Book Bonfire

Ron Goldman and his daughter, Kim, appeared on Oprah today to explain their rationale for publishing OJ Simpson’s pseudo-confession for the brutal murders of his wife, Nicole, and Ron Goldman, a restaurant employee who seems to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Did OJ do it? We don’t need a purported “self-authored” book to tell us that: we have the crime scene evidence and it is conclusive. Yes, OJ did it, and he got away with murder. Why do we need a book to validate the black eye the jury gave to the judicial system?

The central questions asked on Oprah are should the confession be published? Should consumers purchase the book? Should anyone read a book that could be construed as a manual for murder for other abusive husbands? Should anyone profit from this publication: the publisher, the author, the families of the murder victims?

My answer is that NO publisher should have made the deal to print and distribute the book: period. It doesn’t matter if the killer publishes the book or the victim’s family publishes it, there is NO justification for this book to be published. The decision to do so reminds me of the ploy used by serial murderer Ted Bundy, who, having exhausted all of his plea options, offered to tell where the bodies are buried in exchange for avoiding the death sentence. The response to that deal was “hell, no,” the same answer every publisher should have given to this book.

However, because greed is the primary motivator in our society, the Goldman’s decision is to print and distribute the book, while denying OJ Simpson and his family any profit from it. After all, this is the USA, where we let freedom ring and leave the conscience up to the individual to do the right thing, whatever that may be in this instance. Had it been my decision to make, I would have gone on Larry King Live and publicly burned the manuscript.

However, if the book is going to be published, I support the Goldman’s decision to remove the profit element from OJ Simpson and his family. I think justice would better be served if anyone who thought about buying the book simply donated the price of the book to a non-profit organization that deals with domestic violence. Leave the book to molder on the shelves of the bookstores or enjoy a community bonfire, but don’t acknowledge OJ Simpson by purchasing and reading his account of what he might have done to kill two people.

If you have to read anything about those murders, purchase a copy of the court transcript, read it, and address the core issue of that trial: how did a jury find him not guilty?

It disgusts me that it was a Simpson family decision to write the book, and that the family, including Nicole’s now-grown children, formed a corporation to funnel the profits from the sales of the book to OJ so he can continue to enjoy the lifestyle he has flaunted for the past decade.

Oprah asked if this action is going to bring the Goldman’s peace, and the daughter, Kim, was flabbergasted. As she so eloquently replied, “There is no peace for the families of murder victims,” and then expressed her disbelief that Oprah believed anything would ever bring peace and/or allow the families to move past the double murders.

Oprah’s question was as insightful as Nancy Reagan’s answer to the drug problem, “Just Say No,” or Rodney King’s solution for racial violence, “Can’t we all just get along?” There is no magic cure for murder, for the abhorrence the victim’s loved ones always feel toward both the violence and the killer. Ignoring it does not make the murder go away, it makes it fester, like a pus-filled boil that, sooner or later, must be lanced.

In finding OJ Simpson not guilty in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, a jury played the ultimate race card, seeking retribution for every black man ever found guilty by a white jury in spite of the evidence. To add credence to that verdict by allowing OJ Simpson any form of public acceptance for confessing to the crime simply reinforces the shame we all should feel for the miscarriage of justice that allows him to continue to live without paying for the heinous crime he committed.