What a surprise.
by Jim?Rutter
Turns out that even Oprah can be shamed into a condemnantion of lying.
Yesterday, on her show, Oprah confronted "author" James Frey, whose book "A Million Pieces" she had endorsed with her "book of the month" designation, over his factual inaccuracies in his alleged memoirs.? Her initial endorsement of the book led to millions of sales for Frey.? However, a six week investigation by thesmokinggun.com revealed many fabrications of events, outright lies, and historical errors in Frey's tale.?
???? Oprah had defended Frey's penninng of these errors, claiming that the book had "changed millions of lives," and that the "emotional meaning of the book" was more important than its factual content (anyone remember Tawana Brawley?).? However, her fans, spurred on by a concern that they had been duped, called, emailed, and harassed her enough to recant to the point where she brought Frey back on the show yesterday for a verbal harange worthy of Ted Kennedy taking on a right-wing nominee (except that Oprah was sober during the interrogation).?? And it doesn't help when even a NY Times editorialist realizes that there's something wrong with what Frey did in lying so blatantly in a memoir.??? So after her two week campaign of trying to defend Frey failed (she even called in during Frey's Larry King interview less than a week ago), she drug him back on the air to redirect her viewers anger away from the person who defends the liar?into?a public shaming of the liar himself.?
I feel duped," she said Thursday on her syndicated talk show. "But more importantly, I feel that you betrayed millions of readers."
It's nice to know that enough angry emails and calls can change Oprah's stance on a moral issue; now if we could only figure out some way to get the same result from people who support national health slavery.?