Blogcritics The critical lens on today's culture & entertainment
Olfactory fatigue works within an institution as well as within an individual: a persistent stink fairly quickly ceases to register as the smeller becomes used to it. This helps to explain how units within a huge corporation — like for example Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp — can tolerate the indiscretions of their sibling units on an ongoing basis: they just get used to it.
However, occasionally a stench is so horrific that even the sibs sit up and take notice. Such has turned out to be the case with If I Did It, the ineffably ill-conceived, taunting, gloating new O.J Simpson book and attendant two-part TV interview about how he “might” have killed Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson in the most atrocious of slashing cold blood, scheduled to synergistically disgrace News Corp’s Regan Books and the Fox television network, respectively, next week.
Many booksellers vilified the book, and Borders said it would donate proceeds from sales of the book to the victims’ families; the punditocracy arose in monolithic indignation including mouths at Fox News; and continuing the internal rebellion, a dozen Fox affiliates said they would not air the appalling sweeps “special.”
“I and senior management agree with the American public that this was an ill-considered project,” said Rupert Murdoch, News Corp. chairman. “We are sorry for any pain that this has caused the families of Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson.”
“This publication has been cancelled,” the book’s product page on Amazon states simply.
While the mind reels that anyone, ever, thought such a gross and evil project was, you know, kind of a cool idea, it is heartening to find that if the fumes are powerful enough to overcome olfactory fatigue, even Rupert Murdoch is willing to do the right thing.
