Kiko’s House’s Shaun Mullen is a prize winning editor and reporter who, among other things, covered the famous O.J. trial which was called “the trial of the century.”
In THIS MUST READ POST he gives you his take on O.J.’ recent stab at gaining notoriety by putting out a book about what would have happened IF he had killed his wife Nicole and Ron Goldman and rubbing his re-emergence in America’s collective face by going on the amoral Fox network (which wants ratings) to hype his book (in an interview conducted by a neutral, hard hitting reporter — his book publisher Judith Regan).
He details for you the reasons WHY this trial was so unusual and attracted so much attention (a lot of reasons you might not have thought about before). And gives you shares with you some of the personal experiences he had while being assigned to cover The Trial. Here’s a tiny taste of what he says about the controversy now:
I came to see O.J. Simpson as a deeply complex and conflicted person.
Friends invariably described O.J. as kind and generous, and I believe he was. I think he handled fame better than many people. He was a good father. But beneath that impish grin lurked another O.J. — a man prone to fits of jealousy and rage who had a weakness for cocaine and other drugs.
But back to where I began: The news that O.J. has taken time off from his lonely search for the killers to pen “If I Did It.”
The ghostwritten tome, to be published by HarperCollins, already has made it the 54th best selling book at Amazon based on advance orders, and The Juice himself will be promoting it in an interview on the all-too-willing Fox network.
Is this O.J. Simpson’s way of confessing?
Without a reasonable doubt. But instead of facing arrest and a new trial, which he is protected from because of double jeopardy, there’s a big pay day.
Should Judith Reagan, the super influential boss of HarperCollins, be ashamed?
Of course. But she is shameless and has said, by way of rationalizing publication of the Juice’s trash, that as a victim of abuse herself, she’ll make sure that royalties from the book go to his motherless children.
Is the whole thing tasteless?
Yes. Even Bill O’Reilly, the judgment impaired Fox News commentator, is covering his nose over the forthcoming interview, which will be conducted by . . . Judith Reagan.
READ IT ALL.
PS: And while you’re at it, read Judith Regan’s rationalization excuse public relations spin explanation HERE as to why she’s publishing it. Did you know she’s the victim in all of this? (TMV has occasionally read a book published by Regan books and even agreed to review a few. He won’t ever again because he’s out of bath soap.)
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.