Simpson Reprise

We interrupt our five-part presentation on Second Life to bring you further details of the debacle surrounding the O.J. Simpson book, If I Did It.

Additional trivia:

• On Thanksgiving Day, the New York Daily News reported: "O.J. Simpson called it 'blood money' and laughed yesterday as he boasted how he gladly spent the estimated $663,000 he got from Rupert Murdoch's company for his now-discarded book . . . In a telephone interview with Florida radio station WTPS-AM, Simpson said, "Would everybody stop being so naive? Of course I got paid . . . I spent the money on my bills. It's gone."
• From an article in the New York Post (NYP) referring to the Florida interview: "Simpson said the project was not a confession to the slayings. "I made it clear from the first day I met the writer that I wasn't involved . . . I said, 'I have nothing to confess.' "
• "After the interview, the former gridiron great played three hours of golf at a course near his home in Miami. He refused to answer questions, but could be heard loudly singing, 'I work hard for my money' and chuckling to himself as he was driven around in a buggy by one of his playing partners. " (NYP)
• eBay responded to complaints from the family of Nicole Brown Simpson that copies of the book were showing up on the online auction site. Hani Durzy, spokesman for eBay said, "Once HarperCollins reports to us, we take the auctions down . . . "We appreciate the concern of the Brown family, but this is a procedure that has to be followed."
• Rupert Murdoch's News Corp broke its silence about the deal, admitting that the "third party" with whom ReganBooks had contracted was Lorraine Brooke Associates. The advance paid was $880,000. The $663,000 figure reported by the Daily News is arrived at by subtracting the $100,000 paid to ghostwriter, Pablo Fenjves, and by subtracting the presumably 15% commission paid to Lorraine Brooke Associates ($117,000),
• In a November 28th story, Newsweek reports "that ABC’s Barbara Walters had explored so seriously the idea of doing a Simpson interview to promote the book that when she balked at proceeding, ABC’s Entertainment division had to pay Mur­doch’s publishing arm a “kill fee” of as much as $1 million."

"O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!"
--From Hamlet (I, v, 106)