January 26, 2006

Oprah Takes Her Credibility Back

I meant to publish a post alerting you to James Frey appearing on Oprah today. But, oops, I forgot to hit the "publish" button. I'm going to engage in some literary license (inspired by Frey no doubt) and quote from a post that will never need to see the light of day:

James Frey goes from the non-threatening Larry King Show to the enabling Oprah Winfrey Show. Expect even fewer hard questions about A Million Little Pieces and a lot of tears.

There were tears, but I didn't expect Oprah to shed them from acknowledging she was duped like all the rest of Frey's readers. In a very impressive mea culpa she told her audience:

I gave the impression that the truth does not matter. I made a mistake.

Here's how a Chicago Tribune reporter viewed the scene:

"I made a mistake," a somber Winfrey said at the opening of the live show, "and I left the impression that the truth does not matter, and I am deeply sorry about that because that is not what I believe."

Winfrey's apology and pointed questions about incidents and people in the book appeared to take Frey by surprise as he sat across the couch from Winfrey today as they had done during a much more convivial show four months earlier.

"It is difficult for me to talk to you because I really feel duped," Winfrey told a startled-looking Frey who licked his lips often before speaking. "More importantly, I feel you betrayed millions of readers...As I sit here today, I don't know what is true, and I don't know what isn't."

Winfrey looked near tears and her audience gasped when Frey revealed for the first time that Lilly, a central character in the book, didn't commit suicide by hanging, but instead slashed her wrists.

"Why do you have to lie about that?" Winfrey responded.

She continued chiding Frey:

I feel duped. But more importantly, I feel that you betrayed millions of readers.

She asked why he fabricated events in his book. Frey answered,

In order to get through the experience of the addiction, I thought of myself as being tougher than I was and badder than I was, and it helped me cope. And when I was writing the book, instead of being as introspective as I should have been, I clung to that image.

Questions didn't stop with Frey. Oprah lashed out at Doubleday publisher, Nan Talese. Talese responded by saying the book wasn't fact-checked because publishers don't do that. "I thought as a publisher, this is James's memory of the hell he went through. . . . I do not know how you get inside another person's mind."

A question that I don't know was asked was why Frey allowed Doubleday to publish the book as a memoir when other publishers rejected the book when it was sold to them as a novel? Frey admitted lying to millions of his readers yet said, "I still think it's a memoir."

The Smoking Gun editor William Bastone "felt bad for Frey" after Oprah's onslaught.

Random House, owner of Doubleday, will publish an author's note in all future copies of A Million Little Pieces. There's no mention if the book will be recatagorized as fiction.

No surprise, the blogosphere is buzzing:

• NewsBusters points out another example of Oprah being duped.

• La Shawn Barber watched the show and was "mesmerized."

• Michelle Malkin has some video. I was wowed when Oprah said, "I feel that you [Frey] conned us all."

• AmbivaBlog "almost [felt] sorry for Frey!"

• Celebrity Jihad found out Tara Reid will write a memoir. "Frey is set to blurb the book and add an additional 18 pages which will contain some 'unauthorized' tidbits about Miss Reid's life." I can't wait to not read that.

"Oprah Tells Frey He 'Betrayed' Readers"

"Oprah Throws the Book at Herself"

"Oprah Calls Defense of Author 'a Mistake'"

"James Frey Gets His, Takes It Like Man(?)"

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