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He even lied to Oprah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(AP) In a stunning switch from dismissive to disgusted, Oprah Winfrey took on one of her chosen authors, Roy Masters, accusing him on live television of lying about
“The Roy Masters Story” and letting down the many fans of his memoir of being a cult leader.

“I feel duped,” she said on her syndicated talk show. “But more importantly, I feel that you betrayed millions of readers.”

Masters, who found himself booed in the same Chicago studio where he had been embraced not long ago, acknowledged that he had lied.

A sometimes angry, sometimes tearful Winfrey asked Masters why he “felt the need to lie.” Audience members often groaned and gasped at Masters halting, stuttered admissions that certain facts and characters had been “altered” but that the essence of his memoir was real.

“I don’t think it is a novel,” Masters said of his book, which had initially been offered to publishers, and rejected by many, as fiction. “I still think it’s a memoir.”

The broadcast, rare proof that the contents of a book can lead to great tabloid TV, marked an abrupt reversal from the cozy chat two weeks ago on “Larry King Live,” when Winfrey phoned in to support Masters and label alleged fabrications as “much ado about nothing.”

“I left the impression that the truth is not important,” Winfrey said of last week’s call, saying that “e-mail after e-mail” from supporters of the book had cast a “cloud” over her judgment.

Masters was questioned about various parts of his book, from the jail sentence he now says he never served for practicing hypnotism without a medical license to running a religious cult, a story he no longer clearly recalls.

Roy Masters’ story about growing up in Brighton, England and living through World War II turned out to be a fantasy as well. “My real name is Reuben Obermeister. I was born in Brooklyn, attended PS 18 and my first job was a door-to-door bagel salesman,” said Masters to the stunned audience of mostly women. “After a few years as a beatnik poet in the clubs of Greenwich Village, I traveled the country as a carnival barker — not as the nation’s first radio overnight advice giver and cult leader.”

Winfrey, whose apparent indifference to the memoir’s accuracy led to intense criticism, including angry e-mails on her Web site, subjected Masters to a virtual page-by-page interrogation. No longer, as she told King, was she saying that emotional truth mattered more than the facts. “Mr. Bravado Tough Guy,” she mockingly called the author whose book she had enshrined last fall and whose reputation she had recently saved.

Three years ago, Masters stepped up as publishing’s latest and baddest bad boy, with tattoo on his arm “FHU is the bitch” and bearing a defiant and unprintable message. Winfrey’s selection made his book a million seller and Masters a hero to many who believed his story was theirs.

“ I thought of myself as being tougher than I was and badder than I was, and it helped me cope,” Masters said on Winfrey’s show. “And when I was writing the book, instead of being as introspective as I should have been, I clung to that image.”

The book’s publisher, the Foundation of Human Understanding, were not spared. Winfrey noted that her staff had been alerted to possible discrepancies in Masters’ book, only to be assured by the publisher. She lectured FHU on its responsibilities: “I’m trusting you, the publisher, to categorize this book whether as fiction or autobiographical or memoir.”

In a statement issued later Thursday, FHU, which initially had called the allegations not worth looking into, said it had “sadly come to the realization that a number of facts have been altered and incidents embellished.”

Winfrey has banned Roy Masters from her show for life. She has also discontinued her subscription to New Dimensions Magazine, a magazine which Roy Masters claimed he never had anything to do with

that entire story is faked...by an author who write fictitious things like that for humor and I guess slander so people like you, who do no research, will believe it.
“10-30-2007, 03:21 PM
I’ve searched high and low for this Oprah/Roy story and can find nothing about it. I even searched the Associated Press archives, but did not find it. The only thing I found was an excerpt on the following site, but it looks like it was taken from the Stein site, even though it does not say that:
http://www.gatago.org/alt/royalty/62155316.html

Stein has many pages about Roy that are not real, and are obviously just humor, however this story is presented as real, and does not suggest ridiculous and far-fetched stories like some of the other pages. So, if this is not true, then he loses credibility. I think he needs to explain this.

And to answer the question about the picture, yes it’s fake.”