I've read about it and Tivo'd it, but I just can't bring myself to watch Oprah, even when she's getting all Cleopatra Jones on James "No, Really" Frey. Plus, I'm starting to feel bad for him, or at least as bad as I can feel for a chronic liar and a millionaire with the vocab skills of a 9th-grade dropout who has died. Apparently Oprah brought in Joel Stein, Frank Rich, and Maureen Dowd to help her pile on Frey. Like some kind of cosmic convergence of complete jagoffs. I'm amazed their gravitational fields didn't send them careening into each other and exploding into a... dare I say it?
Posted by Jim Treacher at January 27, 2006 11:02 AMIt was pretty wild when Frey beat an audience member into unconsciousness with his penis, then used a ballpoint pen to pop out his own eyeball.
At least, that's the way I remember it.
Posted by: Hubris at January 27, 2006 12:27 PMPoniewozic quotes Stein: "...when the bigger truth is true."
The whole miracle of this thing is that Oprah came to her senses and realized that there is no higher truth than truth. Which is great. There are certainly times in the the past where she HASN'T held literal truth above of her scented-candle feelings.
Posted by: Crid at January 27, 2006 12:39 PMI tuned in halfway through for about five minutes. For the life of me, I can't figure out why he agreed to show up except for the publicity (and I guess there really is none that is bad; his book climbed a couple of notches on Amazon the next day).
Posted by: pete at January 27, 2006 01:25 PMThere was talk that the publisher had recalled the book, but apparently not:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Frey
Still, if you were a publisher and you could choose just one person in the world not to piss off, wouldn't you go with Oprah?
Posted by: Crid at January 27, 2006 01:55 PMOprah, Stein, Rich, Dowd.
That these four people can congregate and not be struck down by the heavens proves that God does not exist. Or that his patience truly is infinite. Or that he's evil.
It's a question of the ages.
Posted by: Sortelli at January 27, 2006 06:52 PMDon't worry - this wasn't any change of form for the Big O. From what I hear she made the thing another episode of "Oprah: It's All About Me" by stressing repeatedly how important it was to correct the errors of these charlatans so all the folks in Oprahland won't be led astray.
Posted by: Russell Wardlow at January 29, 2006 12:51 PMOkay, it's too late to add comments about the Joel Stein "experience" but I see that you mentioned Joel Stein in this post so I'm hoping this isn't considered too far out of bounds.
Do you think that Joel Stein wrote his "F the army" column as a sort of mea culpa for dissing the diva of anti-war snark, Maureen Dowd? After all, that earlier column probably seriously miffed his Westside liberal posse, he desperately needed to earn back their respect. I'm just wondering.
Posted by: Alastair at January 29, 2006 10:11 PMStein lusts for MoDo. He craves her giant feet and seeks to ply her with wine.
Posted by: Sortelli at January 30, 2006 02:08 AMThat Steadman character must be an ass-man, right?
Posted by: Rob at January 30, 2006 01:55 PM