A Crowded Sewer

O.J. Sewer Leads Right to Murdoch by Tim Rutten

A review of recent history:

This week the Fox television network announced that it would air a two-part interview with O.J. Simpson as part of the publicity campaign promoting a new book, "If I Did It," in which he offers a hypothetical account of how he might have killed his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Lyle Goldman outside her Brentwood condominium in 1994.

Simpson was acquitted on murder charges but was subsequently held civilly liable for both deaths and ordered to pay an as-yet-uncollected $33.5-million judgment to the victims' families.

"If I Did It" is the product of the former football star's collaboration with an unnamed ghost writer and will be published at the end of this month by ReganBooks, the euphonious shock-and-schlock imprint Judith Regan runs for the HarperCollins publishing house. Fox, ReganBooks and HarperCollins all have something important in common: They're owned by the predatory Australian-born media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, who has devoted his life to making money by making sure that news and entertainment are as coarse and vulgar as can be imagined in as many places as possible.

In fact, if there is a single compelling argument for restrictive immigration policies, Murdoch is it. It is one of history's inexplicable perversities that this avaricious antipodean has been welcomed into this country while honest Mexican workingmen are walled out.

Part of Murdoch's dark genius is that he never settles for having things both ways when he can have them every way there's a buck to be made. Thus, while Regan and various Fox broadcasting spokesmen were shrilly defending the book and interview, a couple of the stars on Murdoch's cable news network were in full-throated denunciation mode.

Fox News' biggest draw, Bill O'Reilly, called the project "simply indefensible and a low point in American culture," then went on to note piously, "For the record, Fox Broadcasting has nothing to do with the Fox News Channel."

Nothing, except for the fact that both are personally run by the same Murdoch functionary, Roger Ailes.

Meanwhile, Fox News' Geraldo Rivera had this to say about the book and interview:

I think it's disgusting. I think he's a murdering liar. I think he's demonstrating that he made a fool of the jury in Los Angeles and all of the black community across the country that supported him. This sleazy, low-down murdering dog who killed his ex-wife, the mother of his children as they slept upstairs…. I think it really is the most appalling thing I've ever seen.

Pretty strong stuff, especially when it comes from a guy with the gag reflex of a turkey buzzard.

So let's see here … Judith Regan publishes Simpson's book. To whet the buying public's appetite for it, Regan herself interviews Simpson and the results are aired on Fox Broadcasting during the sweeps week, which is critical to the network's advertising. To build buzz and controversy, which means audience, the commentators on Fox News denounce the whole thing as a cultural low point, something they'd recognize more easily than most. Keep in mind that both networks report to Ailes, who once created a talk show for Regan. Ailes, Regan, O'Reilly and Rivera all work for Murdoch, who ultimately profits from both the outrage and the outraged.

This is the sort of thing that keeps conspiracy theorists up at night, but there's a more practical result. According to publishing sources, the first printing of "If I Did It" is 400,000 copies, and all this week advance orders on the Amazon.com list soared.

Everybody in this whole unsavory arrangement is satisfied except Regan, who mysteriously seems taken aback by criticism of her decision to publish this gruesome book. As she told the New York Times on Thursday, "The book is his confession. I would have no interest in publishing anything but that." However, as Edward Wyatt reported Friday, Simpson inconveniently refused to confess and "did not say directly in the book or the interview that he killed" his ex-wife or Goldman. "Rather, he spoke about the murders in the hypothetical sense, a stance that admits nothing and could be viewed as a denial."

Regan, however, doesn't believe any of that matters because … come on, guess … and, no, it's not because she's in rehab — it's because she's a victim herself! That's right, domestic abuse. In a rambling, semi-hysterical statement distributed Friday, Regan said she was unsurprised by Simpson's acquittal because she was disbelieved when battered by her husband more than 20 years ago. According to the publisher, he was "tall, dark and handsome. A great athlete. A brilliant mind. He was even a doctor, with an M.D. after his name and a degree that came with an oath: 'First do no harm.' He was one of the brightest men I'd ever met. And he could charm anyone. He charmed me. We had a child. And then he knocked me out, with a blow to my head, and sent me to the hospital. He manipulated, lied and broke my heart."

Simpson's acquittal, Regan insisted, was "a seminal moment in American history" and, recalling her own experience going to confession as a Catholic schoolgirl, said that she "made the decision to publish this book and to sit face to face with the killer, because I wanted him, and the men who broke my heart and your hearts, to tell the truth, to confess their sins, to do penance and to amend their lives. Amen."

Really.

Like shame, the indispensability of privacy is one of the things that's often hard to recall these days. But even now, sacramental confession is done in private and held as an inviolable confidence. Priests give absolution, not multimillion-dollar advances, and they don't plan on profiting from the exercise.

Regan says that when she "sat face to face with the killer, I wanted him to confess, to release us all from the wound of the conviction that was lost on that fall day in October of 1995.

"For the girl who was left in the gutter, I wanted to make it right."

The only gutter at issue here is the one where Judith Regan does business and, when you consider all the help she's getting from the rest of Rupert Murdoch's minions, it's a very crowded sewer.