecting something phenominal to have happened. Like her sponsoring 100000 African children in the name of other children throughout the country. She has the money to do it and that would be a pretty big suprise.

I was very moved by the story. I feel so bad for all of them except Oprah’s mother. What a horrible person she is to have children and give up their sibling, then she does not tell any of them they have a sister. How could she have kept this from them. She then rejects her daughter numerous times and still does not tell anyone. Oprah’s mother is a monster. I feel bad for the rest of the family. I don’t get how Oprah is not mad and disgusted at her yet she seems like she is forgiving her. For those that run down Oprah, you are so mean and lacking complete logic and judgement. Oprah has class, integrety and she is so genuine. She truly cares about ALL people and tries to help people. I can;t beleive some of the sickening comments I read against Oprah. You must be blind not to see how great of a person Oprah is. What is wrong with you people. I would love to have her as my best friend.

An emotional Winfrey introduced her newly found sibling to viewers Monday and explained the woman’s persistent quest to find her birth mother.

“This, my friends, is the miracle of all miracles,” Winfrey said before bringing out the 48-year-old woman, who throughout the program was identified only as Patricia, with no mention of her occupation or any other details.

After years of searching for blood relatives, the woman met Winfrey on Thanksgiving Day of last year.

When Patricia was born in Milwaukee in 1963, the young Winfrey was living with her father and did not even know her mother was pregnant, she said.

Patricia, who Winfrey said bounced from foster home to foster home until she was adopted at age 7, had given up after previous searches for her mother. But she decided to resume looking several years ago at the insistence of her grown children.

The effort seemed to hit a dead end when a woman from the Wisconsin adoption agency called to respond to her inquiries.

“She was telling me that my birth mother had called her back, and she had made the decision at that particular time that she did not want to see me,” Patricia said.

Coincidentally, on the local news that day was a story about Winfrey’ mother, Vernita Lee, who revealed details about two of her children who had since died. Those details, Patricia said, matched information she had seen in papers about her own adoption.

Winfrey’s mother also said that one of the deceased children had been named Patricia.

“The hairs on the back of my neck stood up,” Patricia said. “Because I knew one of my siblings and I shared the same name.”

Later, she found more matching details, including the fact that Winfrey was born in 1954, the same year as the woman Patricia knew was her surviving sibling.

Patricia found the daughter of Winfrey’s dead sister in Milwaukee, and they took a DNA test that confirmed their relationship.

Lee, who recently suffered a minor stroke, said she never told Winfrey about her half-sister, “because I thought it was a terrible thing for me to do, that I had done, gave up my daughter when she was born.”

Winfrey said documents from the girl’s birth reveal that Lee gave up the baby for adoption because she did not think she could get off welfare if she kept the child.

“I made the decision to give her up because I wasn’t able to take care of her,” Lee said during a recorded interview that aired Monday. “So when I left the hospital, I told the nurse I wasn’t going to keep the baby.”

Winfrey said she was particularly stunned by the news because of the way it came out.

She said Patricia had known since 2007 that the two were related, but never attempted to profit off her discovery or contact the press, even as she tried unsuccessfully to contact Winfrey, her mother or others in Winfrey’s family.

“She never once thought to sell the story,” Winfrey said, recalling how she felt betrayed by others who have sought to take advantage of their relationship with one of the largest figures in the entertainment world and one of the wealthiest women in the United States.

Winfrey, for example, recalled how her other sister revealed to the press years ago that Winfrey had had a baby when she was a teenager. The baby, Winfrey has said, died shortly after birth. And she talked about putting her sister in rehab twice for drug addiction, but that her sister ultimately died.

Patricia said she didn’t consider revealing that she and Winfrey were half-sisters to anyone but Winfrey, explaining that she did not want to hurt Winfrey.

“Family business should be handled by family,” Patricia said. “It couldn’t be handled by anyone else. That’s not fair. It wouldn’t be fair to you.”

Winfrey said she was heartened by learning that she had a half-sister, saying it “feels like closure” for the sister who died.

“It feels to me like you are Pat on her very best day,” Winfrey told the woman. “You are what she wanted to be without the drugs.”

Oprah’s huge family secret was revealed on Monday: she has a half-sister named Patricia.

Vernita Lee, Oprah’s mother, gave Patricia up for adoption in 1963, but kept her a secret from her daughter. Oprah was nine years old and living with her father when her mother had the baby. She said she never even knew Vernita was pregnant.

WOW — now that’s breaking news.

Oprah and Patricia were publicly reunited on Monday’s show. Oprah showed video of her and her partner, Steadman Graham, driving to Milwaukee to meet Patricia for the first time on Thanksgiving Day last year.

Patricia said she started thinking that Oprah might be her sister when she saw an interview with Vernita Lee on television. The information Lee gave coincided with what she knew about her birth family.

She tried to track down her birth mother, but was told by the adoption that the mother did not want to get in touch with her. But Patricia did manage to track down Oprah’s niece, and DNA tests confirmed that they were related. This led to Oprah confronting her mother, who confirmed that Patricia was indeed her half sister.