Last night I started reading The Worst Person In The World: And 202 Strong Contenders, by Keith Olbermann, late of the MSNBC nightly news show Countdown and once upon a time of ESPN’s SportsCenter. On his MSNBC show, Olbermann has a bit he does at the end of the program, during which he lists the three worst people in the world for that day - it can be pretty much anyone for anything horrible that they have done, provided Olbermann catches it during some portion of the day’s news cycle.
Today, I read about a new book coming out, authored by O.J. Simpson, that, according to this article on CNN, purports to be Simpson telling how he could have done it if he had been the one who had killed his ex-wife and her friend. According to Simpson’s publisher, the book is “his confession.”
Did I mention there’s a television interview to go along with the new book? Would you be surprised to learn that the interview will air on the Fox news network? Would you be surprised to learn that the interview will be shown at the end of November, just as sweeps - one-month periods that happen three times a year (in February, May, and November) during which ratings are measured and advertising fees based on those ratings are evaluated - are winding down?
I don’t even know where to begin - my mind is positively reeling with visions of the apocalypse. Marcia Clark and Chris Darden in a bar somewhere in Tahiti, doing Jägerbombs and popping X...Lance Ito in a bunker in an undisclosed location with a loaded Glock and enough food to last through the winter...and I’d bet the house, the farm, and the cot that Kato slept on that Johnnie Cochran is out there, somewhere in the ether, and grinning, sipping three fingers of Chivas that he just dipped his cigar into before lighting it.
The R.E.M. song “It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” blares in my head. “Proud To Be An American” has got to be near the top of any list of dopey slogans that have lost the lion’s share of their cachet over the last, what...say five or six years? My mom always said that actions have consequences. In science, they say that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Apparently that does not apply to celebrities, to has-been football stars who pass the time by making inane Police Squad movies, to oil company CEOs who go before Senate committess but are not required to be put under oath.
Sometimes I wonder what makes people do shit like this; are they born wretched, or do they have to work at it? People will buy his book...and watch his interview on Fox; and they will do it for the same reasons they slow down on the highway when they pass a bad traffic accident - some things are so revolting that they have to be seen to be believed, or seen so they can be talked about the next day, to friends who might have missed it. Two people are dead, and their murderer is about to become a best-selling author.
This, then, is my list of the worst people in the world - today’s version, at any rate. An homage to Keith Olbermann, who amused me and enlightened me during many an episode of SportsCenter a decade ago, and has now written an amusing little book about crappy people.
The bronze goes to Rupert Murdoch, Grand Poobah of News Corporation and the man behind the creation of the Fox Broadcasting Company in 1986. Shame on you, Rupe, for for allowing this garbage to sully the airwaves - not that what you broadcast on your network, apart from The Simpsons, is otherwise much more respectable, but this simply has to be a new low - even for Fox.
The runner-up is Judith Regan, of Regan books, who is publishing Simpson’s book. Is it that important that your kids go to the best schools and that your house has one of those refrigerators that will upload a list of needed groceries to your cell phone? Once your kids grow up and learn about this, what you have done by publishing this book, they shall hang their heads in shame - perhaps à la the Dixie Chicks that our President is from their state - and will be right to do so.
And the gold goes to Orenthal James Simpson. Juice, you committed (double) premeditated murder and bought the best team of lawyers you could get, with nothing but the goal of establishing reasonable doubt as their job requirement. You vowed to go after the “real” killer upon your acquittal, yet did not immediately fling yourself from the Golden Gate Bridge or step in front of a bus. You kept playng golf while Nicole and Ron were placed into boxes and planted in the earth. (I suppose it’s possible that one or both of them were cremated, but I don’t have the energy at this point to seek out that information.) And now you’re dredging it all up again in order to make money that you won’t pay to the Goldmans to settle the civil lawsuit against you. This is almost enough for me to wish that the mythology of religion were true, so that I could believe in hell and be certain that you will rot in it.
No comments:
Post a Comment