Jewish World Review Jan. 31, 2006 / 2 Shevat, 5766

Frey — Get a real life!

By Tucker Carlson

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | As every American with a television is now aware, Oprah Winfrey beat the crap out of James Frey on her show today. The author simpered and fidgeted as his former patron made him confess to telling lies in his book, A Million Little Pieces. Oprah's a natural for righteous indignation. Frey's a born masochist. Together they created some of the most uncomfortable yet compelling television I've ever seen. It was a delight, until the final moments.

That's when Frey recited the obligatory litany of penance, the part of the service where the sinner shows evidence of Learning and Growing. "If I come out of this experience with anything," he lisped, "it's being a better person and learning from my mistakes and making sure that I don't repeat them."

I froze when I heard the words. Call me an alarmist, but that sentence seemed to leave open the possibility of a second chapter in Frey's literary career. A truly repentant man would have pledged never to write again. Frey didn't. Instead he vowed not to be so dumb the next time. It's easy to imagine him publishing yet another memoir, this one about the trials of his humiliation. We might be stuck with James Frey for a long time to come.

No one should be surprised by this. Disgraced celebrities hardly ever go away. They live on at the far end of the cable spectrum like ghosts, haunting and titillating us simultaneously. If Joey Buttafuoco can keep coming back, why can't James Frey?

Here's why: Joey Buttafuoco has led a pretty interesting life. James Frey hasn't. That's Frey's terrible secret, the one he lied to cover up. Frey is an utterly ordinary person, an upper-middleclass stoner who went to rehab. You knew him in college. The real James Frey had almost nothing to write a memoir about. That's why he made it up.

That needs to change. As long as James Frey is going to insist on publishing more memoirs — and he will — it's his moral responsibility to do something worth memorializing. For this Frey needs to leave the Upper West Side and get to work. Move to Fallujah. Join the Foreign Legion. Get a job in a coal mine. Become a blackjack dealer on a riverboat. Survive a skydiving accident. Commit a crime and go to prison, this time for real. Anything, as long as it's interesting. Don't come back until you've got a story to tell.