The O.J. Simpson Economy

I remember the buzz when the original murder trial of O.J. Simpson was in process. It dominated the news and conversations at home, work and play. Recently, we were reminded of the “economy” that arose out of those events when O.J. Simpson was again arrested, this time for “removing” memorabilia from an O.J. entrepreneur. Memoirs as well as memorabilia is part of the O.J Simpson economy. In Casanova Was A Book Lover, John Maxwell Hamilton writes that,

Because o the O.J. Simpson trial, we have books by a defense attorney, former wife of a defense attorney, prosecuting attorney at the criminal trial, deputy prosecuting attorney, lawyer for the family of one of the deceased in the civil trial, witness, detective, juror or dismissed juror, journalist who covered the trial, friend of the murdered wife, members of the victims’ families, friend of the defendant, former girl friend of the defendant, niece of the defendant, and the defendant himself, who by the way declined to testify in his criminal trial. As one wit put it, the jurors selected for the various O.J. Simpson trials face a really tough decision: Random House or Doubleday.

Tree huggers should hate O.J. Simpson. When you type “O.J. Simpson” into the search function at Amazon, you get 13,892 results. Think of how many trees had to be killed for all those books.