Fox News and HarperCollins -- Have You No Shame?

Update/revision to the below post: The O.J. interviews will be on Fox Broadcasting, not Fox News Network. And as it turns out, Bill O'Reilly HAS blasted the O.J. shows and the book. I'll fill in the details later.

Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly on the Fox News Network love to wag their finger(s) over various moral failings of folks, particularly, you know, politicians of liberal persuasion. Sometimes they're dead on with their criticism. Sometimes they're way off base.

So it will be interesting if their moral courage and their status as "great Americans" (Hannity's phrase) and "culture warriors" (O'Reilly's phrase) will lead them to blast Fox Broadcasting for what's shaping up to be the most vile broadcasting event of all time.

If they don't offer some kind of an outcry, then their credibility will be entirely destroyed. And WHEN they don't rage against Fox, call or email them to complain. Tell them I sent you.

O.J. Simpson, the un-convicted murderer who has yet to pay for his crimes, will participate in interviews with Fox Broadcasting, tied to the release of his book, titled "If I Did It" and published by ReganBooks, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. The shows will have Simpson describing "how he would have committed the 1994 slayings of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman, 'if he were the one responsible.' "

So Sean and Bill, and the rest of you folks at Fox News, how do you defend the financially motivated decision of your parent company (and, indirectly, Fox News Net and you) to profit off Simpson's murders?

Spin it all you want, but there is absolutely no "news value" in such a show. It's sheer, exploitative, morbid entertainment. It's far beyond crass. It's utterly indefensible.

Fred Goldman, father of Ron Goldman, one of the two innocents murdered by Simpsons, said: "It is an all-time low for television. To imagine that a major network would put a murderer on TV to have him tell how he would murder the mother (Nicole Brown Simpson) of his children and my son is beyond comprehension."

Goldman is right.

Oh, yeah, Simpson (and Simpson's deluded supporters): How's the search for "the real killer" going? Can you give me an itemized list of all you've done in your investigation, the leads you've followed and the information you've discovered?

No? I didn't think so.