November 15, 2006

"If I had a hammer, I am hammering in the morning."

Just an imagined song lyric, running through my head, as I think about grammar, on the occasion of seeing the TV show title: "O.J. Simpson: If I Did It, Here's How It Happened."

18 comments:

Mark Daniels said...

The entire premise of the book reminds me of an old Bill Cosby routine about shop class. A "clever" student puts a bullet in the furnace and it explodes. The teacher makes a couple of failed attempts to flush out the culprit. He then says something like, "Whoever would put a bullet in the furnace couldn't respect their mother very much."

That's more than the guy who did the deed can take. He calls out to the teacher, "I didn't put the bullet in the furnace and quit talking about my mother."

Grammar aside, the impoverished OJ is trying to cash in on fascination with the case and his now-infamous celebrity to produce a book with a tortured premise.

Mark

Mark Daniels said...
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Meade said...
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Meade said...

"I wouldn't do it, but if I did write a tell-all book about how I murdered your daughter, with a TV and movie deal to follow, I'm having my lawyer make sure you still don't receive one thin dime of the $33.5 million in damages I owe you for murdering your daughter. And then I'm a hammerin out danger, I'm a hammerin' out a warning, I'm a hammerin' out the, uh, uh, now how does the rest of that song go?"

Tim said...

The jury failed. He's still guilty.

Bruce Hayden said...

I do wonder how he is going to keep the Goldmans from getting at his profits.

Interestingly, O.J. still has a lot of star power. He came into Summit County, CO, last summer helping a friend buy a house in Breckenridge. He played the local courses, and everyone at the southern end of county was atwitter when he liked the Keystone courses best. There was speculation that he might buy on one of them, etc., and everyone was excited. Then, he left, vowing to return to ski, maybe, this winter - but probably at the other end of the country (i.e. at Breckenridge).

The people who met him and were later interviewed told how great a guy he was, etc. I actually think that he has more notoriety now because of the murders than if they had not occurred.

Palladian said...

Bruce, you're right, he's certainly more notorious since he murdered Goldman and Brown.

Bruce Hayden said...

I have never been convinced of O.J.'s guilt. I must be one of a dozen white people in this country that way. But one of the things that struck me while taking Criminal Law back in the 1980s was the prof telling us that when you are talking murder, there are crimes of passion and crimes of premeditation, and in his experience both prosecuting and defending a lot of capital cases, the more blood, the more passion, and the cleaner the kill, the more the premeditation.

And that was where I was always stuck with those killings. They appeared to be crimes of passion, through their savagery, the use of a knife, etc. But it would have taken an awful lot of premediation for O.J. to pull it off. If someone were trying to hit such a close timetable, I still think it unlikely that they would use a knife for the killing, esp. in such a brutal way, given that there are so many cleaner ways of doing it that would significant reduce the chance of getting blood all over them. Also, more sure fire. Of course, O.J. could just be stupid...

I also question the evidence. I found Furman's story about why he went over the fence to be worse than pretextual. I think it highly likely that their search was illegal, and should have been seen as such by the judge. And, if the cops were going to lie about that, then what else about the case were they also lying about?

Finally, I read a book by a couple of the jurors after the trial, and their take was that O.J. might have been guilty, but that the state had not come close to proving that beyond a reasonable doubt. After having watched a lot of the trial on TV, I have to agree (though, I wasn't of course there, esp. gavel to gavel).

knox said...

I worked in a video store for a brief period in my youth. One day my register total didn't balance--I had $5.00 too much in my drawer. I received a "written warning" for this. On the line where the manager had to detail my infraction, she wrote:

"Left her draw be over by $5.00"

That's the boringest story ever, but anytime the subject of bad grammar comes up, I remember this. It's burned into my brain as the dumbest thing I've ever seen on paper.

paul a'barge said...

Why can't we put O.J. in jail for felony hutzpah?

Anonymous said...

I heard a great one the other day. I was at the gym and after I did my workout I had a Jamba Juice at the facility and I asked for a shot of Wheat Grass and the person there says to me "We ain't got none now." So I said, "You ain't got none?, and he goes, we usually got it but we ain't got none now."

Randy said...

Bruce: As I recall, he's avoided paying the Goldmans thus far by establishing residence in Florida and transferring all his assets before the civil decidion to a trust for the benefit of his children. Thus, the money is legally theirs, not his. I imagine he will keep this money the same way. (I hope one of our many legal beagles will correct me if I'm wrong and explain how he does it.)

Meade said...

If your verb forms don't fit,
you must be a guilty twit.

Mortimer Brezny said...

If I think two accomplices committed the murders, then I think O.J. Simpson and Kato Kaelin did it together, while zonked on crystal meth.

Mark Daniels said...

JohnK:
My late father-in-law, white, also believed that OJ was innocent.

Mark

Maxine Weiss said...

Interesting that even a confession by the murderer, isn't enough to convict him, either before, or after, the verdict.

A confession means nothing, and they are routinely thrown out.

Peace, Maxine

Mortimer Brezny said...

Yes, but they could convict Kato.

Killer said...

OJ will keep the money the same way he has kept any other profits since the murders. He has all procedes sent to a trust for his kids.
The Goldman's can't take his NFL pension and they can't take any money set aside for his kids.