James Freying to a Million Little Pieces in Oprah's Pan

James:  I don't feel like I conned everyone.
Oprah:  You don't.
James:  No.
Oprah:  Why?
James:  Because I still think the book is about drug addiction and alcoholism and nobody's disputing that I was a drug addict and an alcoholic. And it's about the battle to overcome that.
Oprah:  No, but I remember when you were here the last time in the after show a woman stood up and said, 'You know, after reading this book and seeing you coming through what you came through, the way you did, and you having the attitude that you did makes me feel that I can do it too.' I think you presented a false person.

I've never heard anyone make a fuss over how you get the horse to the water.
Did James Frey lie? Yes, he did.
If his lies were never exposed, who would have gotten hurt?
Maybe the 1% idiotic portion of the world's population that would have attempted to get root canals without anaesthesia.
Has the exposure of his lies hurt anyone? Yes!
Now you've given 5% of the actual addicts that read the book a lame excuse not to recover.
They can now say to themselves and others, because we addicts do like our poor-me stories:

I thought I had found some hope and it turned out to be a farce.
No one as f*cked up as I am could actually get any help.
They'll be holding on to this little wound for another ten years before they check themselves into a program. The ultimate culprit(s) in this entire mess is/are The Smoking Gun. They've accomplished nothing but the tearing down of an already troubled man.
James Frey proved something to all of us.
He proved something by first trying to publish the story as fiction and then being rejected.
He proved that some sicko wouldn't accept such a sick story unless it actually happened.
In other words, Frey's writing abilities were probably never even considered and horrible things have to happen to someone, somewhere in order for the publishers to publish and the readers to read. Shame on us all?
[DISCLAIMER: all my statistics are fictional any resemblance to real or imagined statistics are purely coincidental]

P.S. Oprah I absolutely love you, your show and O magazine, but unless I happen to have the one defective laptop on the planet that for some odd reason cannot handle your web site, you must fire whoever you got doing it now and start looking for someone over here. Got that durn'd gap all on the right side and the ads don't show for... then every story is broken up into a million little links instead of just printing the durn'd article on one durn'd page...
posted by Lady Ursula at 6:37 AM