...So the latest shock news that's out there is that O.J. Simpson has written a book. And it's got to be the most tasteless thing that's been published in a long time. It's called "If I Did It" and he was paid $3.5 million dollars to write it. And he's appearing in a 2 hour interview that's going to be spread over two nights on Fox (no surprise it's Fox, right?) - wonder what he's getting paid for that?

In case you hadn't heard, the book is about how he would have hypothetically killed his ex-wife and her friend, Ron Goldman, if he was the one that did it. Now, I know he was acquitted in a court of law of criminal charges, but he was found responsible for the crimes in civil court. As a result of the civil court finding, he owes the families of Ron Goldman and his ex-wife about $33 million in damages. And they've not seen a cent of it. It's not that Simpson doesn't have the money. It's not that he needs money from this book to do it.

Simpson's living off a $25,000 a month pension that he gets from the NFL. He's living quite nicely without needing to hunt down someone stupid enough to pay him for an endorsement deal. I just wonder if the families are going to get any of the money he stands to make from this book or from the television interview. If he doesn't need the money, why did he write it? But let's get back to the matter at hand.

*IF* he did it? Regan Books (which is publishing this crap) just paid him to tell the world how he would have killed them if there hadn't been a houseguest (Kato Kaelin, anyone?) and if he'd had more time. Or maybe this *is* how he actually did it (assuming that he's guilty, and personally I think that he is). Honestly, is there a person in the world who doesn't think he killed them? Everyone remembers the slow Bronco chase down the highway, right? We were all watching that on television that night. I remember being at DH's house and every television up and down the street was on watching the chase. Some folks were wandering to neighbors' houses to watch the coverage and chat.

It was an event. Not a good event, mind you, but an event. It was an event that ended up lasting for months to come. The houseguest, the bloody glove, the method, the motive... I remember when the verdict came in and everyone crowded into a conference room at work to hear it. I remember the seconds of stunned silence when it was announced that he wasn't found guilty, and then the voices either expressing surprise that they didn't find him guilty or expressing joy that they won a bet (and money promptly began changing hands). Ah, but I digress yet again.

People shouldn't be surprised by this - he once told Esquire magazine that if he'd done it, he must have done it because he loved her very much, right? Excuse me? What sane individual says *that*? The same individual that writes what I talk about next...

A clip from the interview lets us know that Simpson wrote "I have never seen so much blood in my life" and his explanation for that is that he doesn't know how two people could be murdered and not have everybody covered in blood. Boy, he got tackled and concussed a few too many times on the field, didn't he? Strangulation, poison, blunt force trauma to the head, a quick gunshot to the chest - maybe I've read too many Patricia Cornwall books and watched too much CSI, but there are plenty of ways to kill people and not have everyone covered in blood. '

I bet some of you want to know if I'm going to watch this - doubtful. Highly highly doubtful. And will I read the book? Not likely. This is just sick, and supporting either the interview as a viewer or the book as a reader just feeds the great laugh he's having on the world. It's likely that he got away with murder - and even if he sang it out to the heavens that he did it during the interview, he could never be tried for it again in criminal court.

Fox and Regan Books are thumbing their noses at the families of the victims, and playing down to the worst elements of the population by airing and publishing this crap. Fox is going for the quick sensationalism of this by playing it out for the couch potatoes, and Regan Books is going to make a quick buck on it from all the junkies for "true crime drama" books. And those two aren't the real villains in the first place. O.J. actually agreed to do this, with a smile on his face. Who ever would agree to write a book like this in the first place if they were truly innocent or truly aggrieved by the murders?

In my opinion, no one would. At least no one sane would. Whether Simpson is insane, or pathological remains to be seen, and that's probably something we will never learn, and that's fine with me. Want some irony? He was once considered for a role in the original Terminator movie, but the producers feared that no one would take him seriously as a cold-blooded killer.

I want this to be over - it took over the media for 3 1/2 years - from the killing to the end of the civil suit. Although it is a nice distraction from the war coverage, but still. Make it go away people. And maybe this is the end. Maybe writing this book will finally remove O.J. from the public eye because this will be his way of admitting that he's given up on his primary goal in life: he swore that he would find his ex-wife's murderer and this is his way of saying he never will...

... except when he looks in the mirror.