The Irish Independent reports that many foreign workers are being treated like slaves in wealthy homes, an Irish Independent investigation shows.
Some young women are being paid as little as €25 for 14-hour days - or around €2 an hour by their newly affluent employers.
The investigation uncovered how the wealthy Irish are routinely exploiting, abusing and under paying vulnerable workers.
Women who come here to work as nannies, carers and domestic workers end up being treated as slaves, working 14 hour days for six days a week, sometimes for as little as €175 a week.
Many, who have left husbands and children behind to earn enough money to send home, have found themselves trapped in big houses, not being paid properly, having their privacy invaded and their passports withheld.
Others who hope to make a new life and friends here find themselves socially isolated.
They can be asked to do everything from minding the children all day, cooking, cleaning, washing the employer's car to being farmed out to neighbours to help at a dinner party.
The Irish Independent also reports that a new emergency care clinic provided by the VHI that promises to have you in and out within an hour is doing brisk business, but it comes at a price.
The VHI SwiftCare clinic in Dundrum in south Dublin is set to be followed by another clinic in an as-yet-unidentified area of north county Dublin by the summer. Then there are likely to be others around the country.
SwiftCare is the first walk-in urgent care facility in Ireland and is proving popular despite costing €85 a visit. It does not treat major injuries but promises fast treatment for minor problems.
The advantage is that if you have a broken limb or need stitching, you are not left waiting for hours while victims of a road traffic accident or a heart attack patient are treated first.
Research has shown that 60pc of people who present at A&E wards only have minor injuries.
But the cost of the facility has drawn criticism from the Consumers' Association of Ireland (CAI) and the Irish Medical Association.
The IMO has harshly criticised the new clinic's private policy. "It only serves cash-paying customers," Dr Martin Daly has said.
"It excludes people on lower incomes and medical-card holders. It is disingenuous to suggest that medical card holders can attend."
Chief executive of the CAI Dermott Jewell said it was another example where taxpayers were paying for a service (A&E) but were unable to avail of it. "It highlights that if you have money you are fine. If not, get to the back of the queue."
The private clinic provides treatment for unexpected injuries such as sprains, bumps, potential breaks, minor burns and cuts that may need stitching.
Opening the Dundrum facility last November, Minister for Health Mary Harney welcomed the "innovative" clinic.
"There are approximately 164,000 visits to A&E departments in south Dublin every year and up to three out of every five patients presenting in these departments are treated for injuries and illnesses that could be handled in a community-based location," she said.
Head of diversified business at the VHI Tim McKeown said that the new clinic was so far surpassing expectations in terms of demand for its service. The new facility is treating 40 people a day during the week and 60 people a day at weekends. Initial estimates were for 30 people a day during the week. A consultation at the clinic costs €85 or €45 if a patient is referred by their GP irrespective of whether they have health insurance or a medical card. An A&E hospital consultation is generally free for medical card holders or costs approximately €60 otherwise.
On-site X-ray and blood pathology diagnostic services are available at the new clinic, as well as suturing and plaster application. An X-ray costs €65, stitches between €25 and €50, and plastering €50.
Mr McKeown said the majority of patients were presenting with broken limbs, followed by those requiring stitching and with the third-highest demand from those requiring the removal of a foreign body.
The clinic is not confined to VHI members but available to everyone and is open from 8am to 10pm 365 days a year.
Mr McKeown said that the clinic had been set up after the VHI had identified a gap in the market but he denied that the new SwiftCare clinic was a "quick-buck operation" designed to boost VHI revenues. The VHI was a not-for-profit organisation offering services its customers needed.
However, Mr McKeown acknowledged that there is no specific cover offered for treatment at the SwiftCare clinic under any of the VHI's plans.
Asked about the fact that the medical card holders and those on lower incomes still had to pay up €85 to attend the clinic, Mr McKeown said the VHI had no arrangement with the Government to cover the cost of medical card holders.
But the organisation was open to discussion with Government health chiefs on the issue
The Irish Times reports that a large majority want to reintroduce work permits for workers from the new EU member states, and a similar majority believe there are already enough or too many foreign workers here, according to the latest Irish Times/TNS mrbi poll.
Most voters see the presence of foreign workers here as good for the Irish economy and society.
However, majorities also see their presence as making it harder for Irish people to get jobs and believe it is pushing down pay and working conditions here.
An overwhelming majority - 78 per cent - believe people from the central and east European states that joined the EU in 2004 should now be required to apply for and receive work permits before coming here to work. Just 17 per cent believe they should not and 5 per cent have no opinion.
Support for a work-permit regime is consistent across all age groups, social groups and regions, with the exception of Progressive Democrat supporters. Among them a much lower 56 per cent want a work-permit regime for east and central European EU workers, 40 per cent do not and 4 per cent have no opinion.
The poll was conducted among a national quota sample of 1,000 voters at 100 sampling points throughout all constituencies in the State last Monday and Tuesday.
Just 23 per cent believe more foreign workers should be allowed come here, 41 per cent think there are now enough here and no more should be admitted, and 29 per cent believe there are too many foreign workers here and that steps should be taken to reduce their number. Some 7 per cent gave no opinion.
There is a significantly higher desire for restrictions on foreign workers among the less well-of than the better-off. In the better-off ABC1 group, 30 per cent believe more foreign workers should be allowed come here, 41 per cent that there are now enough here and that no more should be permitted, and 20 per cent that there are too many and that steps should be taken to reduce their number. Some 10 per cent gave no opinion.
Among the less well-off C2DE group, just 19 per cent thought more foreign workers should be allowed come here, 41 per cent that there were enough and no more should be permitted, and 35 per cent that there were too many and steps should be taken to reduce their number, with 4 per cent giving no opinion.
The C2DE group is also the strongest backer of work permits for new EU members. Some 81 per cent of this group favour it, just 15 per cent want continued unrestricted access and 4 per cent have no opinion. Among the better-off, 74 per cent favour work permits, 20 per cent continued unrestricted access and 6 per cent have no opinion. Among farmers, 78 per cent favour work permits, 16 per cent unrestricted access, and 6 per cent have no opinion.
The Irish Times also reports that a group of Irish investors are in pole position to buy a €165 million hotel in Florida with connections to the Professional Golfers' Association (PGA) tour.
RQB, led by property investors Paul Pardy, Niall McFadden and Paddy Kelly, is the preferred of two bidders for the Marriott resort hotel at Sawgrass, Jacksonville, Florida. The hotel is next to the Sawgrass golf course, home of golf's "fifth" major competition, the Players' Championship.
The hotel does not own Sawgrass, but controls the booking for tee times there, and most of those who play there stay at the hotel. It has more than 500 rooms.
It is also the official hotel for the Players' Championship and the Tournament Players' Club.
Its current owner, Sigma investment fund, is selling the property, and RQB, headed by chief executive, Mr Pardy, is one of the last two bidders for the hotel.
Mr Pardy confirmed this to The Irish Times at the weekend. "We are the preferred bidder for the property," he said. He was not able to reveal the other party's name.
The hotel is likely to be sold for over $200 million (€165 million). RQB intends funding the purchase through bank debt and private equity contributed by Irish investors.
Sawgrass, the headquarters of the PGA Tour, is well known to golf players and fans of the sport.
It has two courses, the stadium course and the valley course. The stadium is used in the Players' Championship, and is well known for its 17 hole, which is on a distinctive island green.
Architect Pete Dye designed both courses, which were cut from 415 acres of woodland.
The stadium is set to undergo a $25 million renovation that will include a Mediterranean style clubhouse.
Last year's Players' Championship featured the best field in any professional golf tournament in 2005, and also had the richest prize money purse, at $8 million.
Fred Funk won it in 2005, beating the top 125 players on the PGA tour, and, at 48, becoming the oldest winner in the competition's history.
In 2004, Adam Scott became the youngest winner in the championship's history when he pipped Irishman Pádraig Harrington by just one stroke.
RQB's principals are already well known in Irish business. Both Mr Kelly and Mr McFadden have been involved in a number of high profile property deals. Mr Pardy is a former Anglo Irish Bank executive.
The Sawgrass Marriott will be RQB's first foray outside the Republic, if the company is successful in bidding for the property.
The company has raised €50 million since May, and has invested in a number of properties.
Its investments include an office block in Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin, a mixed residential and commercial holding off Clanbrassil Street in Dublin's city centre, and a site in Castleknock, Dublin.
It has also embarked on a joint venture with Pierse Construction to build a 300-unit residential development at Carrickmines, Dublin.
The Irish Examiner reports that a cut in farm production levels as a result of the European Union nitrates directive would have severe implications for the Irish agri-food industry and rural areas, it was claimed yesterday.
The Agricultural Science Association (ASA), which represents graduates in the agri food sector, warned the directive could drive some farmers out of business.
It said leading commercial dairy and drystock sectors will be forced to reduce the amount of chemical fertiliser they apply, with a consequent drop in production levels.
President James Fitzgerald said the directive, which comes into effect on February 1, flies in the face of the Government's policy on a competitive agri-food industry and contains more stringent provisions than in other EU states.
"The limitations the directive imposes on nitrogen and phosphorus levels mean up to 30% of pig producers are at grave risk of being put out of business with consequent devastating impact on cereals and compound feed production," he said.
He called for an expert group to prepare a case for derogation on the phosphorus provisions similar to one being sought by the Government on nitrogen.
He said such derogations would significantly ease the difficulties created by the directive.
Mr Fitzgerald said the ASA is alarmed people with no scientific training and no knowledge of farming will have wide-ranging powers under the directive, including the right to seize farm equipment and enter farmers' homes.
He also said the absence of information from the Department of the Environment is accentuating confusion and concern among farmers and the industry.
"It is not good enough that a measure of this magnitude is signed into law while the Government department responsible adopts a policy of silence and allows panic and confusion to run rampant," he said.
The Financial Times reports that Paul Wolfowitz, president of the World Bank, has triggered a bitter conflict with the bank’s senior career staff by empowering a group of close political advisers to pursue aggressively what he sees as widespread corruption surrounding bank projects.
The dispute has come to a head with the appointment last week of Suzanne Rich Folsom, a counsellor to Mr Wolfowitz with close ties to the Republican party, as the new director of the Department of Institutional Integrity, the internal bank watchdog that investigates suspected fraud and staff misconduct.
Her appointment has raised objections that a person close to Mr Wolfowitz, and with a political background, has been put into a senior position at a unit that was seen as independent of the president’s office since it was set up in 2001.
Robert Hindle, previously the senior manager of the unit and a long-time World Bank employee, resigned in November largely as a result of what four current and former bank sources said was concern at the targeting of employees who had worked on projects that developed corruption problems, and pressure on two occasions from Ms Rich Folsom to bypass internal rules on investigating the e-mail records of a number of employees.
Ms Rich Folsom, who was brought into the bank by James Wolfensohn, Mr Wolfowitz’s predecessor, denies strongly any breach of internal rules. She insisted that in every case she followed proper procedures that require the bank’s general counsel and another senior manager to approve any investigation of staff e-mails. “I have never asked Robert Hindle to circumvent any procedures,” she told the Financial Times.
Mr Wolfowitz said those alleging violations of e-mail procedure “are trying to get me not to be tough on these issues. I just would like to say I don’t intend to be intimidated”.
“We are in a transition, but I think it’s extremely important that we be moving from talking about corruption to dealing with corruption,” he said in an interview.
The World Bank Staff Association has raised concerns over the process that led to Ms Rich Folsom’s appointment and has heard complaints about e-mail checks from a number of parties. Alison Cave, chair of the association, said: “To clear up any questions, it would be a good idea to have an independent investigation or audit of the department.”
A number of senior bank staff and executive directors representing member countries, who asked not to be quoted, complain of a lack of consultation by Mr Wolfowitz’s advisers, and an atmosphere of suspicion.
Roberto Dañino, the bank’s general counsel and a former prime minister of Peru, this month also announced his resignation because, friends said, he was unhappy at the way the bank was being run by Mr Wolfowitz. Mr Hindle and Mr Dañino both declined comment.
Mr Wolfowitz’s appointment last year was greeted with apprehension by some long-time staff. Many Republicans believe the bank is plagued by corruption. Ms Rich Folsom was hired by Mr Wolfensohn with the task of improving the bank’s relations with Congressional Republicans.
The FT also reports that Iran’s top nuclear official on Sunday warned Tehran would resume efforts to enrich uranium on an industrial scale if its case was reported to the UN Security Council, further raising the stakes in the crisis over its nuclear programme.
Tehran earlier this month moved to resume nuclear research, including some small-scale enrichment. But Ali Larijani, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, which handles the nuclear issue, said in an interview with the Financial Times that a referral to the United Nations would force Tehran to broaden significantly the scale of such work.
“If the case goes to the Security Council, we’re obliged to lift all voluntary measures,” he said, specifying that this included industrial-scale uranium enrichment.
The European Union and US have been pushing to get Iran’s case reported to the UN Security Council since Tehran announced it would restart its nuclear research two weeks ago. The US and European governments consider the move a breach of a 2004 agreement with Iran.
A referral could come as soon as next week at an extraordinary session of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the governing board of the UN’s nuclear watchdog. Such a move could lead eventually to sanctions.
The US and EU argue that involving the Security Council would strengthen the IAEA’s hand. But Mr Larijani’s warning appears designed to show that greater diplomatic pressure would instead undermine both the IAEA’s work and attempts to curtail Iran’s programme.
Iran has always intended to develop industrial-scale uranium enrichment, which can be used for nuclear reactors or atomic weapons, but stopped all preparatory work during two-year talks with Europeans.
Nuclear experts say assembling enough centrifuges and preparing for industrial production could still take years.
Mr Larijani spoke at the start of a week of intense diplomacy. European officials will visit capitals represented on the 35-member IAEA governing board to lobby for an EU-backed resolution on referral.
Meanwhile, Mr Larijani is likely to be in Moscow to discuss a Russian proposal to find a compromise, an effort to forestall the Europeans or at least temper the tone of any IAEA resolution.
Moscow has proposed a joint venture to enrich uranium on Russian soil for use in Iranian reactors. In his interview Mr Larijani said the proposal “had to become complete. Gaps have to be filled.
“We have to see what potential this idea has for being productive,” he said.
“There are two issues to be considered: one is Iran’s right to enrichment, and the other is non-diversion [of nuclear material to weapons].
“Any solution should be consistent with these two considerations. The scale, extent and timing can all be discussed.”
The New York Times reports that if Robert A. Iger, the chief executive of The Walt Disney Company, and Steven P. Jobs, chief of Pixar Animation, played characters in a movie, it could well be Pixar's own computer-animated "Toy Story."
As Buzz Lightyear, a space-age superhero who can seemingly fly, Mr. Jobs is the perfect foil to Mr. Iger, whose smoothly coiffed hair and earnest intentions bring to mind the amiable cowboy Woody. And like the two characters, Mr. Iger and Mr. Jobs, who is also chief executive of Apple Computer, are friendly and sometimes cautious rivals, but that relationship could change substantially.
Disney's board is considering whether to buy Pixar Animation for roughly $6.8 billion in stock and give Mr. Jobs a seat on Disney's board. But whatever the board decides, Mr. Iger's aggressive pursuit of a deal with Pixar speaks volumes about his own ambitions and how he perceives Disney's future.
Seen as a safe corporate successor to the combative and polarizing Michael D. Eisner, Mr. Iger is trying to position himself as an old-media executive willing to embrace new-media ideas. Unlike Mr. Jobs, however, who has shown his mettle in music, videos and television, Mr. Iger has yet to establish a track record as a technologically hip leader.
But he has given hints of what he is willing to do. Mr. Iger, who has been chief executive for only four months, angered movie theater owners when he suggested studios needed to accommodate consumer demand by releasing movies simultaneously in theaters and on DVD. He weathered the wrath of network affiliates when ABC announced it would distribute episodes of "Lost" and "Desperate Housewives" for the Apple video iPod. And bringing Pixar into Disney would probably entail a wholesale rebuilding of Disney's famed animation department and bring a new level of intrigue to a corporate board that at times was described during Mr. Eisner's tenure as passive and compliant.
"Steve Jobs has proven that he is a visionary in technology," said Brian Grazer, the Academy Award-winning producer of "A Beautiful Mind" who is a friend of Mr. Iger's. "It is Bob's goal to control storytelling and acquire intellectual property. If you are trying to bet on the future, it seems like a pretty interesting partnership."
Mr. Jobs, of course, does not have to sell himself. His career has been marked by his iconoclastic business style, which is characterized by a disdain for traditional business school strategies and conventional thinking. A dropout from Reed College in Portland, Ore., Mr. Jobs is a legendary micromanager with a mercurial personality who has an instinctive sense of what will be a hit.
At first glance, Mr. Iger seems like an unlikely match. He grew up in Oceanside, N.Y., and has a curiosity that appears genuine; he was voted "most enthusiastic" in high school. Unlike Mr. Jobs, Mr. Iger exhibits a cool demeanor that has served as a corporate survival technique. Mr. Iger declined to comment for this story. But since being named chief executive, he has sought to distance himself from Mr. Eisner, his predecessor, most notably by smoothing over old conflicts with Mr. Eisner's enemies - among them Mr. Jobs.
"Bob's been No. 2 for so long he is not so covetous of power," said Mr. Grazer. "A partnership is more biomedically comfortable for him."
But now, as Disney's No. 1, the company's fortunes lay squarely at Mr. Iger's feet. Disney has hardly distinguished itself in recent years as a think tank for technological innovation. In the 1950's and 1960's, Disney was prized for its entrepreneurial flair. Then, Walt Disney handpicked some of his studio's best creative talent to plan, design and build Disneyland.
Imagineers, as they were called, pioneered such innovations as audio-animatronics, including a talking and moving Abraham Lincoln, which awed audiences in 1964 at the World's Fair in New York.
Disney struggled to maintain a competitive edge. It missed the computer-animated movie wave altogether. Mr. Iger oversaw technology initiatives while he was Disney's president, including Disney's failed MovieBeam venture, a video-on-demand service.
Perhaps the company's biggest new media success is ESPN, a prized brand in cable television, mobile phones and online for its sports news and games. Many in the industry speculate it was successful because executives at Disney's headquarters in Burbank, Calif., were discouraged from meddling at all. ESPN is run as a mostly autonomous unit based in Bristol, Conn.
Even in the cable distribution arena - hardly risky new media - Disney has been criticized for overpaying for Fox Family Worldwide, a $5.2 billion acquisition that has not lived up to its original promise. That deal has given some analysts pause regarding Pixar, given that an acquisition would dilute future earnings and there is no guarantee that Pixar will continue to produce box-office hits.
"As a concept you can't do better than this merger," said Michael G. Nathanson, a media analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company. "But, then again, the market loved the combination of AOL and Time Warner when that was announced."
But even as Mr. Iger espouses a new-media philosophy, his foot is still squarely in an old-media camp. After making the statement that so angered theater owners, Disney has not moved to offer blockbuster movies on DVD at the same time they play in theaters.
And while Mr. Iger got public relations value out of being the first to make shows available on the video iPod, ABC has not aggressively promoted the video service during showings of "Lost" and "Desperate Housewives." (NBC runs brightly colored ads for iTunes during "The Office" and "My Name is Earl.") The reason, said a Disney executive, is that ABC does not want to further upset affiliates by driving viewers away from the broadcast to iTunes.
For Mr. Jobs, the deeper question is the significance of taking a board position as Disney's largest shareholder. Many analysts and others agree it would probably have less impact than his ability to focus his attention on Apple Computer.
Mr. Jobs has always been clear that his goals extend beyond profitability. He is famous for having seduced the former Pepsi-Cola chief executive, John Sculley, to become Apple's chief executive by asking him if he wanted to spend the rest of his life selling "sugar water."
"Having Steve Jobs as its largest shareholder would be a wonderful thing for Disney, but it probably won't change the world," said Roger McNamee, co-founder of Elevation Partners, a private equity firm investing in media, entertainment and consumer electronics firms. "Apple is Steve's platform for changing the world and there's no other platform like it."
Mr. Jobs has positioned Apple better than at any time in the company's nearly three decades. This year Apple, with its new alliance with the chip maker Intel, was the talk of the recent Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas as dozens of companies tried to imitate Apple products. Apple's stock closed at $76.09 on Friday, down just over $10 from its five-year high earlier this month.
The challenge, though, for Mr. Jobs is completing his original vision of the personal computer as the ultimate digital media machine. To do that, he will have to operate from his base in Silicon Valley. And Mr. Jobs's interest appeared to be shifting from audio to video when he made the first step to offer television shows, music videos and animated short films on the new video iPod.
That may be just the beginning. Apple is widely believed within the technology industry to be moving toward offering an Internet-connected set-top box, a move to bypass the control of the cable and telephone companies now struggling to maintain control of the distribution of digital content.
Indeed, having succeeded in creating a vibrant digital marketplace for music and podcasting, it may fall to Mr. Jobs to successfully connect the next generation of Hollywood's high-definition digital video by creating an independent system using the Internet to connect to the ever-larger television screens in American living rooms.
"He's the only guy who has applied systems thinking to media," said Paul Saffo, a consumer electronics industry consultant who is a director at the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, Calif. "He's the only person who bridges both hardware and software."
The NYT says that there were signs, years ago, that something was amiss. Like the lengthy Minneapolis Star Tribune article that raised questions about some of the more outlandish vignettes in James Frey's memoir, "A Million Little Pieces," shortly after its release in April 2003.
Or the few mainstream critics - the precious few - who expressed gentle skepticism at the B-movie flourishes in the book's tale of drug abuse, crime and recovery. Janet Maslin, in this newspaper, for instance, winkingly noted that a well-meaning fan, writing a "customer review" at Amazon.com, inadvertently extolled Mr. Frey as "a new voice in fiction."
And what was unknowingly foreshadowed in this final passage of a profile of another troubled writer, in The New York Observer of May 21, 2003, struggling with truth and addiction?
"On the nearby coffee table was a copy of 'A Million Little Pieces,' the memoir by the self-rehabilitated drug addict, James Frey. Sticking from it was a business card, which he took out. It said: Jayson Blair, Reporter. Then: The New York Times.
"Jayson Blair looked at it. 'This is my new bookmark,' he said."
Mr. Frey has not disputed the allegations of myriad embellishments in his book, made by the Smoking Gun Web site two weeks ago. Chief among these is his three-month stint in jail, which apparently never happened.
This is not important, Mr. Frey told Larry King, because he has written a "memoir," and it is the book's "essential truth" that matters.
Never mind that over the last three years, as "A Million Little Pieces" was heralded as a masterpiece and questions about his truth-telling were at a low boil, he had professed the exact opposite.
"The only things I changed were aspects of people that might reveal their identity," he told The Cleveland Plain Dealer in July 2003. "Otherwise, it's all true."
Based on such assertions (and with a generous push last fall from Oprah Winfrey, who recommended the book to her club), at least 3.5 million readers laid down good money for the book, and at times it seemed that nearly all of them were chattering about it, with utter devotion, online.
But the truly interesting artifacts in this whole affair are the few, sometimes anonymous, Internet leavings of readers, many with substance abuse histories of their own, who sensed something was wrong long before there was a Smoking Gun exposé.
Certainly, by late last year, with the scrutiny brought on by Ms. Winfrey's endorsement, the skeptical voices had grown diverse and authoritative. And more than Mr. Frey's criminal record was being questioned.
"Having been through treatment," wrote Carol Colleran at Amazon.com in November, "and four other members of my family being through treatment at the facility he so clearly describes, I am offended and angry at him and this book."
Ms. Colleran is a renowned expert on drug and alcohol abuse and a co-author of "Aging and Addiction," a guidebook published in 2002 by the very rehab facility in Minnesota, Hazelden, that Mr. Frey depicts in his memoir.
"There is nothing in the book that is accurate or even remotely true," she wrote.
But who might have been the skeptical soul who left this review at Amazon.com nearly three years ago, just a few weeks after the book's debut?
Date: June 7, 2003
From: A reader
"As an ex-drug abuser and as a writer, I've never been so offended or enraged by a book. ... Notice that the author, though supposedly downing quarts of booze, fistfuls of crack, and incredibly, glue and gasoline, manages to graduate from college, spend a year abroad, keep his friends and support himself. ... I hope some of his 'classmates' at Hazelden decide to blab - or someone chooses to look deeper into the story."
Shortly afterward at the same site, Dr. Larkin Breed, a radiologist from Pleasant Hill, Calif., expressed similar doubts about the infamous scene in which Mr. Frey is forced to undergo a root canal procedure without drugs of any kind.
Date: Aug. 5, 2003
From: lbreed
"I quit reading this book when the author began to describe having his teeth worked on, early in recovery, without analgesia. This would never have happened for a number of reasons. This lowered the author's general credibility to near zero."
Indeed, even as the marketing machinery behind Mr. Frey's book intensified - Amazon.com named it the top pick for 2003 - and a legion of blogs and discussion boards admired its "raw" and "visceral" prose with "ya gotta read this" links to an Amazon or Barnes & Noble shopping cart, an undercurrent of critical analysis was forming.
"The joke is that tens of millions of sobby idiots bought and believed every one of Frey's self-indulgent lies, and accepted his parody of Hemingway laconic narration as high art," wrote John Dolan, an editor of The Exile, an English-language newspaper and Web site based in Moscow, in late 2003.
Just over a year ago, at Amazon, J. North wrote, "I can't believe they tried to pass this off as nonfiction." And in October, a reader from Michigan added that "anyone who has gone through treatment at a center, or works at one, knows that James Frey's description of treatment is largely fictionalized."
Another reader, Lisa Lias, wrote in November, "Maybe this guy did go to Hazelden. But this book is fiction."
Asked recently why she thought so, Ms. Lias, an actor, wrote in an e-mail message, "For my work I have to read a lot of scripts. I know bad dialogue when I see it."
At SmartRecovery.infopop.cc, a discussion site for recovering addicts, a user called jakatak was asked about the book. "Well, if you enjoy a good piece of fiction, I suppose you might like it," he wrote in December. "A national airline allows a person, unattended, to fly with four teeth missing, a hole in the side of his cheek, and blood and vomit on his shirt? Ya, right!"
Mr. Frey has his defenders, including his publishers and Ms. Winfrey. And millions of fans believe his ends justify his means.
But as Mr. Frey retreats into his multimillion-dollar loft and flashes his poetic license, he might do well to take a tour of some of the more confused dialogue now unfolding at some recovery and substance abuse message boards online, if only to solidify the public commitment he has made to never write about himself again.
"I think it upsets me because here's someone who's 13, 10, 8 - or however many years - sober, who has been deceitful, by continuing to tout inaccuracies in his book as factual," wrote a user called Autumn at SoberRecovery.com, a clearinghouse of substance abuse information.
"That, to me, is not a person who comes anywhere close to being what I might have considered a model of recovery at one time," she continued. "And I think the same might hold true for most, if not all, regulars who hang out here. Recovery is important to us."
