THE MONSTER'S HIRELING

Last week Judith Regan of ReganBooks, a subsidiary of HarperCollins Publishers, defended her decision to publish O.J. Simpson's book If I Did It, an account of his brutal murder of his wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman, under the gimmick that it is only a hypothetical account of how it would have happened if he had done it.  Regan said that we all should be glad that she got Simpson to finally confess to the murders.

Well, sure, a confession from Simpson would be good.  However, he doesn't do that in If I Did It.  Indeed, the conceit of the book is that he didn't do it.  Granted, no one is falling for this ruse, but then no one but the willfully ignorant has doubted Simpson's guilt.  So Regan's publication of If I Did It does not advance the truth at all.  And even if Regan successfully persuades a lot of people to suspend disbelief and accept this book as a genuine confession from Simpson, it is morally void as it is unaccompanied by his repentance.

So this whole venture is nothing but a money grab.  The monster Simpson will have profited from his evil deeds, and so will his hirelings Regan and the other bottom-feeders in the media who are promoting his piece of garbage.

Comments

[Bill Churchill]

What does it matter? After all, did any of them, Simpson, Regan or Harper Collins “never really meant anything by it?” These Superstars would say, “Everyone’s gotta make a buck,” and that since “everyone knows the rules,” who is anyone to judge except the “greenies,” (who prove their naïveté by “being judgmental”). Needless to say, these worldly wise sophisticates are the same people who would decry the lack of God and prayer in the public schools, etc. But those issues are likewise a shtick and “hook.”

After all, they would say that, if we are so "morally squeamish,” that we “should learn to get over it,” and that the market should determine what is “right and wrong.” This is of course the modern version of Nietzsche’s belief that we should move “Beyond Good and Evil.” It seems like the many blood baths of the twentieth century didn’t quite make enough of an impression to cause our species to “get over” its Uber-man complex. It seems to me like these “Supermen” need to get over their taste for blood before people start thinking that they really do mean anything by their actions.

Posted by Bill Churchill (December 4, 2006)

[Bill]

Hi, Bill.

Yes, indeed, which is why peddling the Simpson book as a "confession" was tripe, because it lacked the moral substance of such. It was the fig leaf, and a rather wilted one at that, Regan used to try to cover a naked money grab.

You make a good point that the marketplace cannot define morality. Morality is prior to the market, which cannot exist in anything but the most primitive form without an objective code of good and evil. Otherwise, we would have nothing but the "caveat emptor" of the bazaar rather than the free market of voluntary exchange under the rule of law.

Even if some, like Simpson and Regan, would like to think so, not everything is for sale. Now that HarperCollins and Fox have axed this sorry attempt to flog a shameless act of chutzpah, we can take some comfort that there still remains in our society a bedrock of common decency that even the most brazen corporate hucksters must reckon with.

Regards, Bill