I had to cut the other post in half because this part is more useful than any post just marked "About Oprah". Eh. What a thought for going into Monday: Oprah.
Anyway....
About that famous shrink-writer (as opposed to shrinkwrapper, I think):
But I blame Oprah even more for the pap she passes out on a daily basis. The last time I sat through more than counting the black women in an Oprah audience, to my great surprise, she had as her guest a man I once worked for.
You'd recognize his name. He wrote some of the bestselling personal psychology books in the 1980s who liked to say there were people who lived lies so intrinsically, they made themselves evil in performance of the lie.
Unfortunately, I had the misfortune to discover that this great man lived one hell of an evil lie himself. I won't go into the details here. He passed just recently - surprisingly, not from his chainsmoking of unfiltered Camels, something you might not completely expect from a Waspish psychiatrist - and he was once much loved by a man I much loved. Not in a homosexual way (not that there is anything wrong with that as I put my ten cent Seinfeld line royalty in the mail) but the man I loved cherished this man as a friend, a mentor, and perhaps a father figure. Anyway, the point here is that some of his family members, of which I am not at all sure they ever learned about his lie because they had learned to lie to themselves, might happen upon this and I would not like them hurt at this time.
But I watched Oprah that day just completely fawn over this man. She said she spent close and personal time "breathing" his two or three bestsellers (I was around after the second one for a brief time when he helped start a foundation) and with this shrink and she was there to attest that this man was a God! Everyone should read his book, she said. It was THAT important, she said.
I thought about that for a long time. Even as I looked at his pale eyes staring back out of the TV at me, a man I'd sat across from several times as he probed me mentally for the work I was to do in his name and the same pale eyes I had to look into when I learned his life, I could see the pall over him so clearly. I could not begin to imagine why, even if Oprah was blinded by brain lust, people in the audience weren't squirming.
But they could not squirm, of course, because Oprah loved him and so they, too, of course, loved him.
As I said, this man died recently. It made me think a lot about that time. But also about some of my own choices and how close I'm come a few times in getting invested in my own lie. I'd like to think I've largely escaped that now, which is about the only reason I could begin work on "Dear God, What the Fuck?".
But who knows?
Who ever bloody knows until the very last breathes of life whether they escaped the lie or lived a lie exclusively?
Oprah lives a lie exclusively. She's enormously well paid for it.
This famous shrink lived a lie exclusively and yet was world renowned as a great sage of the human condition and how to avoid your own "condition".
James Frey is living the high lie life.
True, they say that the truth shall set you free. What they don't always admit is that the truth also will tie you in binds the likes of which you will never know until you try.
You see, when it comes right down to it, people like a James Frey or an Oprah or an ... oops, I almost said his name... (and actually, I've peppered more than enough clues with my wording for my immediate taste).. far better than they ever savor the truth. Hell, we spend our lives begging people to lie to us as effectively as we do to ourselves. Let someone come along and vibrate the illusion and WHAM! The poor truthsayer is gonna go toothless, penniless, and jobless.
People of the Lie? It's not uniquely American. But it's damned close.
