Media

It was revealed this week that the critically acclaimed memoir "Love and Consequences," the story of a young mixed-race girl who grew up in poverty under foster care to become a gang member on the mean streets of South Central L.A., was in fact written by a white woman raised in the considerably less mean cul-de-sacs of affluent Sherman Oaks by her own biological, non-gangsta, parents. Fake memoirist Margaret Seltzer (under the ingenious pseudonym "Margaret Jones") was exposed by her older sister, obviously jealous of the younger sibling's impending, though dubious, success. Further proof of Margaret's fraudulent street cred: failure to "waste" her sister for "snitchin'."

Following hard on the heels of the exposure of Misha Defonsecas' falsified "Misha: Memoire of the Holocaust Years" and coming only two years after James Frey's Oprah-duping "A Million Little Pieces," it's surprising publishers are still taken in by this scam. Until publishers start demanding that would-be memoirists wear webcams to verify the acts of depravity and humiliation they document, those who feel an irresistible the desire to tell the world their story—or rather, a story—can do so with the 23/6 Memoir-o-Tron.

Night fell, blanketing the streets of Comptonthe Warsaw Ghettothe meat packing district with comforting anonymity. Shaking with fear, I huddled alone in a burned-out Camrycello casepile of bloody aprons  . My only source of warmth was a busted lightera lukewarm bowl of moldy kreplach  a pile of rotting veal. I tried assuring myself that for at least a few hours I was safe from the copsthe SSangry butchers  . How had things gotten this bad? It'd only been two years, but it felt like centuries since I was dancing around an open hydrant  studying the Talmudan anal virgin. Pinning the blame on the ManReinard Heydrichfinding Daddy's stash of poppers  was too easy. I brought myself here. I chose to be a six-year-old meth addict  Hassidic birthday clown gay sex surrogate in spite of my parents' warningsincessant nagging incalculable wealth  . It wasn't their fault either. My father didn't want to be a Tuskeegee Airman  cake of soap hermaphrodite but he played the hand they dealt him. Mom coped by becoming schizophrenic sleeping with the Gestapo  buying airports. I tried to sleep, the only certainty being that when morning came, I'd once again be huffing industrial solventsmaking soup from old curtains on my knees in a subway bathroom  .