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Oprah: Joining us is Frank Rich, a New York Times columnist who recently wrote that James Frey reminds us that we live in an age of "truthiness." What do you mean by...explain that.
Frank Rich: Truthiness is a word, of course, that's been popularized by Stephen Colbert of Comedy Central.
Oprah: Yeah.
Frank Rich: I mean we live in this word now where this is just sort of the tip of the iceberg, this memoir, where anyone can sort of put out something that sort of looks true, smells a little bit like truth but, in fact, is in some way fictionalized. You look at anything from Enron fooling people and creating this aura of a great business making huge profits when it was an empty shell, or people in the government telling us that mushroom clouds are going to come our way if we don't invade Iraq for months when it was on faulty and possibly suspect intelligence. Or even things we label "reality" in entertainment like reality television. It's cast. It's somewhat scripted. You see Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey as happy newlyweds. The reality show is over, they get divorced and split the profits.
Oprah: Yeah. So what do you want to say about what you've heard today?
Frank Rich: Well, I think it's amazing television. I mean, I think that I share Richard's view. I think it's great that you up and took a stand and the hardest thing to do is admit a mistake...
Oprah: In front of millions of people.
Frank Rich: In front of
millions of people.
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