Stop sleaze, don’t watch O.J. on TV

The world of sleaze sports is officially here and we are the worse for it. O.J. Simpson is back. A national magazine, (no, I won’t name it) has published an interview with him in which he makes the already infamous and obscene statement that “if” he murdered the mother of his children, he must have really loved her. My God.

Now his comeback attempt continues on a national TV interview show where he’s going to talk about – what? Welcome to something worse than Jerry Springer, this is sleaze sports, and God help us if we support it by buying or watching.

To write about him here puts his name in the media one more time. Not to do so is a silent acquiescence to a grotesque use of a sports figure who may have gotten away with murder in a criminal trial, but was found responsible for two deaths in a civil trial. Are we really going to see Simpson make the circuit of talk shows? Are media outlets really going to give him space and time? Are we really going to watch?

There comes a point where lines are drawn. There are wrongs, there is a rancid sleaze. This is it. What next? Let’s go round up a group of mass murders and rapists. You can be their agent and back them on all the talk shows for a price. Ten percent of the take is yours.

Let’s gather together all the racists in sports, all the athletes who call fellow participants names we tried to bury 100 years ago. We could put them on the air with minority athletes and let them swear at one another and maybe, if we’re lucky, they end up in a fist fight. That would draw the ratings.

Then they could write a book and travel around the country signing copies, speaking as they go, for a fee of course. If we get really good at this we can start the 24-hour sports sleaze network and get people to log on at .Sleaze.

Big bucks and vote for the top 10 sleaziest athletes of all time. They’ll be no lack of entrants who’ll receive votes. The trouble is, there probably will be no lack of people voting.

This insanity can’t go on, can it? Simpson is being used by the media to make money. They are using the fact he probably killed two people as the hook. He is using the media to try for a comeback in the public eye!

There are stories that he believes the public will forgetand/or forgive and he will be accepted again. That means he wants back on the air broadcasting, wants to run through some more airports for a fee, wants to be a spokesman for someone’s product.

The media using him has sold out. They want the ratings and if O.J. can deliver them, to hell with the dead.

There’s room for honest discussion about his case, why it happened and what occurred. That does not involve assisting his self promotion.

As always, there is only one way to stop this gross and sickening matter. Don’t buy the magazine and don’t watch the shows. Better yet, write to those media outlets and protest.

It can be a fine line between the presentation of information for knowledge sake and the exploitation of gross and obscene conduct for a dollar’s sake. That line is being crossed in the Simpson matter and it stinks.