Egregious Liars and Hypocrites

I hope this thread does not offend anybody, but in any case, I hope this thread is used to scream about influential people (not personal friends and enemies) who make us RAGE that they have influence

Here is mine: Marianne Williamson.. tonight on Oprah, talking about being a woman 50 or older.

Marianne's stance, paraphrased: "I am all about what is real, so I am 52". (maybe she said 51 or 53)

I have encountered her dozens of times in dozens of arenas, including some aquaintance type ones (not as close as friends).

I found her kind of interesting, though she was mostly hated by the mutual acquaintances we had.

She has had radical cosmetic surgery, multiple times (nose job when young, eye job when about 45, JAW REDUCTION at 50 --she had a very prominent, kinda cute, defining Jay Leno but more feminine jaw--, so many things - face lift, more eye stuff, more jaw stuff by this point that she looks nothing like herself even 7 years ago)... whatever she has had done has even changed her voice. She is somewhere between very late 50s and early 60s (not early 50s), which would be very cool, otherwise.

I do not mind that she was basically a Hollywood slut who went after the Constantines of her day, until she found Jesus.

I do not really mind that she was a bad friend to her female friends.

But It drives me INSANE that she is a zillion dollar seller of lies about herself, and of principles she does not practice.

OK...that vented, she doesn't actually drive me insane. In fact I never think about her in other circumstances... so I guess it is really about any influential liars. She is a small potatoes example, unlike politicians and higher ups at places I have worked.

Fraz, are you referring to the Marianna Williamson who wrote books on love, etc.? I have one of those books - wasn't impressed.

Oo-o! I would love to see some photos of her before and after all the plastic surgery.

How did this person initially break into the biz? Acting or writing?

I had the wrong person - I was thinking of Melody Beattie - sorry.

But I do know now who Marianne is.

Marianne was always cute, and the big chin/jaw looked fine in real life, but it did photograph as bigger than it was. But even then she looked cute.

She is 59 or 60, according to a mutual friend, so that is about right from what I remember of her when I was in my early 30s and she was clearly older than me. Now she looks like my teenaged daughter. Maybe she had a whole face transplant.

Even that would be fine...but the topic she was pontificating about was aging women's spirituality, and she made a big deal about not lying about her age.

You are a bigger man than I am because I cannot stand her fakety fake ass. Do you know who else I cannot stand? Suze Orman. I would love to go through the tv and shake her. I swear to god her "finanical" advice is ridculous. She literally told one couple one day on Oprah to to help them budget they should sell their second porsche. I don't know about y'all but i don't happen to have one of those floating around to sell off to finance my son's college education . I just love it when millionaires think they are realting to the middle class of this country. They literally have no clue. I guess Oprah is well meaning and all but really does she and all her finanical and spirtual advisors really have a clue how the rest of the world lives?

Another thing that drives me crazy, celebrities that think I really give a rat's ass how they are going to vote and why. There are very few that actually know what the hell they are talking about . STFU!

And while I am on a rant how about the ladies of the View? I actually heard them say the other day no one cared about the Oscars this year because most of the nominees were too obscure. WHAT?? I suppose it would be better if no talents like Tomkat and Brad were nominated. Please. Just sit and listen to them sometime. Barbara Walters is an idiot. How she can call herself a journalist with the softball questions she lobs is beyond me. Don't even get me started on their political commentary.

Aerwin is my hero and I LOVE her! It's like you took the words right out of my mouth on all the subjects you just hit on! Well, except for the first one because I don't know who the hell that is But, I enjoyed Frazz's rant on her!!

Aerwin wrote:

Quote :

Another thing that drives me crazy, celebrities that think I really give a rat's ass how they are going to vote and why. There are very few that actually know what the hell they are talking about . STFU!

Yep! The more they get that holier than thou attitude about who they support and why...the more they lose credibility with me. I second the STFU command on that one!

And the gals on the view???? What I want to know is who listens or watches these nauseating people anyway?

Frazz, I looked up pictures of her and I can totally tell she got work done. Certainly someone looking at her up-close would realize. I think you should write into Oprah and maybe she'll dress Marianne down the way she did that guy who wrote the drug abuse book. That would be awesome.

The View was only interesting to me when Rosie was on because she had an opinion and she wasn't trying to be all candy-coated about it. I was hoping (sorry FC) that they'd at least get Kathy Griffin to replace her, but after Rosie, they needed safe and non-controversial. That's when they lost me. Elizabeth Hasselbeck can kiss my ass so hard. Her world is black and white and she has no business stating her opinion as if she knows what the hell she is talking about. She lives in a bubble where she's categorized people as good or bad and nothing can change her opinion. She refuses to listen to facts. From what I understand, Barbara Wa Wa is also fake as can be and a total bitch.

Funny, when I looked up pictures of Marianne, they had a picture of Suze and under her picture was Marianne's name. I thought that was funny.

I've also become disillusioned with Dr. Phil, who I also understand is a phoney baloney and total asshole. What a media whore he is! Kathy Griffin (sorry FC) tells this awesome story about him hitting on Jane Fonda. I used to like him until I found out how he really is. I liked his son until his head grew ten sizes and he married a Playmate.

On Kathy Griffin...

I do kinda enjoy her and my personal take is that her Clay stuff is mostly fun (I know FC doesn't feel that way, so what I am about to say might just tickle FC).

Kathy considers herself a gay icon. And she actually is a big supporter of gay causes.

The place I work in the mornings, AIDS Project LA, is in some sort of fund raising partnership with a gay Cruise to Bora Bora with Kathy Griffin for a week, with drag queen costume contests and stuff like that.

Two months after the Cruise was announced, a few weeks away from it happening, they have sold, count 'em, SIX tickets.

(btw - you guys don't need to say sorry FC every time you talk about Kathy G. )

(ok to be perfectly honest, when she is not making fun of Clay I kinda think she is funny)

I dunno what they will do about the six people....maybe Kathy will invite them to a tea party, instead.

frazz, that is sad. I mean, Rosie's cruise is pretty successful. Maybe they should have partnered with her. I think Kathy has performed there.

FC, I could feel how hard that was for you to admit. The thing I like about Kathy is that every stand-up routine is totally different from the last. Speaking of phoney baloney people, I can't stand it when comedians go on Jay Leno and instead of having an interview with them, he sets them up so they can tell a joke. Then I see their latest stand-up special and it's almost word for word what they said in their "interview". Dennis Miller, who so totally USED TO be funny, did that. I can't stand him now. He's turned into a caricature of himself.

I just saw this online. I think it is an interesting moral quandary.

My take is that the author wrote a reportedly good and researched-enough account, so the only real drama here is that one sister hates the other one and wanted to squeal on her. What do you think?

Quote :

Author admits gang-life 'memoir' was all fiction
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Sister blew the whistle on writer who said she was a foster child in South L.A., but really grew up with her family in Sherman Oaks.
By Bob Pool and Rebecca Trounson, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
March 4, 2008
The gripping memoir of "Margaret B. Jones" received critical raves. It turns out it should have been reviewed as fiction.

The author of "Love and Consequences," a critically acclaimed autobiography about growing up among gangbangers in South Los Angeles, acknowledged Monday that she made up everything in her just-published book.

"Jones" is actually Margaret Seltzer. Instead of being a half-white, half-Native American who grew up in a foster home and once sold drugs for the Bloods street gang, she is a white woman who was raised with her biological family in Sherman Oaks and graduated from Campbell Hall, an exclusive private school in the San Fernando Valley.

Her admission that she is a fake came in a tearful mea culpa to the New York Times, which last week published a profile of Seltzer using her pseudonym. It was accompanied by a photograph of the 33-year-old and her 8-year-old daughter in Eugene, Ore., where they now live.

Seltzer was unmasked when her sister Cyndi Hoffman, 47, saw the newspaper's profile and notified the memoir's publisher, Riverhead Books, that Seltzer's story was untrue.

Riverhead announced Monday that it had withdrawn "Love and Consequences" and canceled a book tour that was supposed to have started yesterday in Eugene.

Seltzer could not be reached at her home for comment late Monday.

In a brief telephone interview, Seltzer's mother said her daughter was very upset and contrite about the fabrication, but had been advised by her editor not to speak further about it for the moment.

"I think she got caught up in the facts of the story she was trying to write," Gay Seltzer said. "She's always been an activist and she tried to draw on the immediacy of the situation and became caught up in the persona of the narrator. She's very sorry and very upset."

Gay Seltzer, of Sherman Oaks, said she had been aware of her daughter's book, but had not read it or known that it was a purportedly personal account of gang life.

She confirmed that Hoffman had revealed the hoax.

Margaret Seltzer's literary agent, Faye Bender, declined to comment.

"I'm so sorry, I can't be a part of it. I'm running out" the door, she said.

But Sarah McGrath, Seltzer's editor at Riverhead, told the New York Times on Monday that the publishing house was stunned by the disclosure.

"It's very upsetting to us because we spent so much time with this person and felt such sympathy for her and she would talk about how she didn't have any money or heat and we completely bought into that," McGrath told the newspaper.

McGrath, whom the paper identified as the daughter of former New York Times book review editor and current writer-at-large Charles McGrath, characterized the deception as "a huge personal betrayal" and "a professional one."

"Love and Consequences" drew admiring reviews from critics. Los Angeles Times book reviewer Susan Salter Reynolds cited "her loyalty to the language, the sense of community, the tight bonds she formed with her gang."

The review told of how "at 5, Margaret B. Jones, part white, part Native American, was taken from her suburban Southern California home after she came to school bleeding from what the teachers and social workers assumed was a sexual assault. She spent three years in foster care before landing with 'Big Mom,' a hard-working black woman raising four grandchildren in South Central Los Angeles. It didn't take Jones long to fall in with the Bloods."

The reviewer told of how the book described "Jones" selling drugs at age 12 because she was "eager to earn my own money toward the flame-red Nike Cortez with fat laces that everyone else wore, but even more excited to prove myself worthy of wearing the affiliated color and moving up the ranks."

Seltzer told the New York Times that although the personal story told in the book was fabricated, other details were based on friends' real experiences.

"I just felt there was good that I could do and there was no other way that someone would listen to it," she said.

bob.pool@latimes.com

rebecca.trounson@ latimes.com

On the one hand, I think "so what? Who is she hurting?" On the other, she must have seen what happens when it's found out an author who sold a story as truth, was really making the whole thing up. To make a lie that grand and think you won't get caught in your lie, is a huge act of hubris. She must have known her sister was a vindictive bitch and would rat her out at the first opportunity.

It sounds like this is an important book that probably would have had a huge impact if she had sold it as a work of fiction. Or at least if she said she was using this one character as an amalgam of many women she's met and it's based on truth. There were many other ways to handle it and she chose something that, if found out, could ruin her.

Can I just say this? WHY in todays world does anyone think they can get by with anything like that? Anything you do if you are even minutely in the public eye will be found out. Seriously. It sounds like a good book she could have just labeled it fiction.

Ok speaking of hypocriical hear I go again. CNN is supposed to be a trusted new source. Why then the other night on Larry King did he have a panel of celeb and semi celebs speaking of who they were voting for and why? That's journalism? Fran Dresher was on and made a plea to latinos in spanish to vote for Hilary. Again STFU!! I don't care . I swear to god when I become queen everytime a stupid celeb opens their mouth regular citizens will get equal time. Honestly celebs are one thing that KILLED Kerry in the previous election. You can bet I e mailed CNN about it too. It is a joke. And then after Fran was sort of made of fun of by Larry LoudMouth O'Donnell puts her two cents in and says he should retire.
BTW I do think he is doddering and most of the time has not idea who he is interviewing. But I am more than ready for her to shut her freaking mouth. Did anyone her a rant about
911 and that no way fire could melt steel? Talk to my husband he is an operations mgr in the steel industry. He laughed his ass off about that. If you know not of what you speak. SHUT UP!!