Oprah and Mary Sue

I've been kind of immersed in Sci-fi lately and have only been paying minimal attention to the James Frey story playing out on the periphery of my attention, but I did love Anderson Cooper's description of him: "If in fact he's pretending to be this badass... crack-slinging, police-punching guy, you know, all of a sudden, he's not. He's this guy who brings his mom to "LARRY KING."

Anyway, I finally figured out why Frey and Oprah piss me off so much in spite of my lack of overwhelming interest in the story. He essentially 'Mary Sued' his own life. And Oprah's cool with that. Sheesh. (If you don't know what a Mary Sue is, visit the wikipedia definition and see if that doesn't resonate.)

Particularly noisome was Oprah's insistence that his fictitious bio doesn't change any 'essential truths' - hey, you can find essential truth in fiction, Oprah. There's any number of Essential Truths in Moby Dick, or Anna Karenina.

But nonfiction sells better than fiction, so pretending fiction is nonfiction for profit is ... well, fraud.