great things

Meet Zach Anner, Oprah’s Replacement

Over the weekend, the world was introduced to Zach Anner, a young man with cerebral palsy — “the sexiest of the palsies” — via his hilarious video entry to Oprah’s Search for the Next TV Star contest. The entry, a pitch for a show “designed to inspire people who never thought they could travel,” quickly gained traction on Digg, Reddit, and various Internet aggretators, and has by now earned a likely unbeatable 2.6 million votes (the current No. 2 has 1.3 million). Which is great, because he is awesome.

Here’s the entry (which you can still vote for):


But wait — it gets better! While word spread of his awesomeness, Anner was actually out of town and had no idea any of it was happening. But his brother did, so when Anner returned home, his brother and a friend casually mentioned that Anner had gotten a few more votes on his Oprah entry, and that he should go check it out. And they filmed his reaction. (It comes in the middle of this “thank you, Internet!” post Anner put up yesterday.)


(Break for tissues.) Hopefully we will be seeing a great deal more from this awesome, awesome young man. Did we mention you can still go vote?

Oprah’s Search for the Next TV Star [Your OWN Show]

Meet Zach Anner, Oprah’s Replacement