Finally, The Goldmans May Get Some Payment

Dateline Los Angeles November 17, 2006

This story about OJ Simpson's new book is quite amazing to me. Just amazing. It's been theorized that he misses the spotlight, or perhaps this is a stage in his confession process, or even that he needs the money for his kids, since he can barely squeak by on the 300 thou a year his NFL pension reportedly yields him.

It's almost as amazing to me as the number of people that went on TV back then to say that they had seen his killer instincts in his cold calculating eyes. I guess I am just much less intuitive than all those wise souls who saw that he had it in him to kill his ex-wife and her friend. I ran into him a bunch of times in the early 1990's. We were both on the set of a car rental spot that seemed to go on forever because of rained out shoot days. I never saw anything out of the ordinary. He just seemed like a normal celebrity, trying to get through the job and collect a paycheck.

I never got much chance to talk to him, and he seemed a bit full of himself, but he didn't seem like a murderer. I didn't form that opinion of him until I was exposed to the non-stop coverage of his trial. That was a decade ago, though, and I think he's had some time to develop some remorse. That's why he wrote the book, and agreed to promote the thing on Fox TV.

I think I know why he's really doing it. It's for the Goldmans.

He can't really expect that the money will go to his children. I doubt that it will even get out of the publisher's house before the Goldmans have filed an injunction to glom on to that cash. It certainly doesn't seem like much of a stretch to see how a legal argument can, and should be made that if a criminal cannot profit from his crime, a co-conspirator cannot, either. The publisher, altruistic story of getting OJ's "confession" aside, stands to make a buck from this. It seems that anyone who tries to profit from these murders, and does so in concert with the now civil-court "convicted" murderer is conspiring to enrich the murderer.

It ought not to matter that the money form the book and TV deals won't go directly to OJ. Even if he never sees a penny from it, if it pays for his kids school and allows him to spend more of his pension on greens fees then it is enriching him. If it goes to his kids and then they give it to him, in whole or in part, ditto.

If it is all going to his kids, who are probably two of the only true innocents in this whole story, then it is a shame that it will probably be taken away from them. They will get all the embarrassment and humiliation of having their lives re-examined by a vulture-hungry "press corps" seeking to milk this old story for a few more dollars, and no payout.

A little creative lawyering ought to get all moneys earned from the book, the televised interview and any subsequent movie deal transferred straight to the Goldmans. I really don't see any other possible outcome. When I say all of the money, I mean all of the money - the publisher and Fox TV are all part of the same media conglomerate, News Corp. owned by Rupert Murdoch. The book money, the payments for the interview and all of the advertising revenue should all be forfeit, imo.*

So, clearly OJ wants the Goldmans to get a payment, even though he appears as though he will make them work for it.

Or else, OJ has lost his mind at some point in the past 40 years and that is why he killed them in the first place and that is why he is doing this attention getting book and TV show.

Leave it to Fox to put it on TV. Thank you NBC for having the class to say no.


*If that were to happen, it might bring some good out of this mess. TV might back off from it's fascination with the prurient, just a little bit, and try appealing to our better angels, now and then.

Further good news came along with the departure of the poet DH Rumsfeld from the Defense Department, a move that your President says had been in the works for a lengthy period, despite his many protestations to the contrary during that same period. When he said he hadn't announced the change just before the election for fear of influencing the electoral process, I had to laugh out loud. It seemed like exactly the type of move that he and his evil henchman Karl Rove would make on the eve of an election with winning in mind.

In retrospect I have to wonder if that isn't possibly further evidence of the isolation and ignorance prevalent in the Oval Office. The President has successfully isolated himself from as many possible reality checks as he can, it appears, and so it should not be surprising that he believes we are making good progress in Iraq, or that he may actually have believed that he could hold on to Rumsfeld for the full 8 years.

One common refrain I have heard from a number of sources has been "Well, you shouldn't expect this to magically end the Iraq problems." To which I have to respond, in symmetrically mature fashion, "Well, duhhh! The nation's been under the control of a team of arrogant hubristic hypocrital backstabbing clueless self-centered blowhards for 6 years now, and it could be decades before we can restore our former stature in the world community, if it *is* even salvageable."

The war can be ended in relatively short order, but I do not expect it will be, and the environment can be fought for, bit by bit, pushing back on the various fronts that the President has infringed on it. The tax code needs to be addressed with an eye towards restoring the middle class at the expense of some of the payoffs that have gone to the wealthiest in the US, and some attention needs to be paid to restoring the constitution from the bottom of the trash heap that this administration has left it in, but other than those items, we are in pretty good shape. Except for the other problems, and I am sure you have a list of your own.

While even the least brilliant of my friends on the left end of the political spectrum will, I expect, quickly assent to the verity of this moronic (being repeated over and over in various incarnations, such as James Bakers recent "magic bullet" iteration) statement, I would suggest that change, nonetheless, is in the wind.

It will come slowly, as the various "pundits" have pointed out, ad nauseum. In two years, however, I expect that we can be out of Iraq, and can have made progress towards mending a substantial portion of the nation's other ills, and maybe even have some semblance of the Clinton health care initiative back in process.

I think some progress away from the backsliding in education, the environment, health care and the economy are going to be the minimum ante required for the Democratic party to have a little staying power past the next national election. Otherwise, enjoy the next two years in DC y'all, and the rest of us can look forward to a return to wealthy people roool mode after that, with dread.

Pendulum slows

 -- Dateline Los Angeles November 13, 2006

Last weeks election results, though not entirely finalized yet, are greatly encouraging. Turns out that maybe you can't spend 6 years lying to the public and killing their kids and still expect the majority to continue nodding and smiling and droning "Yah, that sounds like a good idea..." every time you announce a continuation of your harebrained, half-assed policy of empire building.

The winning back of both the House and the Senate will bode well for the future, and should restore some sort of balls to the Democratic party. I hope it is enough to make a difference.

If you are wondering, as I am, what is on the horizon, you don't need to look any further than the Sunday talk shows this past weekend to see where the first and primary roadblocks are going to be coming from: the White House.

White House counselor Dan Bartlett said Sunday. "If there are good suggestions - - - we want to listen to them."

So, in other words, suggestions that are not "good" will be ignored. I don't know about you, but most of the people I know tend to think in pretty black and white terms, and ideas that they like are Good, whereas ideas that they do not like, are Bad. It isn't too tough to envision what the White House is going to think of suggestions coming from the other side of the aisle, or what they will do with those suggestions. Just look at what has been done in the past.

Now, there isn't a Republican House and Senate any more, so I do not think they can get away with totally ignoring all outside suggestions any more. You can expect to see the full repertoire of killing with kindness come out in the next two years, however.

Eventually, the Bush administration may have to enact some sort of concrete change in the policy in Iraq, but I am afraid it will only come about after it has been force fed through a veto over-ride, and this is a shame. At that, they may be so good at dragging their heels that no change will happen until the next President is elected.

Which would be tragic for tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands or likely millions of people with ties to the middle east, but might have an upside in that we see a Democratic President and additional gains in both houses of Congress in 2008.

While I would love to see that government, I would hate to see the war in Iraq continue on the road it is on, and would gladly trade a few seats in either congressional house for a little bonafide national unity. Maybe it's time the President rethought his definition of Good.