Wednesday, Dec. 20, 2006

Don't Mess With Oprah

Early in 2006, talk-show queen Oprah Winfrey became queen of the blogosphere when her one-time guest, author James Frey's book A Million Little Pieces was exposed as largely fabricated on The Smoking Gun website. Winfrey, willing to stand behind Frey's best-selling memoir of self-renewal and drug rehabilitation, called into CNN's Larry King Live where Frey was appearing to defend him. It turned out that publisher Random House had not checked the total authenticity of Frey's claims. Frey later apologized for the fabrication, but was dropped by his literary agent and publisher and lost a future deal with Penguin Books. He later appeared on Oprah where she admitted that she had made a mistake and called him a flat-out liar. But Frey did get the last word when he told Publisher's Weekly recently that he is "looking forward to showing people that I can write fiction."