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You nailed it. It was all about her image and I'm reading that she was crushed that her reputation was torn down. Hey, once in how many years that she's been on tv? Shows you the power the consumer and the media have on getting "celebrities" to flip flop. Sounds like a page from the Kerry playbook.

Yes, and I realize: this had a political overtone to it, because Oprah's real "mistake" was to not tow the Dem Party line on this matter, as espoused by Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich. That was very disappointing to me, that she felt she had to flip-flop a la Kerry to get back in line with them.

I happen to sympathetic to those who worked at that clinic and had concerns about how their clinic was portrayed, but, again, surely the publisher had an obligation to do some investigating prior to publishing that book, and surely the publisher could have decided to market the book as fiction or with a disclaimer.

When Oprah previously said she relied on the publisher, wrongly as it turned out, I thought she had a much stronger case. Unfortunately, no one in the NYT really went after that publisher.

The writer wrote the best story he could, and he is at the mercy of the publisher's marketing plans. So, he was a pawn in a sense, but as Oprah and the NYT showed us, it's easier to dump on a pawn than on a powerful publisher.

PS I think this whole episode foreshadows the Dem Party's upcoming marketing line in elections, which I predict will be something like: "We are the party of TRUTH -- unlike the GOP." Kind of a hard sell, IMO, when you think back at Bill Clinton, Jayson Blair, and a host of other examples the Dem Party probably hopes everyone will have forgotten come Election Day. ("Hey everyone, just remember how we caught that scoundrel-receovered drug addict-author James Frey!")