From 'Freying pan' to fire

As everyone on the planet knows by now, Oprah really gave it to James Frey on her show yesterday. She acknowledged that she had made a mistake by initally backing his deception. She was, as one of her guests called her, a real "mensch." And another guest also brought up a point that was worrying me as well as the original problem. She had chosen Elie Wiesel's "Night" as her next memoir for the Book Club and I had deep concerns that the fallout would link the question of truth in memoir to the subject of the Holocaust, which certainly does not need any new doubters! Or perhaps that she had chosen it as her own "redemption."But she cleared that up as well, saying it had been chosen way before this contretemps. And that too is good. But now I must get to the "mega" concern that I have about the whole issue of why we need "mothers" or Queens or any kind of celebrities to tell us what to read or wear or think about anything! In the case of Oprah, she is intent upon doing good, but maybe we could learn not to follow 'celebrity' quite as much. So don't listen to me, who the hell am I to tell you what to do!