Telling Lies, Selling Evil

L ies sell. Just ask James Frey. Since a Web site outed his alleg-ed memoir A Million Little Pieces as lies posing as facts, Frey has been circling the wagons. He claims he first tried to sell his manuscript as the fiction it was, but was turned down by more than a dozen publishers. As fantasy, the publishing gatekeepers considered his story a flop. Masked as truth, it had dollar signs written all over it.Advertisers know that cultivating the right image is the key to moving product. Public relations, which is nothing more than lying and manipulation if the real truth be told, teaches that the "spin"placed on a story is everything. Make it look good no matter how bad it really is.Frey needed a bad-boy image to get his book published. His rap sheet, which consisted of a few hours spent in jail for moving violations and a DUI, just wasn't going to cut it. He also had the pesky problem of having earned a college degree and even traveled abroad, facts not usually consistent with a gangster-like past. Most people lie to inflate their resumé. Frey needed to dumb his down.Thus, his real past turned into a crime saga complete with 14 arrests and three months behind bars before a stint in drug rehab.Once caught, Frey put on one helluva PR show by trotting out his mother on Larry King, where he said he stood by his book's "essential truth." But the coup de grace came when Oprah, who picked Frey's book for her reading club last year, called in to say "the underlying message of redemption in James Frey's memoir still resonates with me." White House spinmeister Karl Rove couldn't have written the talking points better himself. (However, by Thursday, Oprah retracted her support, saying she felt "duped.")Bad behavior carries cachet, and so does evil. Take American public-enemy No. 1 since Sept. 11. On his most recent videotape, Osama bin Laden mentions William Blum's Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower, a book critical of U.S. foreign policy, and sales jump. The book rose from a 209,000 rank on Amazon.com's sales list to 30 after the bin Laden endorsement.And the more salacious the story, the better, because sex always sells, too. Why else would we put Amy Fisher, the woman once dubbed the "Long Island Lolita" for her affair at age 16, on television with her former lover Joey Buttafuoco and his ex-wife, Mary Jo? Remember, Fisher shot Mary Jo Buttafuoco in the face and spent seven years in jail for it.What's truly scary about Frey's story is he is not alone in thinking it's fine to make things up. Journalists have fallen into this trap more and more. Woodward and Bernstein showed that it was all right for journalists to become famous. But the road to fame is littered with the bodies of those who thought that taking a shortcut could get them to their destination far quicker. Consider the cautionary tale of Janet Cooke, who made up a kid who shot himself up with heroin to catapult her story to the front page of The Washington Post and on to a Pulitzer prize.But we never learn from history. Proof of that comes from Stephen Glass, who lied in his New Republic stories for self-esteem, and Jayson Blair, who plagiarized at The New York Times to get ahead. And instead of giving these people the pariah status they deserve, we allow them to turn their sagas into movies and books.I'm all for forgiveness and redemption, as long as it doesn't come with a paycheck. When advertisers lie, the Federal Trade Commission steps in to slap them with fines. When public relations efforts go too far, like the White House paying prominent black commentator Armstrong Williams $240,000 to promote the No Child Left Behind education reform act, a congressional investigation and Tribune Media cancelling his column is the right outcome.When a writer goes too far, the editors are supposed to step in. Not in Frey's case. The Random House division of Doubleday said in a statement that a memoir "by definition" is "highly personal." The message from our vaunted New York publishing world: The line between fiction and non-fiction is irrelevant. I guess they failed to consult their other publication called the Random House Webster's College Dictionary. My 1991 copy defines memoir as "a record of events based on the writer's personal observation. An autobiography." If that's not clear enough, autobiography means "a history of a person's life."Can someone please slap these editors? If not with a hand since assault is illegal, then at least with a lawsuit. Otherwise, the message is it's just fine to lie to get ahead. Frey knows this. Look for sales of his book to jump.

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Telling Lies, Selling Evil

Wendy Melillo

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Wendy Melillo