Posted on 01/23/2006 11:21:42 PM PST by Utah Girl
Of course Oprah took the side of veracity-challenged author James Frey, author of “A Million Little Pieces. She is in the feelings business, and you don’t succeed in her line of work by favoring facts over deeply felt but untrue stories. The tears that she and her staffers shed while reading Frey’s largely concocted tale of crime and addiction made the book important to her. When Frey appeared on CNN’s Larry King Live, Oprah made things worse by phoning in to say, “the underlying message of redemption in James Frey’s memoir still resonates with me.” Apparently this meant that she was so moved by the book that she doesn’t care that it contains many untruths. Resonance makes lying defensible.
She has a lot of company. Bill Bastone, the talented investigative reporter whose web site, The Smoking Gun” broke the news about Frey, says 40 percent of email consists of “How dare you” messages defending Frey. Patti Davis, President Reagan’s daughter, expressed sympathy for Frey, and some bloggers have abandoned coherence in order to come down on Frey’s side (“ I believe that much of his fabrications are collective memories, splintered memories and probably recovered memories,” one wrote.) Various publishing types help justify the fraud by arguing that memoirs are never a hundred percent accurate and almost all autobiographies contain evasions and lies. Doubleday pointed to the “overall reading experience” of Frey’s work, which is probably better than saying, “It’s a pack of lies and you’ll love it.” In 1972 the writer Clifford Irving went to prison for creating and selling a fake autobiography of Howard Hughes. Now Oprah and his publisher might defend him as an emotional truth teller.
The willingness to accept “emotional truth,” even when packaged in lies, is hardly new.
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
"Emotional Truth" I like the ring of that.(sarc)
Unfortunately, I know many liberals here in NY that operate on that principle also.
*Oprah* alert.
It's a liberal thing, "fake but accurate"...
It's easy to be anonymous on the Internet. I'm guilty of flaming comments (2-3), but I felt so bad after my statements. Now I just ignore provocative comments and try to stick to the facts. That can drive the liberals just as crazy.
Nonsense. To even think so would be a hate crime, somewhere.
Now, off to the sensitivity retraining camps with you...
/sarc
It must be a liberal thing. They want some stuff to be so true that they willfully ignore the facts. Makes me crazy at times.
I have a friend who is the exact opposite of me politically (think crunchy granola hippy environmentalist type.) We were talking about pollution and cars and fuel. She is convinced the car companies do have alternate ways of fueling cars, they just want to make more money off oil and bespoil the earth. She was complaining about potential drilling in ANWR and the status of caribou herds (they're all going to die from the evil drilling.) I asked her if she knew what happened to the caribou herds when the Alaskan pipeline was built. Me:"The caribou herds increased five-fold. They were getting warm by the pipeline and were reproducing like crazy." She looked at me and finally said "I don't want to hear that." OK. (Her greatest fears are that we don't have enough potable water to drink and air to breath.)
Looks like the ole "fake bit accurate" syndrome to me. Eh Dan? Eh Jimmy? Then there's the ole "no controlling legal authority syndrome", made famous by algorejr.
At least in your state, the majority vote correctly.
Ever hear any news about Elizabeth Smart? I still pray for her to have a truly happy and blessed life.
I used to belong to an online Oprah book club. After a few years I unsubscribed, I got tired of her one theme book selections. I think I read the first three books in her original book club and then would only read the other selections that we picked as a group. When those selections started being something I would prefer not to read, I unsubscribed.
One of the members was a liberal librarian who would read "My Two Mommies" to kindergarten kids without any parental permission. Her rationalization was that most kids wouldn't get the picture about homosexuality, so the kids needed to have a "neutral" portrayal of two mommies or two daddies in a so-called family. The war on that view was a costly one to the group's membership list. However, the worst war was the one where someone innocently said that America was a great country. Oh my.
Good grief. That's just AWFUL.
Oprah seems to think she has papal infallibility. She owes her "worshipers" a lot more scrutiny in the books she recommends and people she crowns as GOOD.
Not much news about Elizabeth Smart, other than she seems to be doing well. Her parents have stayed active in the Amber Alert Alert program here. I heard that Elizabeth participated in a harp concert last autumn.
Her kidnappers still haven't gone on trial. Wanda Barzee is in the Utah State Mental Hospital, I think her lawyers are arguing that she shouldn't have to take her medication to make her sane (she is mentally ill.) In July, 2005, Brian David Mitchell was also found not competent to stand trial for Elizabeth's kidnapping.
Utah law is that they will stay in the mental hospital until they are "cured", then they will face trial. There is no innocent by reason of insanity plea in Utah (thank goodness.)
Thank you!
You have a real problem when you cannot protect the truth because some powerful people in your society embrace and promote lies (The end justifies the means). In my mind, this has a connection to the suicide bomber who is willing to die himself in order to kill people. Those who lie and defend lies are probably liars themselves and want their own "illusions" to be accepted and promoted by society in a way, of course, which will enhance their wealth and power. And, if the lies are discovered..Well, not big deal..They were valuable as "emotional truth." Someone has said it already..GOD HELP AMERICA!
Makes me want to see Akira Kurosawa'a Rashomon again.
That was so, like, you know, unkind of you to confuse your friend like that with the FACTS. You should've known she couldn't handle it and kept it to yourself. You're so mean.
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