Dibs!

Kaye Gibbons, author of the bestselling 1987 novel Ellen Foster – an Oprah’s Book Club selection written in the voice of a preteen and set amid scenes of domestic violence — is set to appear today before a North Carolina judge on prescription drug fraud charges, according to the Fayetteville Observer: ”The 48-year-old was charged in November with obtaining property by false pretense and illegal possession of a controlled substance. An officer said authorities were alerted to a pharmacy when Gibbons tried to pick up the prescription painkiller hydrocodone. Gibbons was released from jail in November after posting $5,500 bail.” One of Gibbons’ later books, A Virtuous Woman, was also an Oprah pick. Gibbons is the recipient of the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction, a Special Citation from the Ernest Hemingway Foundation, and the Louis D. Rubin, Jr. Prize in Creative Writing. Let’s hope she clears up these legal difficulties pronto.

In 1995, Twyana Davis gave birth in her Ohio college dorm room, wrapped the baby in plastic bags and stuffed it into a trash bin, presumably hoping that the tiny girl would die. After a passerby rescued the infant and detectives discovered whose it was, Davis told the media that she’d become pregnant while being raped at a party. Regaining custody of the child in 2000, Davis co-wrote a book about her experiences, Sacred Womb: The Twyana Davis Story, and discussed it on Oprah. According to her user-profile at CommonContent.org, presumably composed by Davis herself and posted in April 2004, Davis was “a 27-year-old inspiration and motivational speaker and businesswoman. She is a native of Columbus, Ohio and a graduate from Ohio Dominican University where she earned her Bachelor of Arts degree with a double major in Visual Communication and Advertising Production with a minor in Art. During her tenure at Ohio Dominican University Miss Davis was bestowed as a National City Scholar. She earned prestige within the community by graduating Suma [sic] Cum Laude. Miss Davis is the co-author of the highly anticipated book Sacred Womb, The Twyana Davis Story. Miss Davis has also dedicated her time to traveling around the country to speak to adults and teen [sic] about teen pregnancy, infant abandonment and self-empowerment and self love. Miss Davis is the Co-Owner of Autumn Publishing and is the former spokeswoman for project cuddle, an organization fighting infant abandonment. She has been featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Montel Williams Show, 20/20, 48 Hours, The Ricki Lake Show, The BBC, Jane Magazine, and Court TV.” Ten years later, the proud college grad, talk-show guest, mom and author has now confessed that what she told the world back then was a lie. She’s a pedophile! She wasn’t raped; while she was a college student she’d been having a relationship with a twelve-year-old male cousin. Now she’s been convicted of rape herself, sentenced today in Columbus to a long span in prison by a judge who dubbed her a sexual predator, the highest possible sex-offender label. “She admitted to a continuing pattern of sex with that child dating back to the mid-nineties, resulting in the birth of her daughter,” according to OhioNewsNow. She fessed up to even further creepiness: “Davis admitted to sexually abusing two or three other children; one as young as 18 months.” Wait — 18 months? Sentencing her to a minimum of ten years and a maximum of 25 behind bars, “Judge Michael Holbrook told her she has manipulated the system and the last 10 years have been a sham.” Davis told the judge: “I am not trying to manipulate the system in any way. I have to do this for myself and for the Lord and respectfully, in addition to you, your honor, there is a judge we all have to stand before one day.” Welllll — sure. But your point is? Davis’s daughter is now in foster care.

He’s got a hunch that Oprah Winfrey doesn’t like black men, and he’s talking about it on radio shows nationwide. Syracuse University finance professor Boyce Dewhite Watkins, author of What If George Bush Were a Black Man?, fuels his claim by pointing to the recent feud between Winfrey and Ice Cube — who, along with other top rappers, resents never having been invited to appear on Winfrey’s show. A fan of Cube, Dr. Watkins explains in a press release that “the presence of very prominent black men on Winfrey’s show does not mean that she does not have a bias against black men.” He elucidates: “If you have a Grammy Award, next to your Nobel Prize, next to your Academy Award, then you are OK with Oprah…. But if you are a rank and file black man, you are more likely to be put on the show if you are ‘on the downlow’ — secretly gay — or beating your wife. I rarely see the spotlight placed on black men who are on the front lines working hard in their communities to educate and empower their people.” As revealed on his blackmanbush.com web site, Boyce feels “ostracized for even saying the words ‘black man’ in my research.” On a Fox radio show, he called Condoleezza Rice “Aunt Jemima” and “Bush’s personal porch monkey.” He doesn’t remember where he said “I’m living proof that you should never give an angry black man a PhD, ‘cause he might kill somebody with it,” but he firmly assures us that he did indeed say it, somewhere.

Fifty years ago, animals with the wrong numbers of heads or legs would have been taxidermed and turned into sideshow exhibits. But now one such creature appears on daytime talk shows. Does that mean we’re more kindhearted — or that we still love gawking at sideshow freaks but we just can’t admit that’s what we’re doing? In 2003, the Stringfellow family acquired a little brown puppy with only one front leg. They named her Faith. Soon afterward, Faith’s withered remaining front leg was amputated. The Stringfellows taught her to walk, hop, and stand on her hind legs — then they turned her into a brand, self-publishing a book called With a Little Faith through Xlibris and establishing a “Faith the Biped Dog” Web site. Now they’ve taken their freaky creature on the road. Oklahoma English professor Jude Stringfellow has appeared with Faith on Oprah and Montel, pimping the pooch as proof that disabilities can be overcome. (For aesthetic reasons, it’s just lucky that Faith is a female dog.) The Web site includes zany photographs (Faith in a tiny T-shirt! Faith outfitted with white feathered wings for Christmas!) and commentary from Stringfellow, who remembers how her son found the puppy: “The mother dog was actually trying to terminate Faith’s life when Reuben lifted her weak body out from under the mother dog; he brought her home to me knowing I had a heart like a marshmellow.” So many authors out there yearn for a chance to appear on Oprah, because it tends to make authors rich. But now the secret is revealed: Don’t be a literary genius. Just get involved with something that makes people go, “Eeeeuw!” — and tell them they’re being inspired. It worked for James Frey.