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Oprah Winfrey takes “A Million Little Pieces” James Frey, (gifted writer and admitted ne’er do well), to task for being a gifted ne’er do well.

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“James Frey is here and I have to say it is difficult for me to talk to you because I feel really duped. But more importantly, I feel that you betrayed millions of readers. I think it’s such a gift to have millions of people to read your work and that bothers me greatly. So now, as I sit here today I don’t know what is true and I don’t know what isn’t.” – Oprah Winfrey to her audience and author, ex-addict James Frey.

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“That book is so fantastical, I will say, that, really, that’s not washing with me. But I just want to know because [this show is] live. So what did you do legally to make sure? Did you vet it?” – Oprah Winfrey to Random House Publisher Nan Talese on Frey’s “A Million Little Pieces”

A question of integrity – or – pure theater?

For the record, I never read this book – never was drawn to it. Seemed like another solopsistic narcissistic post -post -post-modern trip into fatuous american-hood. (If it’s great, tell me.)

But a lot of people did read it, and a lot of people liked it. Really liked. Were moved by. Took it to heart¹.

And isn’t that the purpose of literature – to move you, to get you past yourself and to experience connection with the larger world – or with a part of the world you never knew existed.

Who is James Frey? He’s not a great historical figure. He’s not a political figure. He’s not a journalist telling the story of the struggling millions. Who is he? Just another fatso, overdrugged american – but with an imagination and a story to tell.

And he told it well, I’d guess, based on sales and popularity. I’d also guess that the writing was moving to Ms. Winfrey. He did that part of writing right. So what did he get wrong?

Well, he’s clearly a strange guy – maybe a liar with an addict’s personality (wow, imagine that) to not have come out from the start and said “This is based on real events, but I’ve changed some to reflect or transmit a greater emotional reality.” or some such thing.

I don’t know much about the bio business. I don’t know if it’s easier to sell a crazy, wild, ‘it’s all true’ auto-biography, versus a crazy, wild ‘I made it up’ work of fiction. I’m just a little nauseated by the self-righteousness of the media response. It’s a bizarre kind of scapegoating.

We accept so many lies as truths on a daily basis – (and here I will invoke my right to talk about my work) – I have provided piles of evidence about the world’s greatest religion (the sex=death one – but just for whom we say it does) –

The 9/11 people have their pile of truth, equally unnerving,

the peak oil people have theirs,

the JFK and trilateral commission folks have theirs,

the CIA/crack connection folks have theirs –

The School of the Americans, the Panama Deception, the Invasion of Timor, the bombing of Cambodia, and on and on..

But very few people look at the big fat ruinious lies these piles of evidence point to. Why? For lack of interest in overturning a paradigm, or a lack of courage to see how ethnocentric, tribal and ugly we still can be.

So we pick this one as the horror of horrors. Because it’s the worst thing that ever happened? No, clearly not. We pick it because It’s a lie we can stand to look at.

Right on the front page – Revealed as a Lie. Not 9/11, not AIDS, not Iraq, CIA, JFK, Oil, et al..

No, no, no and no. Nope.

Just one guy – James Frey.

An amazing thing. Fascinating, really.

Should we feel angry because he duped a lot of people? Well, I’m not sure he did – he performed his job. Tell the story, make it moving. Sell books.

He wasn’t writing a self-help book. He’s not a journalist. He performed his societal role. ‘Make us feel something – something that we don’t have to do much about, so we can have a catharsis for all the evil that we fear and ignore.’

Now he’ll perform another – Scapegoat. He’ll bear our toxic shame for all our dislocated fear and dishonesty.

If we’re supposed to be angry at media that peddles gratuitous misinformation, we should storm the offices of US Weekly and the Star, demanding transparency.

He wasn’t writing a magnum opus on curing drug addicion. He’s a junkie with talent. He was selling his junk.

If we’re going to be angry, we might as well be angry with the human species, for so easily embracing what’s tawdry and easy, verus what requires deep analysis.

From the point of view of theology or mythology, or social contruction –

We live in a culture without any guiding myths. As we always have, we bow to authority; we weave our belief systems, not out of observable reality, but out of projected needs.

The Right believes in government; the Left believes in the progressive media; Christians believe in the church; Liberals believe in the scientific authority. Each entity is afforded a power through non-rational group-fantasy, far greater than it actually merits.

Human beings always project their personal and group needs (usually unidentified or subconcious) onto remote figures – parents, kings, leaders.

We like to pretend that we don’t. We like to believe that we’re conscious; engaged; debating issues. But deep analysis of any condition is a rare event among individuals, let alone whole societies.

We in the West, who have more or less abandoned the larger mythologies of our predecessors (one of the three abrahamic religions) are constantly re-inventing idolotry. We do it to movie stars, pop singers and authors. We do it to Oprah.

Oprah isn’t a just a tv personality, she’s a Superstar. She is revered – worshipped – by her fans. She is a cult figure herself.

What would happen if you put Oprah on the hot-seat about orgazations she supported? Beliefs she holds? She’s a great deal more honest, in the sense of self-disclosure, than James Frey, no doubt. But she’s human. How would she fare?

– Saint Oprah ….

– and the scapegoat….er, I mean…dragon

– Oprah in one of the few remaining photos of her when she was still a lowly human

Couldn’t we make ourselves feel disgust with almost anyone, if we pushed hard enough at their belief systems? If we hunted them for hypocracy?

What we allow ourselves to know at any given moment, is entirely different from what’s ‘true’.

I think it’s clear at present that we not only do not know ‘Who’ to believe – we do not know ‘What’ to believe. What story, what idea, what mythology is our guiding principle?

Truth? (no, profit). Democracy? (no, freedom to purchase and be fat).

We’re in a cultural free-fall (maybe a dead-fall). We have no center. The only thing we agree on at present is spending. Spending is good. Spending is freedom.

Buy something, you’ll feel better.

(I don’t have a specific solution in mind either, though I would lean toward generating an understanding of the earth as a living thing (a parent or grandparent, father or mother) that we have a responsiblity to care for, above all else. – Topic for another discussion, perhaps.)

All in all, Oprah could just as easily have gone on her show and told her army of Oprah-matons –

“Hey, that was a good book, wasn’t it? Turned out the writer made some of it up. Does that change the way we feel about the writing? Does that change the quality of the story-telling? Do we like him less (we probably do). Are we still moved by the story (we probably are).”

She could ask: “What does that tell us about the fundemental nature of being human? That we like stories, we live for stories, we live BY stories? That truth isn’t simply the summation of Facts? That truth is beyond the specifics? Hmmmm….interesting….”

“Okay – what’s next on the list – Here’s a fun one – “Night” by Elie Wiesel. That’s been vetted, no worries there.”

But instead she chose to shame him, humorlessly. Mercilessly. For telling a good story.

He wasn’t claiming to be a newswriter. It was his own fuzzy backside he was talking about, after all. (If he’s a creep, then he’s a creep who wrote a book that millions loved before they bothered to figure out whether they should worship him or not.)

So she shames him, and regains the worship of her audience.

Now she’s been the good mother to all her girls. Protected them from the bad man.

Next week, she’ll have on some other actor/performer/superstar, and they can ‘get real’ about any number of issues that they’ve never experienced, and evoke all sorts of feelings in the viewing audience, so we can all have our catharsis.

It’s a passion play. (And I don’t mean the Oprah Winfrey Show. I mean all of it).

Always was, always will be.

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¹ Some good amazon.com reviews and critiques on ‘Pieces’