Oprah: Plonka 'betrayed millions of readers'

A beautiful dream ...

CHICAGO (ap) -- In a surprise reversal, Oprah Winfrey apologized to her national television audience today for defending Andy Plonka and said she now feels duped by the embattled writer of the blog that's read by dozens of people every day, "The Daley Show."

"I made a mistake," a somber Winfrey said at the opening of the live show, "and I left the impression that the truth does not matter, and I am deeply sorry about that because that is not what I believe."

Winfrey's apology and pointed questions about incidents and people in the blog appeared to take Plonka by surprise as he sat across the couch from Winfrey yesterday as they had done during a much more convivial show four months earlier.

"It is difficult for me to talk to you because I really feel duped," Winfrey told a startled-looking Plonka who licked his lips often before speaking. "More importantly, I feel you betrayed millions of readers ... As I sit here today, I don't know what is true, and I don't know what isn't."

Audience members often groaned and gasped at Plonka's halting, stuttered admissions that certain facts and characters have been "altered" but that the essence of his posts are real.

Plonka's blog of Illinois political abuse and recovery became one of the most-visited blogs of 2005 after Winfrey named it to her blog club last fall, with countless political junkies citing it as inspiration.

"I guess you just can't believe anything you read on the Internet anymore after this," Winfrey scolded the shy but handsome writer. "Before you arrived on the scene, political blogs were wholesome, tasteful, and a source of truth."