Don't Take It Personally, James: It's The "Business" of Being Oprah
LIFE ON PLANET
OPRAH IS LOOKING PRETTY GOOD THIS SWEEPS PERIOD.
First
"endurance artist" David Blaine breaks a world record on O's show. He held his breath in a water-filled sphere for 17 minutes and 4 seconds, breaking the previous record of 16 minutes and 32 seconds, set Feb. 10 by Switzerland's
Peter Colat, according to the
Associated Press.
Then the Divine Miss O wooed Scientologist A-lister
Tom Cruise back on her couch. What went unnoticed by the media is that, this time, the mountain went to Moses, or in this case,
one of Scientology's highest Operating Thetans. I didn't catch what Tom was selling but be sure he wasn't just there to make nice-nice.
Such is the dance of dependence between Hollywood and America's number one marketer, The Oprah Winfrey show. Cruise's appearance also allowed Oprah to practice her future permanent gig: that of celebrity interviewer, taking the place of
Baaba Walters when she retires from ABC.
And, speaking of Baaba, she sold herself a couple thousand books
by revealing an extramarital affair with -- shocking! -- former moderate Republican
U.S. Senator Edward Brooke on yet another of O's sweep show.
All this and May has only begun! Kudos to the Grand Wizard of multimedia!
Yet, getting far less play by America's corporate media, is
a story in the new Vanity Fair which adds yet another chapter to the sordid tale of
James Frey, the pariahic neo-memoirist of "Million Little Pieces."
Frey and his editor,
Nan Talese, claim they were lured with lies into doing the second TOWS show during which Oprah gave her famous dressing-down by telling them the show's topic was on "Truth in America.'' Which would have been a dead giveaway to this former TV producer, but maybe not to Frey: after all, hadn't Oprah mightily defended him on
Larry King? It was mere weeks earlier when Oprah told
Larry King Live that the revelation that his book was primarily fiction "seem[ed] to be much ado about nothing."
It was only after the
New York Times' Frank Rich and the
Washington Post's Richard Cohen took the Wizard to task for her indifference to truth that she backtracked and stabbed Frey with her tongue.
Frey claims that after the verbal lashing, Oprah told him, "I know it was rough, but it's just business." Oprah indignantly denies the claim, saying, "In 22 years of doing this show, I have never said to anyone, 'I know it was rough, but it's just business. This was beyond business. This was about the trust I share with the audience who faithfully supports the Book Club and buys the books I recommend."
Surely there is some irony in that statement? When the O show sent out press releases after Tiger Woods called himself a "Cablanasian" on her show, was that about her audience, or business? When Oprah
gave away new cars, surely that's more about the "business" of being omnipotent than promoting Pontiac's new G-6 midsize 2005 sports sedan? When she says it's all for her audience, she sounds a little bit like
Barack Obama saying,
"We are the ones we've been waiting for." But really, Oprah, the talk show, radio show, magazine, network -- they're not about the "audience"; they're about power and money.
Connecting the dots has long fallen off the agenda of America's corporate media who find the payoffs of synergy more rewarding. For instance, no media outlet I know of investigated further the report that
Oprah producers knew about claims that Frey's book was fiction. The
Times reported that "three months before
The Smoking Gun - before, in fact, Ms. Winfrey first had Mr. Frey as a guest on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" - producers at the program were told by a former counselor ...that his portrayal of his experience there grossly distorted reality."
Oprah, of course, professes to have been indignant about the deception. But I don't buy it: this is a woman who
rewrites headlines in her magazine. As one anonymous source told the
New York Post's Keith J. Kelley in 2000 that "Oprah is very much in control" of the editorial content of her mag. Does that sound like someone who delegates?
But in that golden-rule way, the final word is yet to be written:
Kitty Kelley, celeb biographer of "poison pen" fame, is under contract to write a tell-all on Oprah. Kelley's publisher is Crown,
an imprint of Random House, as is the Talese's publisher Doubleday. The announcement of Kelley's contract came not long after Oprah's public flogging of Frey. Payback can be a bitch.?
According to GameBids.com, IOC members will make that decision on October 2nd in Copenhagen.
