Letters to the Editor
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Jennifer Rexroat: Read Up on Narcissism
You may have already realized that this is what has happened to Oprah. Ignore Sam Vaknin, who has Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) himself, in its malignant form. But any of the other standard NPD descriptions should shed light on what Oprah's early wounds have created.
She is tone-deaf at times when empathy (not the stimulation of her own tears and attention to herself) is required. A recent example was when Mindy McCready, a country singer who had recently survived horrific spousal abuse and nearly committed suicide, was weeping beside her. Oprah said, with a sort of What's-Wrong-With-YOU? little snicker, "Girl, but you've got anything you could want...you're skinny, white, blonde, blue-eyed..."
Got a laugh from her audience but McReady looked as though she'd have liked to have downed some pills then and there.
It's a piling-on thing, that victims of abuse sometimes grow up and unwittingly do to other victims. It's subtle, with Oprah, who has surely (and sincerely, I'm sure) also done a great deal of good for the victimized. But at some times, she does reveal very narcissistic traits. (Remember her response to Jamie Foxx's gift of a life-sized portrait?)
I feel sorry for her but hope people will stop confusing her accomplishments and power with anything all-knowing. Ain't so.
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Frey's flogging
Hillary Frey was right on the mark with the Oprah episode featuring a contrite, stammering James Frey. It wasn't enough to just tape a short apology to her viewers about her "embarassment" and "regret". She had to have an entire show with James Frey present, like a delinquent teenager, to convince her audience she was was hurt, damn it, and this man will be punished for doing this. Doing this to her. As I watched the show, I could not help but feel that Oprah was treating Mr. Frey's embellishments in his book as if it was a personal affront to her, orchestrated to bring her reputation down in front of millions of viewers. Hillary Frey said it was creepy...I couldn't agree more.
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Oprah was perfectly within her rights to display Frey's fallicies...
Some of the anti-Oprah sentiments is purely a chance to knock a television icon down to size. The woman is human and her biggest mistake was believing so many of the lies sold to all of us that she was willing to cosign Frey's character. While there are many of us who have no problem sticking up for our friends first and asking questions second, there are many of you who are cowardly enough to wait for the dust to settle before picking a side.
I pitied Frey too. Why? Because suddenly we got to see what a pitiful man he is. Slow minded and figgety during the interview, clearly Frey is the type of man who he knew wasn't worth writing a book about, so he embellished, sometimes unnecessarily. Clearly he still has several issues, as his suicide joke at the end of her show hinted at. Still unable to face his own reflection during the interview, he refers to his past acquaintances as "characters" and balked at identifying the book's fictionalized elements, like his girlfriend's suicide, possibly to make his harsh reality more palatable for himself.
I'm no Oprah cult member. Despite her television perfection, we all know and see her flaws. But if there's anyone to admonish, it isn't Oprah, its Frey and his publisher. They turned what he first billed as fiction into his "memoir". Oprah didn't lie to us. They did.
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Oprah Shmoprah
My gosh -- such intense discussion about so little. Oprah is a piece of lint on the sidewalk of life. To me, and to many other people, she's nothing at all. It doesn't matter whether she interviews the Pope or falls under a bus -- either way, it won't affect me in the least. And I feel sorry for the people who feel otherwise.
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Why doesn't anyone shame Ann Coulter?
Haven't I read that Coulter made up quotes from newspapers that are easily verifiable? And her book's truthfulness is certainly much more important than the truthfulness of this 'memoir.' So why does Coulter get invited to analyze politics on television as a person of apparently good credentials, instead of a scandal developing over her lies?
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Oprah forgot some things. We did, too
The Frey debacle reveals some things about Oprah, and about us, too. First, I think it reveals how little we know about literature, the distinctions among fiction, autobiography, and memoir. Perhaps we don't agree on those. However, I think it is stupid and unecessary to publish anything and represent it as "fact" when it is not. When did we forget that there is truth in fiction? Was it when publishers in this case reviewed a manuscript that was not good enough to hold its own as fiction, but might have better marketing prospects as non-fiction? I don't presume to know.
Second, our public outrage at Frey reveals how weary we are of the lies and spin about important things in our public life sold as "fact" by persons with straight faces. However,we don't need Oprah to call out the liars in our public life. If public policy hasn't already been reduced to carnival, that surely would be the moment. To her credit, I don't think she really pretends to be that person. That may be one matter in which she has exercised good judgment or, at least, has demonstrated that she knows what draws viewers and what does not.
My problem with Oprah is that she had no right to pretend her show was a public debate about memoir or the publishibg industry or anything else. I don't care if she had comments by Maureen Dowd or anyone else. That just makes her program look more like the hackers' ball that is cable TV news. Her show is not a debate. It's entertainment of some sort--sort of a confessional talk show or a perverse combination of talk show and group therapy.
Because of that, Oprah blew it on another level. She got caught in the darker side of her cultural power--her ability to make or break an author--and she revealed a complete lack of insight into that by going forward with that show. She knew the pitiful Frey was no match for her so, why did she have him on? Given her regret,given the fact he already had confessed on Larry King, why didn't Oprah have a real discussion about litereature and the publishing industry? The episode revealed, sadly, that it really is all about her.
She can do the kind of show she does, but in that context, she disregarded what I expect even my young children to know: that it is easier to be clever than to be kind, even when you challenge another person, that being right is not always the most important thing, and when you know your opponent is no match for you, you can play, but you may not in any circumstances humiliate him or her in front of others.