O.J. Agonistes, Or, If He Did Read the Papers, Here's How He'd Be Apalled By Them
What's got O.J. Simpson's frogman suit in a twist these days? The sick, sad state of the American media:
"When Paris Hilton was going to jail last week, more people knew about that than knew that we were sending people into space that day," Simpson said in a phone interview from Miami. "It has replaced what is real news. There was always a place for it, but it was [gossip writer] Rona Barrett. Now it is the equivalent of Edward R. Murrow reporting it today."…
"When I was growing up, to watch guys like Walter Cronkite and Huntley and Brinkley, I didn't know what they thought of the news," he added. "Legitimate news people are giving their opinions. It is hard to tell the difference between legitimate news people and Nancy Grace and Bill O'Reilly."
As someone who has taken a fair amount of abuse from Bill O'Reilly (not to mention his viewers), I feel compelled (like a battered spouse?) to point out that the mediascape today is 1,000 times richer, deeper, and more informative than it was in Edward R. Murrow's, or Walter Cronkite's, of Huntley and Brinkley's heydays. And that O'Reilly, for all his bluster, is absolutely a positive force in media (if only because The Colbert Report is literally unimaginable without his precedent).
Question for Nancy Grace: If you're doing a ton of missing persons stories, why don't you do one on Roger Cossack, the one commentator made famous by the O.J. trial who seems to have pulled a Judge Crater?
P.S.: If you think the Three-Legged O.J. Dingo boot ad is strange, I submit that this one featuring another '70s gridiron legend is even more disturbing, albeit on a subtler level (click through for legible version):
