But the Simpson phenomenon is in a nefarious league of its own. The fascination over his deeds should have expired long ago. Yet as long as there are entities out there who will do absolutely anything short of televised executions to rake in revenue, scalawags like Simpson will continue to have a forum as well as a means to profit from their misdeeds.
A friend of mine and I have discussed the term “sociopath.” She applies it to someone who has done something terrible and has no conscience about it. But I looked it up and that’s slightly inaccurate.
A sociopath, according to my dictionary, is “a person whose behavior is antisocial and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience.” That doesn’t sum up Simpson completely.
I believe the appropriate term is the much more acute “psychopath.” That is, again according to my dictionary, “an individual who manifests amoral and antisocial behavior, lack of ability to love or establish meaningful personal relationships, extreme egocentricity, failure to learn from experience, etc.”
Using those definitions, Simpson qualifies as a psychopath, especially when applying the terms “amoral and antisocial behavior” and “extreme egocentricity.” And by exploiting his reprehensible efforts to try and make more money off two murders, Fox and Regan come dangerously close to fitting the definition as sociopaths.
Let’s talk about politics just for a moment, without specifying parties, recent elections or future campaigns. If hypothetically, at any point in our history, there are crooks in power, and voters keep those crooks in power, then the onus shifts from the crooks to the people who keep them in office. Generally speaking, voters get the government they deserve.
The same holds true for a lot of things in life, including television. If you keep watching garbage, they’ll keep feeding you more garbage. If you tune in to listen to O.J. Simpson casually discuss “If I Did It, Here’s How It Happened” or if you purchase his book, then you are tacitly condoning what he did.
Viewers have watched murderers discuss their crimes on TV before, but in almost all those cases the killers had been brought to justice and were behind bars and/or about to be executed. There is a morbid fascination with such individuals because it provides a portal into the darkest recesses of human nature, and as disturbing as such spectacles may be, there is at least some educational value in it.
That isn’t what this is. This is Simpson getting away with murder and then profiting from it.
It’s not about him anymore. It’s about you.
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