Cable news channels whoop in delight in anytime there's a story about O.J. Simpson. They know they can toss out all that messy and time-consuming stuff about fairness, getting both sides of the story, and innocent-till-proven-guilty. O.J. Simpson is like a Communist in 1952 -- you can safely say anything you want about him without worrying about libel law or good journalistic practice.
So Simpson's investigation and subsequent arrest on charges of armed robbery in Las Vegas the past few days has been a regular Old West necktie party on the cable nets. They hit the absolute bottom of the barrel -- at least, I pray they can't go any lower -- on Sunday afternoon when Fox News brought on none other than Mark Fuhrman to offer his expert opinion on the case, notwithstanding the fact that he knows absolutely nothing about it. (Not that the coverage wasn't balanced; Denise Brown and Fred Goldman were there, too.) Fox anchor Jamie Colby allowed him to rant for a full 10 minutes without once noting that he was convicted of perjury for his testimony in Simpson's murder trial.
Fuhrman, not surprisingly, offered no facts or analysis, but lots of venom. "What we have here," he said of Simpson, "is a two-bit thug who can play football in an expensive suit." No, what we have here is a two-bit racist liar pursuing a personal vendetta, and a Fox anchorwoman who, if TV had been around a couple of thousand years ago, probably would have brought on a jackal to analyze what the Christians did to provoke those lions.
Footnote: Fuhrman also said that Simpson is "too stupid to be walking around." Gosh, detective, what does that say about you and Marcia Clark, Chris Darden and the rest of the prosecution team on that murder case?
You are perfectly right, I'm not an O.J. either but right is right and I thought this was America. Where's are black leaders on this one.
Posted by: Gdaddy | December 08, 2007 at 01:25 PM