Joseph Stalin has made a bigger impact on society as a whole than Oprah

Given the obvious difficulty in undertaking such a position, we've decided to argue the Con side so that, 'While Stalin has impacted the lives of tens of millions (whether it's by cold hearted slaughter under Stalin's regime or by the people who had their lives significantly disrupted), Oprah has, however, impacted the lives of Americans in such a different way that it isn't possible to say that one has a bigger impact than another.' So in this instance, we will not be arguing that Oprah has a larger impact than Stalin, but that the impact that both has had is incomparable. Given the Pro hasn't posted much substantive in her speech, we have decided to move straight into the arguments. 1) Oprah influenced American society considerably as we know it. We observe that Oprah was born in the 1950s, a period of time when Americans are still deeply entrenched into the beliefs that society was still patriarchal, where men are effectively better than women. She was born to an unmarried mother, who, at that time, was just a mere housemaid who struggled to survive. In those circumstances, a sizeable number of people would have no aspirations to rise above the median income in their lives, let alone become a household name like Oprah is today. Additionally, we observe that Oprah has experienced rural poverty for around 5-8 years in her childhood (The Observer profile, UK) while living with her grandmother, poverty to the extent that everyone made fun of her and she was subjected to ceaseless bullying. These years of abuse takes a significant toll on anyone, and so she ran away from home at the age of 13. While it is possible for us to elaborate more on the difficulties of Oprah's childhood, it can be seen that she has suffered hefty amounts of physical toll and mental turmoil, which makes her ascent to stardom all that more surprising and influential. What Oprah has done is show the ordinary/stuck in poverty Americans that they too, can live a dream if they put their hearts and souls to it. What Oprah has done is give these people a piece called hope. What Oprah has done is show these people that life can be worth living, that while you cannot choose where you are born, you can choose where you end up. It is no mere coincidence that there's an effect dubbed 'the Oprah Effect', where Oprah has the ability to channel beliefs and persuade large numbers of people to make a certain choice, to influence public opinion. During a show about Mad Cattle disease, when Oprah proclaimed that she stopped eating beef due to these health scares, Texas cattlemen decided to begin suing her because of an extraordinary drop in consumer rates, costing beef producers somewhere in the avenue of $11million U.S . During the presidential election of 2008, Oprah endorsed Barack Obama, and was subsequently quoted by the mayor of Illinois to be the 'most instrumental person in electing Barack Obama president', a true testament to the influence that someone like Oprah possesses, but also how much influence she has managed to gain from her beginning, and how it defies the patriarchal society as most people know it. 2) Why is this different from Stalin's influence on society -Stalin 'officially' executed 800,000 people, not to mention the number of people that he effectively killed during his Gulag and Kulak resettlement scheme. This is a direct representation of arguably the most important thing in society- life. Yes, we concede that Stalin's effect has impacted on millions of people, but it affects them in this way, by removing their lives and their position in this world. On the other hand, Oprah Winfrey has changed the lives of millions, she has showed these people that they can build their own path, she has showed them that the patriarchal society is not fixed, she has showed them that they too can defy the unspoken rules and regulations in place in society. One cannot attempt to justify that one person has more of an impact than another based solely on the number or the way that they have affected them. It is comparable, in this instance, to suggest that Stalin has more of an impact because the taking of someone's life is more important than the improvement of someone's life, raising the philosophical question which I'm sure we should not venture into, 'would you rather die early or live in poverty for your life?' In summary, the Con is proud to oppose this stance because both Stalin and Oprah have made a significant impact on the world and it is not fair nor just to claim that one has more of an impact than another.