See what happens when popular TV shows feature authors as guests – everybody’s talking about it. James Frey’s smackdown at the hands of Oprah Winfrey Thursday has been parsed a million times already, but here’s one more from Salon. However, Hillary Frey (no relation) thinks that Winfrey took it a bit too far. “As the audience clapped when Oprah spit out a real zinger (“It’s a lie!”; “I think you presented a false person”), it was hard to avoid thinking that Frey was being put on display not to set the record straight, but for a public flogging,” Frey writes. “More than once Oprah emphasized that this experience has ‘embarrassed’ her. Her revenge: shaming another person in front of a live studio audience. Who knew that Oprah was an ‘eye for an eye’ kind of lady?”
The writer also pokes fun at the most absurd part of Thursday’s show: the other panellists and writers who appeared on the show either in person or via videotape. New York Times columnist Frank Rich used his face time to take the whole Frey/Oprah thing and – yes, it’s true! – connect it to corporate scandals and the Bush administration. (It’s nice to see Rich branching out and offering challenging, unique perspectives on the problems of our time.) Writes (H.) Frey: “Rich took it one leap further, decrying lying in all aspects of culture, including Enron, the sham of Jessica Simpson’s marriage to Nick Lachey and the war in Iraq (at which point Oprah’s eyes glazed over). This took what was decent, if depressing, theater to the level of farce.”
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