Oprah is redeemed, but questions linger

Despite the public’s apparent willingness to live with lies tricked out as truth — embodied by reality shows, the government’s trumped-up evidence of “mushroom clouds” emanating from Iraq, and most recently by Frey — such faux facts have no place in nonfiction book publishing, journalism or government. This argument drew somber nods of agreement from Oprah, and a big round of applause from the audience at Harpo Studios.

Then again, very little of Thursday’s show was business-as-usual. The vehicle itself — Oprah holding herself accountable on the air, along with Frey and his publisher — represented a startling development in the remarkable 20-year-long run of “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”  Best of all, perhaps, was Oprah’s unwillingness to cut any slack to Frey's editor. After Talese lamely attempted to draw distinctions between memoir and nonfiction, Oprah abruptly told her: “I’m not buying that, that doesn’t wash with me.”

Veteran Oprah Show viewers can count on one hand the number of times that Winfrey has countenanced serious challenges to her way of thinking, to her opinions. More than that, regular viewers of the program, me included, know Oprah is a bit of a control freak. More than once has she semi-joked about “not liking surprises.”

Doing the right thing
So one can only imagine the atmosphere around Harpo Productions in Chicago following the Jan. 8 disclosure on the Web site, The Smoking Gun, that cast doubt on James Frey’s bestselling tale of his misspent youth. Oprah and her staff were still on holiday vacation as the story gained traction; her Jan. 11 call to “Larry King Live” happened days before the Harpo staff returned. 

Yet I like to imagine Oprah stalking the halls of her vast empire in Chicago’s South Side, seething and demanding answers. Woebetides any Harpo staffer who might have skirted ethical boundaries in their dealings with Talese and Frey.

And despite the heartrending disclosures from all sides on Thursday's show, we still don’t know how and why she came to select a two-year-old title as the first nonfiction pick for her powerful Book Club.

Still, it is significant, as Keith Olbermann of MSNBC observed on Thursday night's “Countdown,” that Winfrey did the right thing, and in a big, big way: Despite the personal humiliation she clearly felt, Oprah forced a long-overdue conversation about fact versus fiction in pop culture. More importantly, she sought to hold at least one publisher accountable for perhaps willingly blurring the line between the two. This is far from your typical daytime talk show fodder, or even a subject that gets much attention from serious news programs on a consistent basis — unless it concerns fabricating journalists like Stephen Glass or Jayson Blair.

Of course, it remains to be seen if the legions of Americans who continue to shell out money for Frey’s discredited memoir really do care about the line between fact and fiction. But Thursday’s broadcast made one thing abundantly clear: Oprah Winfrey, a former local TV journalist and troubled teen from a dirt-poor Mississippi town, has bigger cajones than most of the men elected to national office these days.

Amy Alexander has written commentary for the Washington Post, NPR and The Nation, and is co-author of “Lay My Burden Down: Suicide and the Mental Health Crisis Among African Americans.”

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