Texans have an outsize image. They are typically portrayed as large people in large hats who love Texas and have little time for subtlety or for salads. They appear to like their meat and their criminals fried. Their message to lettucepromoters and felons alike is clearly emblazoned on the countless T-shirts that encase the burger-enhanced Texan midriff: "Don't Mess With Texas".

This week, however, Texans face an identity crisis. The legal clash between talk-show queen Oprah Winfrey and Cattleman of the Year Paul Engler is forcing residents to choose between redmeat tradition and red-hot celebrity.

Loyalty to the Lone Star state has suddenly become a complicated matter, no longer a simple choice between tofu liberalism and rope'n'roll'n'brand'em machismo. This is not, after all, some skinnny Earth-Firster taking on the beef industry. Nor is it some downtrodden black woman defying the good ol' boys. This is Oprah, "one of the most powerful women in America", according to Redbook magazine, and "the world's best girlfriend".

Born poor in the nearby state of Mississippi, Winfrey returned to the south this week in her Gulfstream jet as the world's highest-paid entertainer, with an estimated personal worth of half a billion dollars. Even diehard Texans admit that in this contest the smart money may not be on the home team.

The drama began in April 1996 with an Oprah show on the subject of BSE or mad cow disease. Oprah's guest, Howard Lyman, a Montana cattle rancher turned anti-meat campaigner, warned that an outbreak of mad cow disease in the US "could make AIDS look like the common cold". His descriptions of cattle being fed animal parts elicited "yucks" from the audience and a declaration from Oprah: "It has just stopped me cold from eating another burger."

Representatives of the beef industry and the Department of Agriculture were heckled and finally booed off the stage when they protested that American cattle were uninfected and that American beef was unlikely to kill anyone.

The total value of all cattle in the US was estimated at $53 billion last year, a figure that has fluctuated little over the past decade. The day after Oprah's BSE show, however, cattle futures fell over 10 per cent. "I sat there and couldn't believe what I was hearing," Amarillo cattleman Paul Engler later said, explaining his decision to sue Winfrey for defamation. "

The beef industry was already smarting from the August 1997 Hudson Beef tainted-meat scandal, which caused the recall of 25 million pounds of processed meat and precipitated a 48-hour burger famine nationwide. Engler sued Winfrey for $12 million under the so-called "veggie libel" law, legislation that allows growers and producers to seek treble damages if someone suggests that a crop is unsafe to eat. Attempts by Winfrey's attorneys to have the trial held in the relatively liberal city of Dallas failed. Instead, the nation's biggest feed-lot, Amarillo, Texas, became the unlikely breeding ground for the state's new-found ambivalence towards its staple diet.

On Tuesday, as a jury of eight women and four men was selected, bumper stickers on passing cars read "The Only Mad Cow in America is Oprah" and "Amarillo Loves Oprah". Winfrey supporters wearing cow suits carried placards that read "Eat Me But Leave Oprah Alone" while ranchers wearing business suits, cowboy boots and stetsons smiled for the cameras. Even the suing beef producers admitted that "Everybody is clamouring to meet Oprah . . . and the plaintiffs are no different." Patrick Swayze, Kenny Rogers, Chuck Norris and other Texan celebrities flew in for Oprah's Salute to Texas shows which are being taped in Amarillo.

For a nation apparently addicted to courtroom dramas, this is the best kind of celebrity trial. In the absence of a real victim, Oprah's 20 million viewers can happily ignore the dull facts and enjoy the spectacle of their heroine invoking her First Amendment right to free speech. They applaud her for defending not just the US Constitution but, more importantly, her talk-show philosophy, the belief that one opinion is as valid as another and that emotion is the final arbiter.

Winfrey has perfected that principle over the past 12 years in her daily hour on the air. Exhorting her largely female audience to "random acts of kindness", to "make peace with [their] hair", to exercise, to read and to feel good about themselves, she has preached and embodied the nation's unofficial religion of selfempowerment. And even maverick Texans have seen the light.

Judging by the cheering crowds in the heart of cattle country, Oprah hasn't just messed with Texas, she has whupped it.