Public outrage, no forgiveness, for fallen hero Simpson

By Andy Goldberg Nov 22, 2006, 8:00 GMT

Los Angeles - America usually likes nothing better than to forgive its fallen heroes. All it takes is a tearful confession and apology.

But not for OJ Simpson - the once legendary football star who somehow evaded a guilty verdict in the 1994 killings of his estranged wife Nicole Simpson and her boyfriend Ron Goldman.

He had always maintained his innocence, even after being found liable for wrongful death in a 1995 civil trial.

But his plans to go public with a pseudo-confession in an interview on the Fox Network and a book entitled 'If I Did It' were abruptly halted by the personal intervention of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, who on Monday ordered the companies involved to immediately drop the plans.

The unprecedented intervention of the world's most powerful media mogul followed public opinion polls that indicated that 79 per cent of the US public thought the Simpson project was in bad taste and would not watch it. Numerous Fox affiliates said they were not going to air the interviews while The Washington Post reported that booksellers had returned 70,000 copies of the book.

The criticism even extended as far as the top blowhard of the conservative Fox News network, Bill O'Reilly, who called the book and interview a 'low point in American culture.'

The Murdoch volte-face marked the second major humiliation for the traditionally right-wing Fox Network this month.

Of all the major US news outlets, Fox had been the most gung-ho in its support of President George W Bush, his ultra-conservative Republican Party, and the disastrous policies in Iraq.

The mid-term election showed just how far not only Bush but also the Fox network had strayed from the public consensus, while the Simpson debacle reiterated the network's lack of judgment about the public mood, media analysts said Tuesday.

But Robert Thompson, a professor of popular culture at Syracuse University, warned that the Simpson imbroglio was far from a high point of American good taste or prudence.

'Don't kid yourself,' he said. 'American people still have a very strong appetite for the shocking, the outrageous and all the rest of it.'

Thompson also predicted that we have not seen the last of the Simpson saga - predicting that Murdoch's News Corp. could sell the book rights and the interview to another company, or even repackage them for a newsmagazine. There's also the distinct possibility that the interview could surface on YouTube or another Internet site.

Fox executives miscalculated when they tried to synergistically promote the Simpson book and turn it into an infomercial that would earn the Fox network millions of dollars, he said.

Now Fox and the book publisher Regan Books will still have to pay Simpson his 3.5-million-ollar fee, even though the books have been recalled from stores and are to be shredded.

But that issue was secondary to the family of Simpson's presumed victims.

'I think the country really spoke out and said you are a, you know...scum bag,' said Kim and Fred Goldman, the sister and father of Ron, on CNN. Fred finished Kim's sentence for her.

'It took the voices of people throughout this country, newscasters, newspapers, outraged people all over this country, yelling and screaming, and telling FOX, telling Regan Books this is disgusting and they finally got the message,' said Fred Goldman.

If the blogosphere is any indication, the cancellation was widely welcomed by the public. The website Technorati.com, which tracks popular blog topics, listed over 30,000 posts about the issue, and a cursory impression showed most of them loudly haranguing the Simpson media show.

Dayngrous Discourse, for example called the idea a 'blatantly irresponsible, money hungry move.'

But media professor Thompson was not rejoicing.

'Everybody is thinking what a triumph for American taste - but we ought to be a little careful,' he said. 'We managed to get an interview taken off the air and a book ground into shreds. Maybe in this case it's perfectly fine. But what about when there isn't a consensus?'