Oprah Winfrey and the ‘real but fake’ memoir

Andrew Potter makes a decent observation:

Oprah keeps getting duped by fake memoirists. Aside from James Frey, there’s Herman Rosenblat (who wrote a fake memoir about the holocaust), Margaret Seltzer, who made up a story about growing up in an L.A. ghetto, and Misha Defonseca, who penned an incredible memoir about a girl who fled from the Nazis and was raised by wolves. All three were celebrated by Oprah Winfrey on her show or in her magazine; all three were eventually exposed as fakers.

And so along comes Kitty Kelly, unearthing some unpleasant facts about Oprah’s life while suggesting that some elements of the official record are not entirely accurate. Oprah isn’t happy, but why does she even care? She should simply give the same answer in her own defense that she originally gave on Larry King for James Frey: who cares what actually happened, as long as “the underlying message of redemption rings true.”