Informed Speculation

Actually, he considers that (‘O.J.’) as being far too familiar, as we shall see shortly; nevertheless, if you think I’ll be able to resist when one of my favorite writers takes on one of the world’s most repellent slugs, you’re crackin’, to paraphrase Dean Martin (why do I feel like Dennis Miller all of a sudden?):

…[T]here are still people who write articles that refer to him just as “O.J.” or “the Juice.” Somewhere in these colloquial and jocular allusions, there may be a clue about the free pass that we seem to grant to celebrity crime. I don’t happen to know Mr. Orenthal James Simpson, and I don’t make a habit of using nicknames for psychopathic killers (I don’t say “Osama” either) so call me pompous and old-fashioned if you will, but he’s “Simpson” to me. And it’s no news to anybody that he butchered two innocent people at close quarters, so there’s no disclosure-value in this creepy business proposition. Nor is it news that he has escaped even the civil verdict in the case, by sheltering his assets under Florida’s shady homestead law and by having his NFL pension considered inviolate. (Attach the assets of a former football “great” who has been ordered by a court to compensate his victims? How un-American can you get?) The only question is whether, having wholly devastated two families and part-orphaned two children, and having laughingly refused to pay a cent of the judgment against him, Simpson can find any new ways of inflicting pain and insult. I had previously thought that his cheery attendance at the “Slasher” convention might mark the low point, but there you go.

Of the many things I can remember about the trial–one of them being a chat I had with a DNA specialist who told me the statistical odds against the blood being proof of guilt, which really weren’t “odds” at all–one detail that sticks in my mind was the incidental disclosure that Simpson can barely read or write. This is, in other words, not just a decision to publish “his” book. It is a decision, which must have been taken some time ago, to get such a book written and to get him to cooperate with it. The title is, of course, illiterate to start with (“If I Did It, Here’s How It Happened” rather than “If I Had Done It, Here’s How I Would Have”) as well as an admission (because, however modified or qualified, the “Here’s How It Happened” still stands on its own) but both of those offenses are quite possible in today’s publishing. It would still be mildly interesting to know who cooked up the idea and who did the inducement and the ghosting. The only thing that definitely didn’t happen, rather like his ongoing search for the real killer, was Simpson bringing in a manuscript and submitting it for publication.

He didn’t write it, in other words, and wouldn’t be able to read it, either. But why should anyone else want to read such a patent confection? In the clips of the interview that Fox has so tastefully released, Ms. Regan is shown holding up the “book” and saying: “You wrote: ‘I have never seen so much blood in my life.’” The double-murderer replies: “I don’t think any two people could be murdered without everybody being covered in blood.” This consists of (a) one cliché and (b) one non-sequitur. A bloodless double murder is easy to arrange, as is a sentence with slightly more Polanski-power than “I have never seen so much blood in my life.” Several moments in the trial were more gratifying, to those who enjoy the sanguinary, than that. (The evidence was that Nicole Simpson’s head was very nearly severed from her body by the vicious frenzy of the ex-husband who took a knife to her. That certainly did leave a lot of spilled blood around the place.) To the general nausea that one feels at this latest exploitation, then, can be added the additional nausea that comes from weariness–weariness at the sheer banal and formulaic manner in which the last drops are to be squeezed, by bored and affectless manipulators, from a story that has been, so to say, done to death.

Even O.J.’s – pardon me, Simpson’s – lawyer has gone on record with his disgust:

Even some of the people closest to Simpson were surprised when they learned about the deal. [Yale] Galanter, Simpson’s lawyer, bluntly admits he’s “p—ed” O.J. kept him in the dark about it. He calls the profits “blood money,” and says, “I definitely would not have approved this.” Galanter says the whole thing is something of a bait-and-switch. Only one of the seven chapters deals with the murder, he says, and nowhere does O.J. admit to killing anyone. Even so, Galanter says, “I wouldn’t have done it for a gazillion dollars.”

The last time I checked the Goldmans’ boycott list was over 42,000 signatures strong…