Kill That Which Lies to Oprah!

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/05/books/05fake.html?hp

So apparently the author of the book Love and Consequences has admitted to falsifying events in the book presented as facts. It's a situation that closely resembles the Million Little Pieces fiasco that apparently shook the literary world and really pissed off Oprah. In my opinion the amount of upset that people display over this kind of thing is a bit ridiculous. I'm not saying that lying about your book is acceptable, what I am saying is that if you read a story that really spoke to you and made you think about things from a different perspective, or even if you simply enjoyed the book dose it really matter that the events taking place therein were skewed slightly. In reality its not like we as readers would know the difference, we are kind of thrust into this quantum box type of situation. These characters are not really alive to use until we assign life to them in our interest in them. Yes, authors hold that power to manipulate our emotions, and yes I do believe that they should use that power responsibly, letting the reader know if the events chronicled in their works were less than realistic would be a nice way to display that responsibly. I remember sitting in front of the television the day Oprah brought James Frey on her show in complete disbelieve, disbelieve not induced by the fact that Mr. Frey had fabricated a number of events in his critically acclaimed book, my upset stemmed from the fact that Oprah had paraded this man in front of millions of television viewers and aired his shame so mercilessly. The tone in her voice and her body language was that of complete repulsion, and for the remainder of her show she allowed members of her condescending audience to verbally eviscerate Frey. I was very appreciative of the South Park episode that followed, my favorite part being when Oprah led a lynch mob against the Frey character played by a perpetually high towel, during animated onslaught a member of Oprah's blood hungry lynch mob / audience screams "KILL THAT WHICH LIES TO OPRAH!"

Anyways, how cool is this, blogging English assignments. Pretty groovy!