Update II (1/27 @ 3:48 p.m.): The bloggers and radio show hosts known as Pundit Review will interview The Smoking Gun’s managing editor Andrew Goldberg this Sunday night at 9:00 p.m. EST on WRKO in Boston. Check it out. By the way, the bloggers finally posted a photo of themselves.
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Admitting when you’re wrong can be very difficult.
Some of you may have been following the story of James Frey, exaggerator extraordinaire and author of A Million Little Pieces. An appearance on Oprah’s show netted him fame and cash. She’d selected his autobiography for her world famous book club, but his book contained more fiction than actual events from his life.
In his memoir, Frey claimed he’d been a drug-addicted bad boy, raising hell and running down cops. He spent months in prison and managed to tame a beast of a man by reading him the classics. While in a drug treatment center, he met and started a relationship with a fellow addict named Lilly, who eventually hung herself, according to Frey. The book depicts Frey as a reckless, dangerous, and overly-macho tough guy who beat the odds and overcame his addiction in a dramatic way.
Frey’s book inspired millions, including the talk show queen, who gushed on national TV about his “life story.” Some doubted Frey’s version of events when it was first published in 2003, but an appearance on Oprah thrust the dubious tome into the national and scrutinizing spotlight.
The Smoking Gun (TSG), a site well-known for posting mug shots of celebrities, searched for mug shots of Frey. After running into brick walls in what should have been a routine task, TSG smelled a rat and began a journalistic-style investigation into the book’s “facts.” The result of the investigation is a well-written, well-researched and must-read piece called A Million Little Lies. Frey emerges as a relatively normal, occasional pot-smoking college boy with too much time and imagination on his hands.
He must have been sweating bullets, not because his lies and exaggerations were exposed or that his readers would be disappointed. What Frey probably feared most was the wrath of Oprah Winfrey (I remembered her last name. I’m impressed…). Frey’s publisher, Random House, didn’t seem worried about the people who pay its bills, either. They were as afraid of Oprah’s potential backlash as heathens are of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
But they both got a reprieve. Temporarily. Frey appeared on Larry King Live to “explain” the *discrepancies, and Oprah unexpectedly called in, lending her support. Read the show’s transcript.
(*According to TSG, there’s no evidence Frey spent more than a few unchained hours in jail as opposed to months, as he wrote in his book. But Frey maintains, “This is my recollection of my life.” Reporters from TSG spoke with the police officers involved, and they said there’s no way Frey spent months in jail. And he didn’t even describe the inside of the jail accurately.)
Well, it now seems that Ms. Thing has changed her mind (A woman’s prerogative.). According to the Gray Lady, Oprah said Frey “betrayed millions of readers.” Frey is scheduled to appear on Oprah’s show this afternoon (4:00 p.m. EST in DC), but a blogger at Gawker got a “sneak preview” and live-blogged it.
For the first time in years, I may watch Oprah’s show.
I really don’t care about this one way or another, but it’s fun watching all the lies come to light in such a public and gaudy way. People are picking this book apart. The Freakonomics guys are fact-checking other events in the book.
Here’s the real issue: people bought the book because they believed all those things happened to James Frey. When the lies and exaggerations were uncovered, Frey and his defenders said that memoirs aren’t 100 percent accurate. It’s all about recollection. True, but that doesn’t cut it in Frey’s case. His book contains outright lies. He even confessed to the queen that he made up stuff. By the way, Oprah may have gotten a heads-up about Frey before his first appearance but brought him on the show anyway. More from Google News.
Speaking of which, a few readers e-mailed about my paradigm-shifting confession. I haven’t made it yet. When I do, believe me, you will definitely hear about it.
Addendum: The Frey Fiasco is truly fascinating. His web site is down because of excessive bandwidth, so reads a message from the systems administrator, but others doubt this claim, too. I should be working, but The Frey Fallout is so interesting. 
An article in the Chicago Tribune goes into more detail about the show:
Winfrey’s apology [to the audience] and pointed questions about incidents and people in the book appeared to take Frey by surprise as he sat across the couch from Winfrey today as they had done during a much more convivial show four months earlier.
“It is difficult for me to talk to you because I really feel duped,” Winfrey told a startled-looking Frey who licked his lips often before speaking. “More importantly, I feel you betrayed millions of readers…As I sit here today, I don’t know what is true, and I don’t know what isn’t.”
Winfrey looked near tears and her audience gasped when Frey revealed for the first time that Lilly, a central character in the book, didn’t commit suicide by hanging, but instead slashed her wrists.
4:05 p.m.: Just a couple of notes. I’m watching Oprah. Frey says TSG did a “good job” dealing with some of the discrepancies. He admitted he wasn’t in jail for 87 days, for instance. More like two? Oprah is asking probing questions. James Frey is on national TV confessing that he LIED to her and the readers. I’m sure someone will create a transcript of this show. Only six minutes into it, I’m mesmerized. Oprah is fit to be tied! She said she regrets the Larry King phone call.
James Frey is finished. He’d better go underground for a while and adopt a pseudonym for future books.
The audience is gasping, shocked that Frey is downplaying and trivializing his lies. For instance, in the book he wrote that he had two root canals with no painkillers. Turns out he received Novocaine, a painkiller. He suddenly remembered.
“Why did you lie?” asked Oprah.
“That was my recollection,” he says. The audience gasped.
“So there were two root canals?” asked Oprah.
“I…I think so,” he whimpered.
4:21: Frey looks terrified. His publisher has joined the show after the break. Nan Talese of Random House is defending the deceptive story. Should have been published as a novel. The whole lot of them were in on the scam because they knew this book would sell, sell, sell, if people thought it were true. There’s a whole lot of CYA going on!
Oprah says she’s embarrassed. Why didn’t the publisher verify the facts? Talese stuttered something about people’s “stories” and how they affect the reader, blah, blah, blah. Oprah says don’t call it a memoir if the events aren’t true.
4:36: Richard Cohen, who called Oprah deluded, is on the show. Oprah thanked him for his criticism and admitted he was right about her. Cohen took Talese to task and said these big publishing houses need to cut this out and hire fact checkers for $30,000 a year to fact-check memoirs. A fact checker would have noticed the discrepancies right away. I repeat, Frey is finished!
An author’s note will be added in subsequent printings to indicate that the “true” book is full of lies. That’s a paraphrase. 
Michelle Malkin’s got the video. More news. After all is said and done, Oprah has been very gracious to James Frey. She urges him to come clean because if he lied about other events, the truth will come out.
Update (1/27): I knew somebody would check this out. Frey told Oprah that his recovering addict girlfriend didn’t hang herself; she slit her wrists. Why did he do that? He wanted to change details about people (to protect identity?). Well, somone has done some digging to find out whether this Lilly “character” even slit her wrists.
Steve Levitt over at the Freakonomics blog has the answer. I’m patiently waiting for someone to discover that “Lilly” didn’t exist at all. She’s just a figment, like many things in the book, of Frey’s active imagination.
