That O.J. Simpson’s book deal has been canceled is really no surprise. What is a surprise is that there is still an audience for this story. Who would buy this book? Who would read it? And why do we still care?
Eleven years after the fact, we are still mesmerized by the OJ Simpson case. It won’t go away and we cannot get enough of it. Maybe it is because we are all still holding our breath, waiting for a different verdict to come back. And maybe this book might have been that other verdict—guilty. Perhaps we would have read it to hear him say in his own words what so many think, that yes, he did it.
But if the book was to be a confession, why not just come out and say “I did it,” freely and openly? Double jeopardy protects him completely.
I asked O.J. Simpson’s lawyer, Yale Galanter, that question directly. And his answer to me was, “Because he didn’t do it.” I asked, if that was him talking or O.J.? He said O.J. So yes, ladies and gentlemen, this whole project was just one giant tease in incredibly poor taste. O.J. is never going to admit to the murders because, according to him, he didn’t commit them.
So why, then, write a book about, them, as if he did? Galanter says it’s “to secure his children’s’ future.” When asked how $3.5 million can secure four children’s future, Galanter’s response is that the $3.5 million dollar figure is inaccurate, as confirmed by Judith Regan.
And yes, O.J. still gets the money, and yes, O.J. has already been paid, or rather, his children have. Galanter said O.J.’s “contractual obligations have been fulfilled and were not contingent on the publication of the book or the airing of an interview.”
Galanter, who will still continue to be Simpson’s lawyer, was against this book and interview and did not learn of it until very recently.
“I think it was in very bad taste,” he said. “O.J. and I have had many heated discussions over the social consequences of this book. Clearly, I was one of the people that, if I had been asked, would have said, no way, no how.”
Galanter went on to say that “the fact that this has been cancelled by Murdoch is a good move. Nobody is happier than me that this book isn’t coming out. I think it is blood money.”
I asked Galanter why O.J. would pull such a repugnant stunt. The reason, according to Galanter, is that O.J. feels that in the eyes of the media and the American public things could not get any worse for O.J. No matter what he did, it would never be good, and never get better. So why not profit off of being so reviled? Why not make some money for his kids?
And while Galanter understands that thinking, he does not agree with it, which is why this deal was struck without Galanter’s involvement.
O.J. Simpson disagreed with his lawyer, and I do too. I think things that “couldn’t have gotten worse” for O.J. have just gotten a whole lot worse.
Maybe O.J. is finally running out of juice at last.