from The San Francisco Chronicle
Nobody knows the trouble I made up
Writer/memoirist James Frey got fried for making up the downer times of his life in the best-seller, “A Million Little Pieces.” When he was busted, 
Oprah personally de-spleened him on her show after she initially had made him a confessional hero.
That was four years ago. Frey just had bad timing.
Today, the two most powerful celebrities in the world, Barack Obama and Oprah herself, are getting tagged for re-arranging their personal histories to fit what’s referred to widely in our contemporary culture as “the narrative.”
This concept of narrative, otherwise known as “a story,” has become a clichéd requirement not just in politics but for anyone famous using personal plot lines for traction in the public arena.
So if people at the top of society, like the president and Oprah, are going to fabricate some things in service to the larger sense of history and purpose, maybe we should loosen our standards for facts.
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