If things went to plan, this time next week you'd have all been unwrapping copies of If I Did It, Here's How It Happened, pulling a strained face and saying "oh, a book describing how OJ Simpson would have murdered his own wife, how did you know?"
But things sometimes don't go the way you expect them to, and that's the case with If I Did It, Here's How it Happened by OJ Simpson. Thanks to some crazy fools thinking that a book written by a man found to be legally liable for the deaths of his ex-wife and her friend describing exactly how he would have brutally murdered them if he had the chance was in bad taste, If I Did It, Here's How It Happened by OJ Simpson will never see the light of day. And thanks to all the fuss that the OJ Simpson Murdering Former Spouses And Their Friends For Dummies caused, the woman in charge of the whole shebang, Judith Regan, has been sacked by Rupert Murdoch.
When we announced that OJ Simpson had written a book detailing how he would have murdered Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman if it was him that did it, which it wasn't anyway so shut up, you responded with haikus. But when we announced that OJ Simpson was going to accompany the book with a murder-based TV interview with Judith Regan on Fox, you responded with outrage. And you weren't the only ones.
The upset caused by OJ Simpson's If I Did It, Here's How It Happened was as far-reaching as it was instant. It seems as if Fox was the only group who didn't think that letting the man at the centre of one of the most notorious murder trials of the 20th century graphically describe the hypothetical murders of the woman he used to be married to and her friend was a teensy but tasteless. There was a public outcry that included several Fox affiliates, and in the end Rupert Murdoch was forced to kill If I Did It, Here's How It Happened and pulp all existing books.
So in the end If I Did It, Here's How It Happened made Rupert Murdoch – who apparently gave the OK to the book and interview in the first place – look silly, and OJ Simpson hasn't come out of it looking especially good either, funnily enough, even though he admitted that he earnt a whole lot of blood money for it. Not even the publisher of the OJ Simpson book is safe – Fox has recently fired Judith Regan, as Scotland On Sunday reports:
Media mogul Rupert Murdoch's publishing arm has sacked Judith Regan, the executive who masterminded OJ Simpson's hypothetical murder confession, If I Did It. Judith Regan's employment with HarperCollins has been terminated effective immediately," the firm's chief executive, Jane Friedman, said in a statement yesterday.
This is a huge blow for Judith Regan – publisher of books such as Slouching Toward Gomorrah and How To Make Love Like A Porn Star – and reports are suggesting that the sacking came after Judith Regan allegedly made some kind of anti-Semitic comment to Jane Friedman in a telephone conversation. Until everyone gives their versions of the story we'll probably never know.
The important thing, though, is that we still don't know how OJ Simpson would have killed Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. And it's driving us mad. Our latest theory is this – spurred on by watching old James Bond films and Tom And Jerry cartoons, OJ Simpson would have travelled to the arctic to construct a satellite containing a laser powered by the sun's energy, which he would aim right between Nicole's eyes use to and explode her skull open. As for Ron, we'd imagine that a simple boxing glove in a Jack In A Box would have sufficed. That's probably pretty much what would have been in the book.
Read more:
Murdoch Fires Publisher Behind OJ 'Confession' – Scotland on Sunday
Ginsters says
I’d like to think he would have done it with beartraps and vinegar
Whoa says
I thought I was reading another OJ article, but when I got to the boxing glove in a Jack in the Box part, it would make a great scene for The Naked Gun 44 7/8 I have to say.