Letters to the Editor
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In a Just World...
.. Rupert Murdoch would have gone down in a mysterious plane crash before he was able to gain so much power and set up his fortune and media empire to be run by his children -- in the manner he wants it run -- after he dies.
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400,000 copies distributed?
Okay, all we need is one of those copies. Then someone can copy it and put it on the internet for everyone to read.
The shame wasn't in publishing the words of the pretentious killer, the shame was in making money off of it.
The public and especially the victims' families should get to hear this bastard's confession. The idiots who still ascribe the possibility that he's not guilty need to read these words. Everyone in the world needs to be reminded of the trash that is OJ Simpson. He shouldn't be able to walk a street -- enter a restaurant, golf, drive, live -- without facing crowds of people who make his life a living hell.
There is a time and a place for copyright violations, and it is now.
--dak
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Poor Sidney
Guess somebody's book proposal couldn't hack it at HarperCollins. Seriously, what a pathetic whine.
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Rats...I was fantasizing about a sneaky typesetter
Breaking in at the last minute before a big press run and erasing the word "If" from the cover of the book. That would have been beautiful. Now we have to settle for the Tim Meadows SNL skit from 10 years ago, where Juice wrote "I did it" in a series of pass patterns on the screen while doing color commentary.
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Thanks for ripping Murdoch a new one Sidney!
Finally, somebody takes the time to detail the absurd pattern that is Rupert "the media ogre" Murdoch.
The press would never take him on for obvious reasons. It would only make them look bad to point out how awry publishing can become. Yet, long ago as this article repeatedly pointed out, Murdoch spun out of control. Took freedom of the press and misused it like none other. Also, contributed in a central way to making sure that a positive society has to spend an inordinate amount of time looking over its shoulder.
Murdoch's behavior is so telling. We can see through him not just how popular culture's main organ of communication operates and why it often borders on being committed to disrespecting itself. You might even say society in the main is evolving into truth being trampled on because of his type of effort.
To the extent that freedom of speech and its relationship to a free press is important marks exactly the extent to which Murdoch should be defined as a modern day tyrant.
Only free elections in fact stop such people from becoming the horrors of times past. At the rate he's helping to corrupt the popular psyche however maybe not even that checkpoint will hold.
Great job Mr. B.
Viva le Salon!
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publication, etc
In the past I've always seen Sidney Blumenthal as an incisive, earnest, yet somewhat plodding writer. Then I see this:
The unintentional irony of Fox affiliates finally protesting the airing of something that is almost certainly true -- never having raised a peep about the endless stream of Fox falsehoods -- was lost in the din.
Who knew Blumenthal had a sense of humor? Bravo!
Secondly, like at least a couple of the other commenters, I agree that the book should not be supressed, although it should not be used to earn either O.J. or HarperCollins a profit.
Every time we hear news of an "inappropriate" book being destroyed, those Pavlovianly impressionable fox viewers Blumenthal writes about become a little more inclined to see supression of speech as normal. Why I Did it is an historical document, albeit a disagreeable one. Why not just give those 400,000 copies away for free? Is Murdochian capitalism so delicate it wouldn't survive such a gesture?
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A perfect Foxism
Bob's comments below follow the Fox News blueprint perfectly - if you have no rebuttal for truthful commentary you simply attack the messenger and their motives.
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The burden of evil
This is excellent writing. It also marks the beginning of the end for Rupert Murdoch. His presence on this planet is an ongoing act of treason against humanity. Unless we are a complete bunch of saps as a species, we had better be able to remove Mr. Murdoch from public prominence.
George W. Bush would not be president without Rupert Murdoch. Our public discourse would not be so degraded without Rupert Murdoch. He is a mass criminal, infecting the culture with filth and propaganda.
Even if the institutions of civilization are impotent to put Rupert Murdoch out of commission, his decline has begun. If Western Civilization chooses to protect him, other forces will come into play to bring him down. Chief among them is time, of course, and the accompanying tide of history. Then there is the burden of evil. Like Bush, Cheney, and the rest of the Bush criminal operation, the weight of planetary-level lawlessness will become too much for them to bear.
The real question is whether they will bring the rest of us down with them.
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Oh wow I can't like you any more now, sorry!!!
Then she recounts being beaten up and abandoned by an abusive husband, implicitly comparing herself to murder victim Nicole Brown Simpson.
She draws out the theme of her victimization...
This is a pretty creepy attitude towards domestic violence Blumenthal is showing here.
This is coming from a liberal?
Dear Mr. Snotty Pants Domestic Violence Victim Hater: Nicole Brown started out as a domestic violent victim. Her murder was the outcome of domestic violence. If Judith Regan did experience domestic violence, then she does have a right to compare herself with Nicole Brown.
I'm starting to wonder about those rumors now. I never believed them before but now I honestly wonder.
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Sidney, read the damned autopsies
I may be the last man on earth who believes that Simpson did not kill the two people at Bundy on that night in 1994. I may be one of the few here to have read the autopsies with a critical eye, too.
There was no aspiration for Nicole Simpson. That is, Nicole was not breathing when her throat was cut open. She did not inhale any blood into her lungs. Nor was there blood in her mouth or sinuses even though the throat wound cut her epiglottis. That is, Nicole was not bleeding when her throat was cut. If she were not breathing or bleeding when her throat was cut, she was dead and had bled out by the time the throat wound was delivered. We are talking at least five or ten minutes for her to bleed out from the puncture wound into her jugular.
Likewise, the stab wound in Goldman's back to his femoral artery did not produce more than about a half cup of blood in his chest cavity, meaning that he too was stabbed in the back after he had died and bled out from the puncture to his jugular.
Maybe if O.J. had been given the forum to speak he could have explained why he stood around the scene of a double murder in the middle of L.A. for ten minutes waiting for the victims to collapse and bleed out so that he could give each corpse a meaningless wound. Especially when he had a plane to catch.
For someone who has read the autopsies it is clear that the prosecution's theory of the case is completely wrong, and unless someone comes up with a theory of how Simpson would have stood around the crime scene waiting for corpses to be emptied of blood I'd suggest that the last decade of hatred directed against Mr. Simpson has been misplaced.
I have no idea if this latest project by FOX would have given Simpson a means to explain how he couldn't have committed the double homicide, or even if he knows enough about the autopsy evidence to explain it. The only thing that's clear is how absolutely resolute the American public is in refusing to listen to anything that could cause them to waver from their hatred of the man.
I guess it would be too much to actually expect people who write so confidently about Simpson's guilt to actually know a few facts about the case.