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PANTS ON FIRE
BY PETER KURTH (published
01.25.06)
All right, maybe you’ve heard enough about
James Frey and the whopping, wicked lies he told about himself in
his mega-selling memoir, A
Million Little Pieces.
Frey’s was the ultimate confessional blockbuster, an
“Oprah’s Book Club” pick and blazing ray of hope to untold numbers
of recovering alcoholics, addicts, ne’er-do-wells, soul-searchers
and narcissists -- at least 3.5 million people, which is how many
copies A Million Little
Pieces is reported to have sold to date. What Oprah herself had
sanctified as “a gut-wrenching memoir” turns out to be a tissue of …
er … untruths.
Or maybe you haven’t heard anything at all
about James Frey. Maybe
you’ve been too busy keeping your eye on your job, the kids, your
credit rating, Judge Cashman, that pervert down the street and those
ever-rising gas prices.
Maybe you’re old or disabled, and you’ve been too worried
about your new, improved Medicare drug benefits to concern yourself
with fancy “literary” scandals.
Either way, I’m sick of the story. So much media wind has been
expended on Frey and his shocking crimes against the Truth that I
can't keep up with all the commentary. And what difference does it
make? Most Americans,
it seems, don't mind being lied to.
You don’t believe me? Go out west and hear what
they’re saying about “gay cowboys” -- i.e., there aren’t any,
despite the huge success of director Ang Lee’s homo-western,
Brokeback
Mountain.
"They've gone and killed John Wayne with
this movie," says Jim-Bob Zimmerschied, a disgruntled, beer-swilling
ranch-hand in Sheridan, Wyoming, in an interview with the
London Telegraph. "I've been doing this job
all my life and I ain't never met no gay
cowboy.”
That’s what he thinks. In fact, cancer killed John
Wayne, and even then he was persistently described as “a
survivor.” So you see
what I mean – the truth has nothing to do with it. Just listen to Bush’s chief
press spokesman, Scott McClellan, who announced last week,
apparently with a straight face, "The president remains fully
committed to building a culture of life, a culture of life that is
built on valuing life at all stages."
You’ll forgive me for saying that the
accuracy of McClellan’s statement depends entirely on what kind of
life you have and, for that matter, what kind of life you are. If you’re an acre of
wilderness or a polar bear or a whale up the Thames, your chances aren’t very good. And if you’re an Iraqi, or
an Afghan or a Pakistani, your life isn’t valued at all. On January 13, in Bajaur,
Pakistan, a U. S. air strike that was meant to “take out” Osama bin
Laden’s second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, instead resulted in
the deaths of 18 civilians, “among them a dozen women and
children.” Once again,
the intelligence was “faulty.”
“Officials first indicated that the
U.S. had killed [Zawahiri],” writes Maureen
Dowd in The New York Times
– “or at least his son-in-law or a friend of his son-in-law, or
maybe the guy who delivered a kabob to him.”
Maybe. According to the Associated
Press, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has instructed the
United
States that the January 13 strike "must not be
repeated." But you can
bet that it will be, and that it will be lied about
again.
"The president is more determined than
ever to stay the course," says a former defense official to The New Yorker’s Seymour
Hersh. "He doesn't feel any pain. Bush is a believer in the
adage, 'People may suffer and die, but the Church advances.'"
It sure does. In a recent ABC holiday
special, "Heaven: Where
Is It? How Do We Get
There?" Barbara Walters asked a whole slew of celebrities what they
thought about this subject.
And while she didn’t actually come up with a “road map” to
Elysium, Walters did explain in that tough, penetrating way she has
that heaven is “a journey, an exploration into life as an
interlude.” Walters is
like Oprah in that sense, only with more facelifts.
No, Americans don’t mind being lied to at
all. We’re used to
it. Sure, some people
out there may honestly believe that Brad and Angie aren’t “involved”
-- even though Brad has adopted Angie’s children and they’re having
a baby of their own – and that The Da Vinci Code actually
represents a serious theological discussion. But these are a minority, I
expect; most of us are fully aware that we’re lied to constantly,
and most would agree with The
Times’ Frank Rich when he says that “no one except pesky
nitpickers much cares whether Mr. Frey's autobiography is
true.” As Frey’s former
editor, Nan Talese, remarks with a sigh, “We aren’t talking about
weapons of mass destruction here.”
Why aren't we? I really think the reason
James Frey is in so much trouble is because he made up stories about
himself instead of something else. That’s a big no-no in
America, where the myth of redemption holds heavy
sway, allowing us not just to write bestselling balderdash but to
bomb other people with impunity while going deaf on our iPods.
You see, Americans are always right. We’re always sincere. And if you believe that,
it’s just as well to leave the last word to Frey, who, at the height
of the controversy, turned up on “Larry King Live” to defend himself
– with his mother, no less – and actually told the truth: "We're dealing with a very
subjective memory.”
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