Kitty Kelley's unauthorized biography of Oprah Winfrey, in which the author spends more than 500 pages offering up reasons the megastar is "not all that" (as a teenage girl and maybe Oprah herself might say), is turning out to be something similar: not all that interesting. This book should not have been released, because I don't believe a thing in the book. And, the jealous friend Erica Jong was never a true friend in the first place. You don't throw your friends in the fire because you've had a disagreement. Erica get a life.
It's a letdown: not enough dish. But part of what makes a big Oprah expose so difficult is the fact that Winfrey has already done much of the heavy lifting in that department. Whether she's publicly charting her fluctuating weight or speaking up about her traumatic past, including being sexually molested as a child and having a baby at 15, Oprah is a testament to the self-protective properties of telling your story on your own terms before someone less than benign does it on theirs. Like all talented confessors, she knows that if you slip on a banana peel, you're a fool, but if you tell people you slipped on a banana peel, you're a hero.
For all of her formidable confessional skills, Oprah is perhaps most virtuosic at the art of conveying intimacy while, in truth, keeping much of the world at arm's length. She may punctuate interviews with teary anecdotes of her own foibles, but to hear Kelley tell it (and this isn't big news), most of Oprah's private self is perhaps not as available, let alone as warm and fuzzy as the best girlfriend she appears to be.
Everyone who works for or around Oprah (and reportedly this includes upholsterers and dog-walkers) signs a confidentiality agreement. That's not unusual among celebrities as big as Oprah. Kelley tells us, however, that Oprah also abruptly drops friends who offer up any criticism, has exaggerated the poverty of her upbringing to infuse drama into her life story, and likes being left alone so much that she won't even supply her own mother with a direct phone number (though she's provided her with handsome financial assistance).
In case you're interested, former Oprah friend Erica Jong recently took the liberty of discussing her friendship with Oprah -- and its demise -- in the Huffington Post, writing: "When everyone thinks they know you, it's hard not to be guarded … [but] when you make people sign confidentiality agreements … you may start to think you're the queen."
With friends like these, you'd better have a confidentiality agreement.
