OJ, GOP Activists, Foley, Haggard and Rush - Much in Common

The classic definition of chutzpah is generally given as, a boy is on trial for murdering his parents, and he begs for leniency, because he is an orphan. The term has many English close-synonyms, but none quite capture the flavor of the Yiddish. Some terms that come close are gall, arrogance or hubris, the latter term itself defined as overconfident pride and arrogance.

There have recently been a spate of instances which illustrate the essence of chutzpah.

OJ’s new book, I didn’t kill them, but if I had . . .

On June 12, 1994, O.J. Simpson’s former wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ronald Goldman were found dead outside Brown's condominium. Simpson was soon charged with their murders. The arrest and trial were among the most widely publicized in American history. On October 3, 1995, Simpson was found not guilty of the two murders. Notwithstanding the jury’s verdict, only four people in the entire country felt Mr. Simpson had not killed them.

Three years later, in a civil suit for wrongful death, the Brown and Goldman families won a verdict against Simpson for $33.5 million. Since the standard of proof for a criminal verdict is “beyond all reasonable doubt” and that of a civil trial, “a preponderance of the evidence”, the judicial determination is that he is between 51% and 99% guilty!

Now, in 2006, after, according to Simpson, searching for the “real” murderer (on golf courses throughout Florida), Simpson has written a book and is the subject of a Fox special (“fair and balanced”) in which he outlines how he would have murdered Brown and Goldman, were he the one responsible for the killings. Simpson is said to be making $3.5 million for this exploitation, par for the course for a man who did the same to many of his trusted friends, who after learning all of the facts under oath said clear and convincingly—he did it.

GOP operatives assert that Bill Clinton’s presidency was marred by his preoccupation with sex and scandal.