Tuesday, November 21, 2006

GARBAGE IN, GARBAGE OUT

I have not posted on this as it has little to do with politics, but I thought that I'd give a rare pat on the back to Rupert Murdoch and Fox for pulling the offensive OJ Simpson book and interview. Nothing good would have come from any of it and the three families that were affected so tragically by Simpson's double murders deserve better than to have Simpson sit in front of a camera and wink at the world knowing that he got away with nearly decaptitating his ex-wife and slaughtering her friend. His actions have left his children without a mother and a father who ended her life. Simpson's actions left a distraught family without a beloved daughter and sister and another family without a son and brother. To give Simpson a pulpit to spew his theories on how he would/did kill two innocent people would have been the quite possibly the lowest descent television would have ever been witness to.
Murdoch's statement is as follows: "I and senior management agreee with the American public that this was an ill-considered project. We are sorry for any pain that this has caused the families of Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson."

Ill advised, huh? Ya think!? Can you imagine if this had taken place. There's the double-murderer Simpson sitting there and conjecturing on how he would have killed these two people "if" he had done it - so basically this book would have been a tell-all. Dear lord, but the man has two children by this slain woman! Can you imagine the conversation between the children and their father. "Hey kids. I'm writing a book and doing an interview where I'll talk about how I would have killed your mommy. Doesn't that sound great?" "Offensive" just doesn't quite describe just how dispicable such a spectacle would prove.

As Eugene Robinson wrote in an Op-Ed for the Washington Post:

Only a narcissist of the first order would be compelled to revisit the scene of the crime and walk us through the butchery, knowing that no one would take his use of "if" or "would have" as anything but a mocking formality -- knowing that everyone would read the book as a true confession of his sins. Only a textbook narcissist would have such a warped need to bask once again in the limelight.


Thankfully, Murdoch has proven not to be utterly and completely tone deaf to the public outrage that was growing throughout the country. Murdoch may be many things, but I believe him to be a businessman first and foremost. And this Simpson pollution was bad business.

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