Oprah and Frey: Celebrity Book Clubs Gone Bizarre

Oprah Winfrey's turnaround on the James Frey "memoir" has been sudden and complete. After vigorously defending Frey following the revelation of factual inaccuracies (and outright lies), Oprah has now retracted that support and apologized to her viewers. Then when Frey appeared on her talk show this week, she mercilessly interrogated him in a way that would make Jack Bauer proud. Why the flip-flop from this usually rock-solid icon?

Well, as the credibility of Oprah's Book Club was eroding, the most recent issue of The Week passes this information along from The New York Times: "'Rogue State,' an obscure book recommended by Osama bin Laden last week as a "useful lesson" on U.S. foreign policy, has zoomed from No. 209,000 on the Amazon.com sales list to No. 30." Clearly, the public is desperate for celebrity literature endorsements.

Maybe Oprah realized that if the murderous and hated Osama could so quickly fill the void she temporarily created, imagine what Tony Danza could do. Or Tyra Banks.