Oprah’s Liar

Thursday Oprah, swollen with righteous indignation, dragged into her studio James Frey, an author she had made famous and Nan Talese a publisher not used to visiting the woodshed. Frey had written a memoir called  A Million Little Pieces (#4 on Amazon sales) Talese’s company Doubleday published. The book, purported to be a memoir of addiction, was an Oprah Book Club selection. The book topped the Best Seller Lists and Frey and Doubleday made a fortune on it. Then, the Smoking Gun, a web site owned by Court TV, decided to investigate some of Mr. Frey’s claims regarding his time in jail. He claimed to have been incarcerated three months. Turned out to be three hours. More lies were exposed and the liar’s memoir became a cause celebre. Frey appeared on Larry King to defend himself and Oprah in a surprise call to King’s show offered her support. But the scandal continued to unravel as more and more details of the book were exposed as not true. At some point Oprah decided she had made a huge mistake to endorse the book. She was embarrassed and thus we had Thursday’s remarkable TV tableau with a darkly dressed Oprah dressing down James Frey who looked like a broken man, a school boy dragged in front of the principal. Oprah drafted columnists Richard Cohen of the WaPo and star cultural columnist Frank Rich of the NY Times onto the show to help her with her butt kickin’. They appeared as ordered apparently on short notice. (I’m sure it would have been entertaining to hangout in Harpo Studios last week watching the fur fly as Oprah decided she needed to take a dramatic step to reclaim her reputation and by God James Frey and his publisher had better get their shiny asses on an airplane for Chicago). Oprah tried to metaphorically slap Nan Talese up side the head for not properly vetting Frey’s material; for not fact checking. Ms.Talese made a spirited, but polite and deferential, defense pointing out that the book was a memoir and that different standards apply. A memoir, she said, is not an autobiography but a recollection, the author’s own impression of life events. She did allow that the next reprint of A Million Little Pieces will include a disclaimer. But Oprah was having none of it and steaming with outrage made Frey admit, made him say out loud, that he was a liar, and then apologized to her viewers for her “mistake” thus saving the credibility of the Oprah Book Club for future authors’ recollections. During the proceedings Talese’s cell phone actually rang and my guess is it was her marketing director reporting that sales had taken another spike.
I watched this show with some degree of wonder. Oprah Winfrey, using her enormous power and influence not to expose a liar, really, but to redeem a sag in her reputation. Frey lied in a book that millions of readers endorsed as valuable. At dinner last night a very bright friend said, “I don’t care if he lied. It was a great book.”
kkThe guy was an addict. Addicts are liars. Who did he hurt? Besides Oprah, I mean? If we read a memoir or hear a story  we know it comes through the filter of the individual writing or telling. It is our job to evaluate it for what it is. A memoir isn’t a history. It is a remembrance. Reader beware. Frey is a con and the cost to any one individual was $21.95. Many felt the message was worth being lied to.
It would be great if Oprah had spent the hour focussing on prominent, public liars who cause measurable physical, financial and emotional harm to the citizens of the world. Concentrate on lies that kill; lies that cost trillions. Now that would be good TV.