I'm Sorry I Got Caught

James Wolcott's post "Big Tears Mean Nothing" isn't about the phoney-baloney contrition of Jack Abramoff or even Duke Cunningham's dry heaves poised over his $3,000 commode. It's about this fascinating expose of James Frey, some author I'd never heard of (though I've seen his tome in bookstores). The Smoking Gun expose posits that Frey turned his extremely boring white-bread youth into a best-selling junkie memoir, called The Preppie Basketball Diaries or some such nonsense, by making up all the good parts.

Next thing you know, we'll come to find Toni Bentley only took it somewhere in the vicinity of the ass, that Kat Harrison and her dad are just good friends, and that Dave Pelzer isn't everything it claims to be.

Wolcott says, "I'm just automatically suspicious of every tale of woe that's peddled as a tale of redemption." Like Paul Bremer's new novel, Receipts, My Ass.

Frey has been scheduled for Larry King's program for tomorrow. I hope he can withstand the gruelling cross-examination, if only so Lar doesn't bring him back for some gang therapy by Dr. Phil and Rick Warren.

Update (1/11):More here.