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The following editorial appeared in the Chicago Tribune on Friday, Jan. 27:
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So it's official: Those troublemakers at thesmokinggun.com - the Web site that blew James Frey's cover on Jan. 8 with a report headlined "The Man Who Conned Oprah" - were right on the mark.
Under cross-examination by Oprah Winfrey, formerly his biggest defender, Frey admitted on television Thursday that he made up details about "every one of the characters" in his best-selling memoir about life as a drug addict.
Just about everybody had already come to that conclusion, and in some ways Thursday's show seemed less about setting the record straight than about rehabilitating Winfrey's credibility. But that's beside the point. It's a great day for truth and justice when one of the world's most admired and influential women stands before millions of viewers and says, "I made a mistake."
It was a big one.
"A Million Little Pieces" rocketed to the top of the best-seller list last fall after Winfrey selected it for her book club. In short order it became required reading for recovering addicts, who identified with Frey's struggle for sobriety. Many readers felt a deep sense of betrayal when they learned the "memoir" played fast and loose with facts.
Even after Frey confessed to fabricating "a handful" of details, Winfrey outrageously insisted the book's message of recovery and redemption was still valid and declared the growing backlash "much ado about nothing."
"I believe in James," she declared.
But Winfrey had a change of heart once she'd had time to think and read her e-mails, and by the time she got Frey back on her show Thursday, she was good and mad. "I feel duped," she told him indignantly. "I don't know what is the truth and what isn't."
Picking at the familiar inconsistencies, Winfrey got Frey to acknowledge that his girlfriend, Lilly, couldn't have hanged herself while he was in prison because he never went to prison. And Lilly didn't actually hang herself, if there really was a Lilly; she slit her wrists.
And those two root canals without Novocain? Frey described that episode in such excruciating detail that some readers had to turn the page, but Winfrey's own dentist told her it couldn't have happened that way, and now she demanded: Did it?
"I honestly have no idea," Frey said.
Well, there you have it. The man has no idea what the truth is. We thought not. You have to think he was a little closer to understanding by the time Winfrey got through with him, but just to be safe we'll never again give him so much as the benefit of the doubt.
But you have to hand it to Oprah. After digging in her heels to defend a liar, she got up in front of the whole world and said, "I was wrong."
And now she's right.
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(c) 2006, Chicago Tribune. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service.
