O.J.’s Forthcoming Book: “If I Did It”

Fang-Face says:

Okay, people, here’s the deal . . .
O.J. Simpson was found not guilty in his criminal trial. From a legal stand point, nothing else matters. Even if he did in fact commit the crime and now comes forward admitting it, all that matters is that he is not guilty de jure. As for assuming he is guilty simply because a segment of the population believes he is, that is simply asinine. A segment of the population once believed the earth was the center of the universe and burned people to death for not also believing it, and even an abject idiot should know how that turned out. The reality in such cases is not that people believe he did it because others do, but that such people are not accepting responsibility for themselves. Ultimately, you choose what to believe or not for yourself; rationalizing that it is due to the influence of others is a cop out

As for Son of Sam laws which do make it illegal for criminals to profit from their crimes by publishing books about them, some of those have been stricken down in the last year or two. The original Son of Sam law itself, comes to mind.

If you think that the book should not belong in your library because it is not accurate, then by all means do not select it for the collection. But trying to start a blanket movement founded on rejecting it a priori on your say so is censorship, and don’t try to pretend that you are doing it out of some sensitivity for rights and freedoms.

Fang-Face says:

Re:Greg’s “banning criteria”

. . . if the library does not have it no one can think it.

ROLLING ON THE FLOOR LAUGHING MY ASS OFF!

So where does 15,000 years of human violence come from?

Let me clue you into one of the lessons of history here. In 1012 the Pope in Rome wrote an encyclical calling for the liberation of the “Holy Land” from the heathen Moors. In 1013 an army swept across Europe heading for the “Holy Land” and took the liberty of murdering every Jew they came across along the way. The Holocaust was simply the most recent expression of this thousand year wave of genocide.

I don’t think the Vandals of the — what? Fifth Century? — did a lot of reading up on wanton destruction before setting out to create a concept that is alive and well and in frequent use to this day. In what library did Cato the Elder get the idea that “Carthage must be destroyed”? Or Rome its imperialism? In what library did some Chinese emperor read about rounding up all the intellectuals and enslaving them to work on the Great Wall, and entombing those within it that refused to do so?

First off: People come up with plenty of ideas on their own.

Secondly: An idea is not responsible for the people that believe in it. Quite the contrary, in fact, it is people who are responsible for what they do and what they believe. I watch a lot of police procedurals; the CSI series, for starters, and yet, oddball that I am, I have never felt the compunction to go out and try to recreate some of those crimes for my own amusement.

Fang-Face says:

Re:Greg’s “banning criteria”
Ah; beg pardon. The formula for the sarcasm tag would be ampersand, lt, and semicolon, followed by sarcasm (or /sarcasm), followed by ampersand, gt, and semicolon. That will give you this when interpreted by the browser: <sarcasm> — </sarcasm>

You can’t just use the angle brackets themselves because the browser will interpret what is between them as an HTML command and it will not show up on the monitor.