To Tell The Truth--Million Little Pieces

[Lightning Rod]

Post Script

I just watched the Oprah show. James Frey was in the hot seat.

I've always loved Oprah. Who can help it? She has the face of a universal mother and she has more credibility than Walter Cronkite. And she has major audience. If Oprah says that she read the table of contents of any given book, the next morning it's on the NYT best seller list. She has immense credibility. I was glad to see her do the right thing today on her show and admit that she helped sell a lie to the American public.

I wrote a column last week about this subject.

http://www.studioeight.tv/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=6094

I was proud of Oprah for admitting her mistake and I admired her for calmly asking the author why he told bald-faced lies in his book. If it would have been me I would have bitch-slapped the weasely little punk all over the stage.

The only thing a writer or a journalist or a broadcaster has is his credibility. Oprah has built an amazing amount of credibility, perhaps more than any other public figure in history. When Oprah speaks, people listen closer than they do to E.F. Hutton.

I'm amazed that the greasy little wimp/wannabe gangsta had the nerve to come on the Oprah show again and stutter and stammer over his lies. I guess he thought it would sell more books. But Oprah had to protect the only asset that she has, the one that made her five billion bucks, her credibility. Frey threatened that with his false tale that Oprah helped to sell.

There are two reasons why this story touches me. One is because I happen to think that the truth makes a difference, and the other is that I am a real version of the person that James Frey claimed to be. I've got false teeth older than he is. I have spent more than twenty years of my life as a narcotics addict. I really went to prison for four years and three months. Smoking Gun can check the records on any of that. So, it's a bit personally insulting to watch a poseur like Frey make a million bucks selling a book that was a bunch of lies when I lived the real story.

I saw through the guys lies the instant that I read excerpts of the book describing Hazelden as if it were Abu Grahb. I had friends who were in Hazelden. They were friends whose parents had substantial money. It was not cheap. In fact, it is much more like The Betty Ford Center than it is like GitBay. It's much like a four star hotel with counseling sessions included.

So, listening to a weekend warrior like Frey tell his picaresque tales of woe and degradation is slightly lost on me. I know too much to be taken in by it. I also know that this is not the first time nor will it be the last time that big publishing or the press or other media sells us a bunch of lies dressed up like the truth.

But I was proud of Oprah for standing up and calling a liar a liar. Now if she could only get George W. Bush in the hot seat.

[stilltrucking]

the whole damn country is sick, no doubt
let the healing begin

there it is
amen

the problem is the diagnosis
to the wacko preachers it is our sexual immorality that is making us sick, the burning issues are gay marriage and abortion. God is going to smight us for our wicked ways.

Meanwhile the band plays on and we steam full speed ahead towards an iceberg of greed. But consumer confidence is high, the economy is sound and it says in god we trust on the money.

sorry clay I think i got off the subject, all I can say about Ohpra's book club is "If six was nine"

[jimboloco]

maybe Oprah should have Kinky Friedman on her show.

He supports both gay marraige and prayer in the schools. He says you can pray to any god you want to. He says they should call the ten commandments the ten suggestions and that could be in the schools too.

jesus Firecracker says thst she writes fictional autobiography, but it is admittedly so.


I've had revised biography written about myself, in
Days of Decision (an oral hx of c.o.'s in the military during the Nam War)the chronology of my refusal to fly was entirely rewritten, altho it was essentially true. It doesn't concern me now.

jesus if i win the lottery maybe i'll check into the mountains and rivers zen center in the catskills.a month long retreat.
me needs a break from pot
pot needs a break from me

to tell the truth
we'll see who'se right
dumbya or ritterman

[picasso]

while i believe some of what frey said was made up to make a better story, i also believe that he was an addict and went through recovery. LR i would have thought you to see this too. also when you are going through rehab and detox you do see shit and not remember shit. there are parts of that book that i just don't think he made up.

i also read somewhere that he presented it as fiction and was rejected some 75 some odd times before his current (or ex current) publisher picked it up and said "we'll market it as non fiction...it will sell."

granted it was frey's decision in the end to publish it as so. i thought it was a good book and more importantly the style in which is was written was great for me. i've been waiting for someone to get published who wrote like that. limited punctuation. no quotation marks. stream of consciousness almost. i see this in poets and on message boards like this one but you dont' see it much in novels and i think sometimes inserting a comma or sticking to perfect grammar makes you lose the point. (another thing some moderators of poet message boards that will remain nameless do that bugs the shit out of me...don't correct my fucking grammar!) i haven't seen a good example of this since kerouac. who also, i might point out, made up shit in his memoirs quite often. yet he is revered as a beatnic god and frey is drawn over the coals.

i get the whole truth thing, but at the same time, he had america interested in books. something that doesn't happen very often anymore.

[picasso]

also, i think oprah is waaaaay too fucking full of herself for her own good.