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Prime Time Crime
Committing the three cardinal sins can be murder
by Tom Byrnes

As the double-length limousine snaked down Pacific Coast Highway through Malibu, I stared out the tinted windows and considered life’s small cruelties. There was much I did not understand, but one thing was certain: If there was anything more lurid than having written a national best seller about the O.J. Simpson double-murder case, it would have to be going on television and talking about it.

After all, shame begets shame, and I had already done the former. Now I was on my way to Paramount Studios to do the latter.

Through a genuinely bizarre set of circumstances, I had written the inside story of three of the jurors who had issued a "Not Guilty" verdict in the "Trial of The Century." Done in the weeks right after the trial ended, it was what is known in the trade as a "crash book" — an insta-tome of insight that appears in the windows of bookstores across the country before the memory of an event can fade from public consciousness. Time is money, as they say, which probably goes a long way in terms of explaining why I pumped out 260 pages in five days to meet the deadline.

Forget the expansive office in the faux Italian villa in Beverly Hills, the round-the-clock team of secretaries, the skillful editor, and the gallon buckets of designer coffee the publisher provided. This is not something anyone should consider doing. Ever. Especially without drugs.

Three weeks later the phone rang. It was a television producer and he was sending the limo. I was now in the pundit business.

This is really how these things happen in America. When it comes to pontificating on serious legal and social matters, other countries have an intelligentsia. We have prime time news magazines featuring exclusive interviews with alleged "experts" like me.

Like most sane people, I had never been on TV before. So I called the only guy I knew who had — an old friend in New York who was a semi-famous war correspondent. He said there were three rules to a successful TV appearance:

1. Talk slowly (I do anything but)
2. Talk in 20-second sound bites (I am fond of what he called "NPR-like answers")
3. Dumb down. Way Down. ("This is America Watching. America is stupid — that’s why they’re watching you.")

Thus reassured I made my way to the Green Room, that ethereal realm of badly made sandwiches and overly effervescent production assistants who immediately act like they have known you for 20 years.

"So…you think he did it or what?"

"Who?"

"OJ! "

" Are you asking me if Mr. Simpson is a murderer? That’s like asking ‘is the sky blue?’"

I had a lot of other things to say, but that was all they seemed to hear. The set-up was perfect: Three Black women who had sprung OJ vs. White author who said he was as guilty "as the sky is blue."

It was then and there that I realized that my media savvy friend had forgotten the most salient fact of all -- Rule Number Four: Never forget that broadcast news is not about information, it is about "infotainment."

Silly me.

The girls went on first and the host tossed a few softballs to them. When they cut to the commercial, I heard the announcer blaring my name and the term "exclusive interview." This was punctuated by a quick cutaway to a shot of me sitting in the green room looking bored. "He believes OJ is as guilty as the sky is blue."

Sigh.

The whole tenor changed when I came out onstage. The host switched gears, becoming aggressive and focused on my role as "the white author who believes that race was an issue in the verdict!"

My three "co-authors" all turned and looked at me. This was news to them.

I calmly explained that I did feel that race had been an issue, one that had been used on a completely opportunistic basis by the prosecution, the defense, and, most of all by the media. As a result, no matter what side of the racial divide genetics had left you on, perceptions about both the trial and the ensuing verdict had all been deeply shaped by the filter of racism. This aside, I did not believe that it was a factor in the jury room and it was very important to note that these women had found Mr. Simpson "Not Guilty," which, under the lexicon of American jurisprudence, was quite different from "Innocent."

This response was followed by the kind of long pause that sends people in the production booth into cardiac arrest. A smattering of confused applause from the studio audience followed. The host glared at me like I had just opened my mouth and farted.

She pressed on. "But you said it! You think he’s guilty! That he did it!"

There was a distinct tone of desperation in her voice and I remembered what my buddy had said about the NPR-like answers: "The whole game is to get you to say something you instantly regret. Then they go after you to either re-state or retract what you just got duped into spitting out. That’s what passes for drama in these formats."

"What I said was that there was an overwhelming amount of evidence against Mr. Simpson that, due to flaws in the investigation and the prosecution’s strategy, were omitted from presentation in court. Taken as a whole — something these women were never allowed to do — it is very clear that Mr. Simpson had a more direct involvement in the events of the evening of June 12th than the four or five conflicting scenarios his defense team offered."

The host’s grinding teeth told me that I had now committed all three of the cardinal sins in just two questions. I didn’t wait for the next one.

"I would also ask you to consider Mr. Simpson cowering in the back of the Bronco during the low-speed car chase -- clutching $10,000 in cash, a fake beard, a loaded gun, and a passport as he headed towards the closest international border. Think about that and ask yourself: Is this the behavior of an innocent man whose wife has just been brutally murdered?"

This drew loud applause and they immediately cut to a commercial. The girls nodded at me in approval. I smiled back. I was just getting started.

‘That’s not what you said backstage," the host shrieked the minute the "On Air" light dimmed. "You said he was as guilty as the sky is blue!"

I shrugged. "Actually, I said all of that, but your producers just focused on one comment and took it out of context."

"Context?" she hissed, appearing as if she had never heard the word before. "Context! Are you kidding?"

Her rising tone of incredulity told me that I had just violated Rule Number Four.

The show lasted another 45 minutes, but there were no more questions for me. Nothing about the color of the sky or anything else.

Nada. Zip. Zero.

I had been given the sentence of silence.

But that’s what happens when you commit the gravest crime in Prime Time.