Well, I’m glad that Oprah has been brought down a few notches… by Oprah. I don’t know who annointed Oprah the arbiter of culture, ethics, and behavior in America. Well, actually, I do know who did that: Oprah. So now she had to confess her mistake annointing James Frey. But in typical Oprah fashion, she didn’t really take the fall herself. She pilloried Frey in the process. We already knew he was a liar of Glassian/Blairian proportion. But what this was about was really whether we can trust Oprah. That’s what her empire is built upon.
But we forget it was Oprah who trashed up daytime TV. She took the Donahue format and threw in shouting, screaming lowlifes, which made her a ratings hit and which everyone else — including Donahue — then copied. Then, and only then, did she get religion. She did a show about how wonderful she was to recant and become, overnight, the queen of quality TV. Her bookers tried to get me on that show — as a TV critic at the time — to praise her. To the consternation of my company’s flacks, I refused.
So Oprah is taken down a notch because one of her creations turned out to be a fake. I can only hope that the next one to fall is Dr. Phil.
: By the way, I’m scheduled to be on Howie Kurtz’ Reliable Sources Sun day to talk about this and other stuff.
