A trip to Ann Arbor today, and what a pleasure it was — the trip, that is. Could this be Detroit? This smooth, rut-free highway, the clean-swept shoulders, the embankments kept free of trash by what appears to be a squadron of orange-suited workers? Are there no lane closures? What is this thing called I-94? I don’t recognize it.
All I have to say is: We should have a Super Bowl every year. It sure lights a fire under public-works projects.
The local slogan for all this is “The world is coming.” Well, come on in, world. At least the trip from the airport will be nice.
So, I see Oprah isn’t so dumb after all:
She added that she believed “I made a mistake” when she said that the truth of the book mattered less than its story of redemption.
In a live broadcast of “The Oprah Winfrey Show” from her studios in Chicago in which she interviewed Mr. Frey, Ms. Winfrey apologized to her audience for her call to “Larry King Live” earlier this month defending the author. Today, Ms. Winfrey, alternately fighting back tears and displaying vivid anger, berated Mr. Frey for duping her and her audience.
Well, I bet that was pleasant. You cross Oprah, you’re going to pull back a bloody stump.
Oh, and look! There’s video! The O looks majorly pissed.
Good for the O. She knows how to do the full reversal with her head held high. Maybe because she now holds the head of James Frey on a platter.
I was once a passenger in a car going very, very fast. The car was pulled over. As the trooper approached the driver’s-side window, another passenger said, “Tell him the accelerator stuck! Tell him the accelerator stuck!”
The trooper walked up. Asked for license, registration and what the hell.
“The accelerator stuck,” my friend the driver said. You can imagine how this encounter turned out. So it was with a chuckle that I see Defamer has Joaquin Phoenix’s number. After noting that the young actor was in a “serious car accident” after “his brakes went out,” the D noted:
We were comforted by his flack’s statement, even knowing full well that when a publicist says a celebrity client’s “brakes went out,�? it’s basically the car accident equivalent of telling you they were hospitalized for “exhaustion.�?
Yup.
Well, folks, that does it for me tonight. Have a swell weekend.
mary said on January 27, 2006 at 12:00 am
Did you read Slate’s take on Oprah’s show? I’m with that guy. It’s good that she figured out that crap is crap, and there’s nothing redemptive about it. I think she may have milked it a bit though. The outrage is good, but why was it delayed?
246 chars
Dorothy said on January 27, 2006 at 6:35 am
I am glad Oprah did an about face, and I am sure she did it for (1) her reputation and (2) a shout out to the authors waiting in the wings for her blessings. It’s not ratings month so I am guessing she taped the show as quickly as she could after previously-taped shows had been aired. I think she also probably took her time to have her staff go over the book, and be painstakingly prepared for her rebuttal on national television when she tarred and feathered him in front of the world.
490 chars
joodyb said on January 27, 2006 at 11:01 am
‘Milk’? Another verb comes to mind.
That was some 24-karat television, but it was also a no-brainer ratings lock.
With her estimable powers, she could’ve done that show at least a ago. (That kind of vetting could have been done in 48 hours. Such mountains can and are moved every day.) Yesterday was two weeks and a day since her kneejerk rush to defend Frey on Larry King, which she says was based on the volume of emails she was getting from people in the recovery community. Her people could have done some fact-checking once those emails began rolling in. They surely could have asked Nan Talese et al a few questions. How long does it take to figure out which way the wind is blowing?
Star Jones said this in an interview this week:
(Of her dramatic weight loss), she’d rather talk about what finally pushed her to make a change:
“Not being able to walk a block without an asthma attack. Not being able to stand in church because my knees hurt so much,�? she says. “I was lazy, lethargic and sedentary. I got comfortable being Star Jones and having a car to take me someplace. It lulls you into a false sense of what you can do. Instead of admitting I couldn’t walk around the corner, I’d say to myself, ‘I have a car to take me.’ �?
Oprah is The Playah. No question. She made it into every news outlet last night. None of it wakes her up in the same world as that of the rubes who have blindly made her what she is.
OH, and i predict the Book Club is a goner.
1507 chars
deb said on January 27, 2006 at 4:47 pm
well, here’s hoping. a fellow book club member once said she hated reading books oprah had picked. she always hid the covers from view, lest people think she was so stupid she had to have oprah tell her what to read.
i read a few of her picks myself, and not a damn one of them was uplifting. bleak death marches, all.
lane change: celebrities being hospitalized for “exhaustion” always cracks me up. when the rest of us feel wiped out, we take a nap or go to bed early; we don’t go to the ER.
next time you DO go to the ER — assuming you can afford it — tell them you’re “checking yourself in for exhaustion.” ten bucks says they page security.
658 chars
Cynthia said on January 27, 2006 at 5:30 pm
Mary, Thanks for pointing me to Slate’s take on Frey and Oprah! Troy Patterson nailed it. I especially liked his line, “he (Frey) was in a proper venue for psychobabble.”
172 chars
mary said on January 27, 2006 at 6:25 pm
Exhaustion and dehydration is so much more common among celebrities than it is among we simple folks. You’d think people like roofers or ditch diggers would be more prone to it than people like Lindsay Lohan, but you’d be wrong.
I always liked Private Eye magazine’s term “tired and emotional.” It means drunk, as in “Princess Margaret seemed tired and emotional at last night’s reception.”
395 chars
Pam said on January 28, 2006 at 11:47 am
The saddest thing about this whole Frey/Oprah deal is Frey’s mother. She was in the live audience when Oprah announced that Frey’s book had been selected for the book club. It was a surprise that the Oprah staff planned for her. The whole scenario was “son is a complete loser, mother suffers and suffers, but now look, aren’t you proud!!” Next, I guess we’ll learn that she was in on it too. Totally off the subject, what is RSS at the bottom of this page? Is it useful?
477 chars