On the OJ Judith Regan flap

(Haiku:)
I don't know, maybe
this is one I gotta see
on train wreck TV.


I think it was a terrific idea to revisit OJ. It has been 12 years, after all. There has been far too much pounding on Judith Regan here. She had a great idea that she was in a unique position to do something about. Nothing wrong with that. The mob opprobrium ended when mogul Rupert Murdoch decided from on high to rub it all out, pulping all the books and the tv special. We are the poorer for this silencing.

Why isn't it a good time to re-evaluate this huge miscarriage of justice? We might also reflect on the evolution of our celebrity soaked universe ever since. Not to mention our penchant for holier than thou censoriousness and smug moral sanctimony. And anyway, no one seems to have read this book. So how do we know it is so bad it needs to be pulped?

OJ's confession is unquestionably newsworthy, even if he doesn't make one. The long, lurid drama of his trial exposed both the virtues and the flaws, mostly flaws, of the US legal system. Sectarian mob sentiments were manipulated by skilled propagandists. Prosecutors crafted their celebrity careers more scrupulously than their case. This was and is great material, and a perennial. We really ought to revisit it every now and then, just to reflect on what it tells us.

The "If I Did It" concept itself was also no more horrid than anything else on America's Most Wanted, or cable tv—including highminded documentary channels like History or Discovery (on which I watched last night, rapt, "Why Did Josh Kill" about a 14 year old who murdered his 8 year old neighbor, in a Lord of the Flies moment, and for no apparent reason). Works of "art" like American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis and Charles Bukowski are repulsive too, and just as suspect in the motivations behind their creation. Bohemian exercises in slumming often successfully pose as high art. This has led in a direct evolutionary line to reality tv.

We Americans like our low art. It's entertaining, even a "teachable moment."

This was not a snuff film. Or rank pornography. We are all like Curious George and the ether bottle. We just have to see what's in there. Will OJ confess? Or squirm, just a tiny bit. Will he smirk, or taunt? Or put on a convincing display of the Grievously Wronged Man. This is what TV is made of. Especially Fox.

Spare me the moral sanctimony as well about producers and publishers buying and selling talent based on what they think will sell. All of the media is this, when you get down to it.

Rupert Murdoch behaved like a craven politician. Businessmen seem to have politician envy and so behave in the same ways. Book pulping is brute censorship and arguably an inappropriate use of power. Censorship ought to scare us. It is good to be reminded how much power lies in certain fabulously enriched hands besides our usual whipping boy, the US government. Remember that Murdoch also axed Hong Kong governor Chris Patten's memoir at the request of the Chinese, and agreed to censor his satellite TV feed of references to democracy at the request of that regime.

Media synergy is thought to be a bright idea to make more money, but it also raises more conflicts of interest. Is it wrong to publish a book then ask your tv affiliate to flack it? Editorial discretion may still exist despite pooled corporate finances, but vertical integration and media monopolies tend to wear that objectivity down. Often "corporate synergy" is really just "journalistic conflict of interest." It would have been better if an independent like Barbara Walters (she was offered it, but declined) or Sixty Minutes, or some other third party had done the interview, by their own lights and in their own way. Ms. Regan herself doesn't have the distance on her own book to wear all the hats well, necessarily. Perhaps she was overly attracted by the tv opportunity. Perhaps O'Reilly was riled because an editorial call was being rammed down his throat by the needs of an affiliate company. Editorial decisions are organic. They shouldn't be forced, lest they become predictable and ersatz, and thus lacking in true appeal. So O'Reilly wound up doing his job in his usual way, by hollering at the top of his lungs—ironically to different effect.

So Oscar Wilde was wrong. Sometimes there is such a thing as bad publicity.

Calls to be quiet for the sake of politeness and taste, however, are suspect. That's what political correctness was and is, and what caused the OJ miscarriage of justice to begin with. Today it is "good taste" and "polite" to blame the U.S. for everything bad in the world. Loud moral sanctimony should always raise our suspicions. History teaches us that conventional wisdom is often the most passionate when it is wrong and being invoked to mislead or deflect attention from "impolite" truths.

The themes of OJ are also relevant to today. Multiculturalism is our ethnic sectarianism. We should be glad we don't have to suffer Iraq's or Rwanda's versions. Instead of civil war and genocide we have OJ and its spectacle, bad yes, but not so bad. To learn from it, we need to take our opportunities to think about it again.

Without question, today's avatars of good taste will in any event be hypocritically blasting some new squirmy tv moment into our living rooms tomorrow.

The other thing that puzzles me is, why wouldn't the Simpson kids and the Goldmans and the Browns want the money? The publisher was only too happy to pay the royalty to the victims and the kids. Why not take that deal? It is free money "no strings attached" as Harper said. You would think they could use the money, since Simpson himself is broke and unable to pay his civil judgment. What did the family mean by accusing it of being hush money? To hush what? The book/tv interview or lawsuit they intend to shop next week perhaps? Or did they just misspeak in the overheated fracus? I wish they'd accepted the money—and let the discussion go on.

If the 60 minutes fish eye lens were trained on OJ, you know everyone would want to see it. Maybe OJ would at last confess. Even if he sits there in denial, reminding us of the endlessness of human perfidy, the spectacle would still be good for us.

November 30, 2006