Oprah strikes a blow for truthiness

Jon Bonné Lifestyle Editor • Profile

I will later regret having ever typed these words, but here goes: Stephen Colbert was right. Truthiness reigns.

Last year, the Comedy Central host eschewed truth for “truthiness”: that which might not be literally true but just feels too good to resist. (In true truthiness form, the word itself not only wasn't coined by Colbert, but has been around since before Mark Twain invented fib-happy Huck Finn.  That only made Colbert defend it even harder.)

So when Oprah struck back Thursday at her disgraced book-club golden boy James Frey for the factual holes in his memoir, "A Million Little Pieces," it was a small (and belated) but bold nudge back out of the proud halls of truthiness.

“I really feel duped,” Oprah told a sheepish-looking Frey, “but more importantly I feel that you betrayed millions of readers.”

She offered an honest apology. And at first glance, it seemed like a bold turnaround from a woman who gave Larry King a jingle two weeks ago to defend Frey's mendacious ways, saying that the one-time drug addict “stepped out of that history to be the man he is today” — a bestselling author with a tenuous grasp on what the “non” in “nonfiction” could possibly mean.

But let's not get too excited here.  Oprah's success has always been built on defending the obvious (philanthropists good, philanderers bad). By endorsing Frey, she not only backed the wrong horse but in fact picked a donkey to win the third at Belmont, so after a long stretch of trying to avoid that fact, it was inevitable she would have to reverse course and give Frey his comeuppance.

That's just good business sense, and Harpo Productions is nothing if not a very well-run company. Plus, Oprah's already taking flak for her new book club pick, Elie Wiesel's “Night” — a brilliant book and one that's far more unimpeachable than Frey's, even though it has commonly been pegged somewhere between truth and fiction.

What's really troubling, though, isn't the length of time it took for Oprah to come around. It's how she, Frey and Frey's publisher defended the book to begin with.

MSNBC TV VIDEO Oprah confronts Frey about 'Pieces' Jan. 26: Talk show host Oprah Winfrey tells author James Frey that she felt ‘duped’ by misrepresentations in his book, “A Million Little Pieces,” during her show Thursday. MSNBC

Rather than reacting with shock or surprise when the allegations were documented in painstaking detail by investigative Web site The Smoking Gun, or even taking a politician's stance by saying that the allegations were disturbing but the truth would eventually be sorted out, Oprah shrugged the whole fracas off as “much ado about nothing.”

For a woman who prides herself on a true sense of empathy with her devotees, this was either the biggest case of a tin ear since “The Wizard of Oz” or a deviously brilliant move to place herself among the masses of Frey fans who themselves were in disbelief.

Even more unsettling was Frey's own response.  Rather than admitting that maybe he had tucked a fib or two into an otherwise fact-based book, he insisted that “the emotional truth is there,” essentially saying that no meddling fact could get in the way of his pain and suffering.

While Frey's editors were unwilling or unable to conduct the basic due diligence that would have torn his “emotional truth” to shreds, Oprah has the resources to check up on her book picks and ensure they're absolutely bulletproof. Why doesn't she?

That moment of truthiness deserves a big Colbertian thumbs up.

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