written by Nkrumah Steward PUBLISHED ON: November 20, 2006
Yesterday It was a Great Idea. Today, OJ Simpson’s Book, TV show, Interview Ill-Considered
Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, the brains behind FOX has decided against selling OJ Simpson’s book, "If I Did It, Here's How It Happened," to the public, and they are asking to have the copies that have already been sent to retail book store outlets be sent back to the publisher to be destroyed.
"I and senior management agree with the American public that this was an ill-considered project," Murdoch said.
Curiously, this conclusion was only come to once they discovered that Fox Broadcasting couldn’t find an advertiser to sponsor the television show.
No advertising. No money. No point. If it doesn’t make dollars then it doesn’t make sense. We’ve heard it all before.
Proving once again that the only way to get America to listen to the moral compass in their hearts is to is to stop putting change in their pocket.
For all that can be said about American values, unfortunately the one value that seems to consistently stand the test of time is that if people are willing to spend their money on it, then that justifies itself.
Because of our notion of free speech, we don’t believe in a common sense notion of decency. We believe that what is decent or not, wholly depends on the individual and we, for the most part, are comfortable leaving it up to the individual to decide what is appropriate for him or herself.
The draw back to that approach to the question of what is appropriate is that is we use the “if people are willing to pay for it, then it must be Ok” litmus test to decide what is appropriate.
That isn’t the approach that is taken in other places around the world.
The weekend after 9-11, in France someone was going to throw a party where the invitees dressed up Osama bin Laden or DC10 Airplanes.
A judge crashed the party on the grounds that the party was in bad taste.
Bad taste isn’t illegal anywhere in America. That just isn’t how we are culturally wired over here. Very few people in America are comfortable giving someone the power to determine what is in bad taste for us.
What we can’t get our minds around here in the US is that something can still be in bad taste even if it makes money.
I know that is a hard pill for you to swallow but it is true.
Profit doesn’t justify anything morally. It might justify things financially but never morally. Unfortunately for too many people what is financially justified is morally justified. They are one-in-an-of-the same.
I maintain that 9-11 party would’ve still been in bad taste if 1,000 people showed up and it had made whoever was throwing the party $10,000 dollars on the cover charge alone.
But most of us don’t see it that way and that leaves us where we are now, with OJ Simpson writing a book about how he would’ve killed the mother of his children if he had done it nad getting paid by someone to do it.
Even if this book would've sold 20 million copies, the television show would've gotten Superbowl type ratings and all the producers won Emmy awards for the show it still would've been inapporpriate to make.
And you don't need to look any further than that innate understanding of common decency in all of us to know I am right.
Good luck getting all the copies of that book back to HarperCollins too.
Can you say instant collector’s Item?
Maybe profit does justify some things. If you’re reading this and you work at Borders, Barnes n Noble or Amazon.com see if you can get me one.
Just kidding.
Jeeesh.
Fuck being a cop If I was 6’5 230 pounds when I was thirteen, with the temper I had, there would be a lot of people out there that have grown up to be productive members of society whose lives would have turned for the worst had I been able to sever their spines over my knee like I had fantasized about doing.
