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Archive for March 3rd, 2008

03
Mar

Phony Memoir Trifecta

oprah-towlie.jpgIt seems like just yesterday that A Million Little Pieces, the fabricated alcohol- and drug-addiction memoir of James Frey, made headlines. Mostly because Frey got sucker-punched into confessing his fictionalization on Oprah!, which was followed by a “South Park” parody.

Fast-forward two years. This week there are two more “nonfiction” memoirs biting the dust. Here’s Bachelorette Number One, courtesy of the International Herald Tribune:

In “Love and Consequences,” a critically acclaimed memoir published last week, Margaret Jones wrote about her life as a half-white, half-Native American girl growing up in South Central Los Angeles as a foster child who ran drugs for members of the Bloods, an infamous gang. The author’s biography on the back flap says she graduated from the University of Oregon.

The problem is that none of that is true.

Jones, a pseudonym for Margaret Seltzer, actually is all white and grew up in Sherman Oaks, in the San Fernando Valley of California, with her biological family. She graduated from the Campbell Hall School, a private Episcopal day school in North Hollywood. She has never lived with a foster family, nor did she run drugs for any gang members. She is still a few credits short of a diploma from University of Oregon.

Riverhead Books, the unit of Penguin Group USA that published “Love and Consequences,” is recalling all copies of the book and has canceled Seltzer’s book tour …

Seltzer’s story started unraveling last Thursday after she was profiled in the House & Home section of The New York Times. The article appeared alongside a photograph of Seltzer (still using her pseudonym) and her 8-year-old daughter, Rya. Seltzer’s older sister, Cynthia Seltzer Hoffman, saw the piece and called Riverhead to tell them that Seltzer’s story was untrue.

And then there’s Bachelorette Number Two, thanks to the diligence of Slate, New York magazine, and an independent blogger with way too much time on her hands (i.e., the best kind of blogger…). Quoth New York:

Misha: A Mémoire of the Holocaust Years [was] a 1997 book by Misha Defonseca, in which the author — who grew up in Belgium during World War II — claimed that she fled Brussels at the age of 7 and lived with wolves in the forests of Europe for months. Oh, and also she claimed she sneaked into — and out of — the Warsaw ghetto and killed a Nazi who tried to rape her. Despite all these hilariously implausible details, Defonseca maintained that her story was true, even as it sold tens of thousands of copies in Europe…

In the end, it was a movie that brought the spotlight onto the unlikelihood of Defonseca’s story. Survivre Avec les Loups was released last month in France, and the film’s claims … caused researchers to investigate Defonseca’s histoire vraie. Turns out that not only did she not live in the woods with wolves for months, she’s not even Jewish, although her parents, resistance fighters, were killed by the Nazis. Even someone whose French petered out in high school, though, will watch the trailer and say, “Duh.” This story is the fakiest fake we’ve ever heard. Didn’t anyone at any of those European publishers, or the French film company, scratch his head, even for a second?

Apparently not. And why should we be surprised? After all, New York City is still the dead-tree publishing hub of the universe, and it was Big Apple publishers that brought us such autobiographical gems as Jimmy Carter’s “Why Not the Best?” along with Jane Fonda’s apocryphal “My Life So far.” Bonus points go to UK comedian Rik Mayall, just for pushing the envelope with his memoir “Bigger Than Hitler, Better Than Christ.”

03
Mar

Green Dumb

street_of_dreams.jpgA tip from reader Steve-o: A domestic ecoterrorist group called the Earth Liberation Front has possibly taken responsibility for fires set to a housing development today in Seattle.

Arson has destroyed five luxury homes in the Street of Dreams development, which had been advertising that its $2-million houses were built using environmentally friendly practices. A sign reading “Built green? Nope black!” with the initials ELF was discovered nearby.

According to the FBI:

[T]he Earth Liberation Front claimed responsibility for burning five townhomes under construction on November 20, 2005, in Hagerstown, Maryland. Fire officials investigating the scene determined that kerosene was used as the accelerant in the arson, the FBI said.

The Earth Liberation Front: Because nothing says “Save the Planet” like raging infernos and the destructive use of jet fuel.

03
Mar

WikiDrama

Jimmy Wales is the guy who founded Wikipedia. Rachel Marsden is a right-wing Canadian political pundit. She didn’t like some of the stuff that was written about her on her Wiki page and directly appealed to him to change it. He did. They got to know each other a little better. They got together. They broke up. (Well, he dumped her. On Wikipedia.) She claims it’s all his fault. She has kind of a history of bad romantic breakups and other problems playing nicely with others. Now Wales is at ground zero. It’s really starting to get good. Did I say “good”? I meant great. (I just made this my home page.)

All of which is salacious enough. But what makes the whole thing Deceiver-worthy is that it looks like Wales broke his own rules by helping Marsden in the first place. According to Wiki:

A Wikipedia conflict of interest (COI) is an incompatibility between the aim of Wikipedia, which is to produce a neutral, reliably sourced encyclopedia, and the aims of an individual editor.

COI editing involves contributing to Wikipedia in order to promote your own interests or those of other individuals, companies, or groups. Where an editor must forego advancing the aims of Wikipedia in order to advance outside interests, that editor stands in a conflict of interest.

COI edits are strongly discouraged. When they cause disruption to the encyclopedia in the opinion of an uninvolved administrator, they may lead to accounts being blocked and embarrassment for the individuals and groups who were being promoted.

Is “trying to get into the pants of a nutty Canuck talking head by deleting all the evidence of her being a serial stalker” considered an outside interest? Citation unneeded!

03
Mar

Look at Me, I’m Kenickie

jeff_conaway.jpgActor Jeff Conaway, who had roles in Taxi and Grease, says Scientology has helped him kick his drug habit:

“I’ve been doing Scientology…my doctor was like, Holy cow, he says whatever you’ve been doing keep doing it because it’s really working.â€

Funny, I thought it was the actual rehab that he agreed to undergo. On Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew — a reality show on VH1 that chronicles eight Z-list performers who are trying to overcome drug addiction — Conaway is a convulsive mess who hogs all the screentime.

Dr. Drew Pinsky, a mental-health veteran who has hosted the radio call-in program Loveline since 1984, has been giving Conaway the lion’s share of the attention on the show, in part because of an enabling girlfriend who’s been a bit unclear on the concept.




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