Amarillo embraces Oprah during beef trial

AMARILLO -- It's not every day in the Texas Panhandle cattle capital that an animal rights activist has to be rescued after he gets stuck hanging a protest sign on a four-story building while his cow-costumed accomplice paces the street below.

It's not every day that the quiet prairie air is ruffled by the strains of a kazoo band on the courthouse lawn while fraternity boys from West Texas State University square off against People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals in a sidewalk grilling duel pitting all- beef burgers against the vegetarian variety.

It's not every day that normally rational people venture out on a cold and blustery night to sing "Happy Birthday" outside the Adaberry Inn. And it certainly isn't every day that a group of ministers treks down to the federal building to pray for both sides in the most famous, and perhaps the most bizarre, civil lawsuit this side of Paula Jones vs. President Clinton. Amarillo hasn't been the same since television talk diva Oprah Winfrey, arguably the most famous woman in the United States, hit town a month ago to defend herself against charges that she slandered beef. In the spring of 1996, while mad-cow disease was spreading across Britain, Winfrey told her television audience that she was swearing off hamburgers forever. Texas cattlemen, believing her remarks caused beef prices to tumble on the commodity markets, sued her for $10 million under an untested Texas statute -- sometimes snidely called the "veggie rights" law -- that was enacted in 1995 to protect agricultural products from defamation. To the surprise of some legal experts, the case actually made it to trial, and old-timers say Amarillo hasn't seen a spectacle like it since Fort Worth millionaire Cullen Davis was tried for murder here in the late 1970s. Tents and portable toilets have been strung along a closed section of E. Fifth Street, where barricades of oil drums and sand bags and yellow police tape have created a kind of midway between the county and federal courthouses. Here, you can listen to a speech or a sermon. You can buy an "Amarillo Loves Oprah" bumper sticker or a T-shirt bearing the message, "The only mad cow in Texas is Oprah." The spectacle -- the street party atmosphere surrounding the trial -- was largely anticipated. If the battle between Winfrey and the locals has produced a surprise, it is that the conflict has been confined to the courtroom. Oprah may be loathed in legal briefs, but she is beloved on the streets. "Most people aren't that concerned about the trial," says Kay Bynum, who staffs the Chamber of Commerce's press hospitality bus, where coffee and cookies have been dispensed since the second day of the trial. "Their attitude is, `Let the court decide.'" Because of the importance of the beef industry to the local economy, there were no guarantees that Winfrey and her entourage would not be met with hostility. Chamber of Commerce President Gary Molberg tried to get ahead of the anti-Oprah curve with a memo to his staff in which he advised that there would be no red-carpet welcome for the TV star and ordered chamber employees not to attend her show. "I was wrong," Molberg said later, when it became apparent that this was not conventional warfare. Fans not only gathered at the courthouse for autographs, but took birthday gifts to the Adaberry Inn, a nine-suite bed and breakfast that Winfrey has rented for the duration of the trial.

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