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BOOKS
It’s Fiction—For Real
Malcolm Jones
Give James Frey some credit. If you had been humiliated by Oprah Winfrey on television in front of who-knows-how-many-million viewers, you might still be hiding under the bed. If your name became cultural shorthand for "man who invents lots of details in his memoir," you might change that name and permanently move to another country, preferably one that didn't carry "Oprah." But the author of "A Million Little Pieces"—the questionable memoir in question—is made of sterner stuff. In the wake of that public shaming two years ago, he picked himself up, got another agent, landed a new book contract and completed a novel, "Bright Shiny Morning," which is being published this month.
CAMPAIGN 2008
Something Wasn’t Wright
Allison Samuels
For any spiritually minded, up-wardly mobile African-American living in Chicago in the mid-1980s, the Trinity United Church of Christ was—and still is—the place to be. That's what drew Oprah Winfrey, a recent Chicago transplant, to the church in 1984. She was eager to bond with the movers and shakers in her new hometown's black community. But she also admired Trinity United's ambitious outreach work with the poor, and she took pride in upholding her Southern grandmother's legacy of involvement with traditional African-American houses of worship. Winfrey was a member of Trinity United from 1984 to 1986, and she continued to attend off and on into the early to the mid-1990s. But then she stopped. A major reason—but by no means the only reason—was the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
ENTERTAINMENT
Late Bloomer
Joshua Alston
Craig Ferguson always hated to fly. Hated it. In fact, he hated it from the age of 13, when he flew from his native Scotland to the United States. He spent years sedating himself into preflight oblivion, even after having gutted out enough puddle-jumping trips to work his way up to hosting CBS's "The Late Late Show." Then one night in 2005, actor Kurt Russell, who is also an avid pilot, was a guest. Russell suggested taking flying lessons. "The first time I tried it, I absolutely loathed it," says Ferguson, 45. "But after 15 more hours of it, it shifted from morbid fear to addiction." If he hated it so much, why do it 15 more hours? "What you're really asking is, 'What is it like to be Scottish?' I don't like being a slave to fear. Fear is culturally unacceptable in Scotland." That explains the kilts.
CHARITY
Oprah’s Big Enough Give
Kurt Soller
When the Oprah store debuted in Chicago last month, shoppers snapped up affordable cosmetic cases, dog leashes and other items emblazoned with the mogul's signature "O." But the best bargains were in "Oprah's Closet," a small, unadvertised section of the store that sells her previously worn designer clothes at cut-rate prices to raise money for her charity, the Angel Network. Oprah's red Manolo Blahnik heels, for instance, are just $300, about half the retail price for similar shoes at Neiman Marcus and a fraction of what other Oprah-touched items have fetched at open auctions. Nice—but the gambit does raise a tiny ethical quandary: if she's doing it for charity, is she obliged to maximize the return? Or is it OK for her to engage in charity-lite if it helps less-affluent fans get a piece of the action? Don Halcombe, a spokesman for Winfrey's Harpo Inc., says it was "important to Oprah" that her castoffs be accessibly priced. And according to Noah Pickus, director of Duke's Kenan Institute for Ethics, Oprah's in the clear. "She's seeking a balance between two things she sees as valuable: charity and a form of democratic experience," he says. "There isn't a contradiction here." Good to know. Still, it's too bad. At a 2004 charity auction, Oprah's Fendi sunglasses alone netted $2,000.
MEDIA
The Myth of Objectivity
Evan Thomas
She tried to make a joke of it. At the debate in Cleveland last week, Hillary Clinton brought up a "Saturday Night Live" skit about journalists fawning over Barack Obama at a mock debate. "Maybe we should ask Barack if he's comfortable and needs another pillow," said Clinton. Humor is often a substitute for anger, and if Clinton wasn't all that funny, maybe it is because she is sore at the press for seeming to go easier on her opponent. She has a point, but the truth about the media and the campaign cannot be caricatured simply as the deification of Obama and the hounding of Clinton.
Hand-Tied by the Times
Howard Fineman
There is no easier TV "get" in Washington than Sen. John McCain. When Sunday talk-show bookers call, he always says yes—52 times to "Meet the Press" alone, a record for current officeholders. Last week, though, he was suddenly, categorically, unavailable. I asked his communications director, Jill Hazelbaker, whether her boss would be on. "Nope," she e-mailed, "Black doing Face." Translation: McCain's campaign would dispatch Charlie Black—lawyer, lobbyist, personal friend, top adviser—to appear on "Face the Nation." There, Good Soldier Black would presumably field permutations of the question raised by a blandly accusatory story in The New York Times: was McCain too close—way too close—to the capital culture of cash and clout he says he wants to reform? (That the unflappable Black was a well-tailored emblem of that culture evidently did not occur to the folks at McCain campaign headquarters.)