Replies

chicagotribune.com

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-0601270195jan27,1,190784.column?coll=chi-news-col

Oprah knows good TV, and that's no lie

John Kass

January 27, 2006

Completely Exaggerated News -- Flush with victory after verbally slapping the heck out of a drug addict on her national television program, Oprah! Winfrey will continue her "Stop the Fibbers Tour" next week in New Orleans, where she's scheduled to visit Mayor Ray Nagin and demand he make a proper chocolate shake. Earlier, she confronted Michael Jackson over his decision to wear what looked like a burqa during a visit in the Middle East. "You're wearing a burqa? I feel duped. From now on, I'm not going to let anybody embellish on my show! Even you. I'm mad as hell and I just won't take it anymore!"

Oprah! didn't say any of that. I was just kidding. I made it up, and I'm not even a drug addict memoir writer. I wouldn't want Oprah! to get upset with me. She doesn't even know my name, and let's keep it that way.

The last thing I'd need is for her to ask me on her show so she could kick my butt like she did that lying drug addict on Thursday.

I wouldn't know what's worse: Being asked by a Chicago Outfit boss to come to his house for a late spaghetti dinner and when you get there it's just the two of you and the floor is covered with plastic tarp; or making Oprah! angry and then she asks you on her show.

She's the queen of media, and you can tell this by all the columnists rushing to write how brave she is for inviting that lying drug addict on her show, then beating him up for being a lying drug addict, and praising her for being the brave one.

Isn't that what drug addicts do? Aren't they liars by the nature of their addiction? And when they're humiliated on national TV by someone who defended them only a few days before, they might get nervous and call their "pusher-man" and ask for more drugs.

That might make a good show too.

Still, Oprah!'s the brave one. She's brave. She's brave. There, I said it. I don't mind having mayors or governors upset with me. And I didn't mind teasing First Grandma Barbara Bush for making cracks about how the New Orleans poor were better off in the Astrodome than in poverty back home. But I wouldn't ever be foolish enough to get on Oprah!'s bad side. If she asked me to put on a puffy swashbuckler shirt and a Scottish kilt and dance, I'd have to pull my black socks up and start stretching.

By now most of you know what she did, and how President Bush angered millions of Oprah! fans by daring to hold a news conference during her show, thinking he should talk about nuclear Iran and the troubles with Iraq. And figured he didn't have to release those incriminating photographs of him smiling, his arm around crooked Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff, because the country would be too preoccupied, eagerly anticipating a drug addict butt-kicking.

"I think he did it on purpose. Oh, that Bush!" said a woman in the lobby of a stately gothic building on Michigan Avenue. "I wanted to see Oprah beat up that lying addict."

You've got to know the story by now. She put "A Million Little Pieces," the memoir of lying drug addict James Frey, on her Oprah! book club, and it became a best seller. Then it turned out he lied throughout the book. Then Frey showed up on Larry King (another tough interviewer) and Oprah! called in to defend Frey, saying truth didn't matter as much as feeling.

Then she had Frey on her show Thursday, and she kicked his behind. Consider this from a ChicagoTribune.com story written by reporter Patrick T. Reardon:

"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's true and I don't know what isn't."

According to Reardon, who watched the program (I was foolishly interested in a nuclear Iran), Oprah! appeared close to tears when Frey admitted that Lilly, a character in the book, didn't kill herself by hanging, but slit her wrists.

So Oprah! ripped into Frey some more and he licked his lips some more. That lip-licking detail really got to me. You know when a drug addict licks his lips on Oprah!, he's finished.

Recently, though, Oprah! called up the Larry King program and defended Frey from charges he was a liar. Details, shmeetails, she almost said, according to a transcript.

Oprah!: "Whether or not the car's wheels rolled up on the sidewalk or whether he hit the police officer or didn't hit the police officer is irrelevant to me. What is relevant is that he was a drug addict who spent years in turmoil, from the time he was 10 years old, drinking and tormenting himself and his parents. And, out of that, stepped out of that history to be the man he is today, and to take that message to save other people and allow them to save themselves. That's what's important about this book and his story."

King: "One quick thing, Oprah. So, therefore, you hold him no ill will, have no less regard, and still recommend the book?"

Oprah!: "Yes. Yes."

But now she feels duped. And many of us media people are rushing to her defense as she protects her brand. But we're not duped. Honest.

jskass@tribune.com

This whole incident is receiving way too much media attention, but what I find interesting is that now, only now, are some people starting to ask more relevant questions, such as: What was this author's agent thinking when he pitched the book as a) fiction to some publishers and b) non-fiction to other publishers? As I said above in my previous post, this author was a pawn in the powerhouse game of publishing. Here's the latest from today's NYT:

Questions for Others in Frey Scandal

By EDWARD WYATT

Published: January 28, 2006

In all of the attention focused on James Frey and his book "A Million Little Pieces" in recent weeks, two main characters in the drama — Mr. Frey's literary agent and the book's editor — have largely escaped scrutiny.

But yesterday, in the wake of Mr. Frey's appearance on the Oprah Winfrey television program on Thursday, a number of people in the publishing business suggested it was time for Kassie Evashevski, Mr. Frey's agent, and Sean McDonald, who edited both "A Million Little Pieces" and Mr. Frey's follow-up, "My Friend Leonard," to talk about their roles in selling and shaping the books.

"I want to know, where is Kassie in this?" said Morgan Entrekin, the publisher of Grove/Atlantic Books, in a telephone interview. "What did she know and when did she know it? And how could Sean McDonald not have had questions about this book?"

Mr. McDonald edited both "A Million Little Pieces" for Doubleday, and "My Friend Leonard" after moving to the Riverhead Books imprint of the Penguin Group.

Nan A. Talese, who heads an imprint of Random House's Doubleday division, appeared with Mr. Frey to defend the editing of the book, but she did not work closely with Mr. Frey on it. As the publisher, however, she bears the ultimate responsibility for it.

Ms. Evashevski and Mr. McDonald have not returned repeated phone calls seeking comment since the Smoking Gun Web site first reported on Mr. Frey's deceptions on Jan. 8; neither responded to additional requests for comment yesterday. ...

The questions about how publishers should deal with the truth or falsity of the books they publish are likely to continue to resound through the book business. Yesterday, publishers, literary agents and booksellers said that, in the wake of Ms. Winfrey's condemnation of Mr. Frey and Doubleday, they expected memoirs and other works of nonfiction to come under increasing scrutiny before and after publication.

Some publishers said they would continue to rely on authors and their literary agents to stand behind their works, even as they occasionally press them for details on some of their claims....

...While it was too soon to tell if Thursday's encounter with Ms. Winfrey would l slow sales of the book, Doubleday said yesterday it had decided that future editions of "A Million Little Pieces" will not carry the Oprah's Book Club logo. ...

During a second segment of Ms. Winfrey's show, which ran yesterday on "Oprah After the Show," on the Oxygen cable channel, Mr. Frey said, as he has in the past, that he and Ms. Evashevski, who works at Brillstein-Grey Entertainment in Los Angeles, had offered his book to some publishers as a novel and to others as a memoir.

"The book went to different publishing houses as different things," Mr. Frey said, according to a transcript of the show provided by Ms. Winfrey's production company. "It did go to some as fiction and some as nonfiction."

Asked if the same agent was telling one publisher the book was fiction and another that it was true, Mr. Frey replied, "All through the same agent, yes." That remark drew a collective sigh of disappointment from the audience.

In the "After the Show" segment, Ms. Talese said that her company always understood that Mr. Frey's manuscript was intended as a memoir and that she would not have published it as a novel. To which Roy Peter Clark, a senior scholar and professor at the Poynter Institute, a journalism program in St. Petersburg, Fla., replied, "The fact that you would not publish it as a novel is influencing writers everywhere: How can I make a million dollars?"...