A Million Little Apologies

This is a departure from my usual format...writing about beauty products, but I just felt like I wanted to share my thoughts about Oprah's show with James Frey, author of "A Million Little Pieces". To catch you all up, James wrote this book as a memoir regarding his journey from massive drug and alcoholism to sobriety. The book was chosen as an Oprah's Book Club selection and, like most of those books, took off in a hurry on the best sellers' list. Oprah and her crew were all very taken with Jame's story as evidenced on the first show on which James appeared after everyone had finished reading the book. Fast forward a few months later and the watchdog website "The Smoking Gun" came forward reporting that James Frey had told several lies in his best seller. Apparently, James had distorted some of the actual events in order to dramatize the story a bit more (probably to make it more interesting to publishers). In any event, James came forward and admitted to doing so, but downplaying the whole debacle to make it look like it was really no big deal. On "Larry King", when he appeared to defend his reasonings for the lies, Oprah even called in to say that the message of the book was still valid. Apparently, she had major second thoughts about this (who knows why), but took the opportunity to apologize profusely for her mistake and then sat with James Frey, on her beautifully appointed leather couch and proceeded to rip him to shreds in more than a million little pieces. I actually found the whole thing rather embarrassing (it was televised live). She sitting there seething with anger while James appeared to hope that the couch upon which he sat would open up and swallow him. Oprah, in a great departure from her annoyingly unbiased self, went to great lengths to prove her point about the enormity of the lies that she had several videoed sound bites from reputable journalists from "The New York Times"(like they never lied). I actually ended up turning it off at one point because I found myself disgusted by the whole thing. What's worse is that all her other guests praised her for her bravery for coming forward and admitting her grave mistake in validating Jame's book even with it's lies. I have to say, I really think she got it right the first time. Afterall, James was still a major addict who had to hit rock bottom before getting and staying clean. Who couldn't learn a valuable lesson from that experience? I would love to know just how many other people who penned their memoirs, took the liberty to exaggerate and/or change a few names, details, etc. to either protect the innocent or make their story more marketable to publishers. In the end I think Oprah did herself a great injustice by taking the whole show to prove her point. She could have just made a simple statement with an apology and done a makeover show instead, which is probably the only other time I really watch her anyway.