Heroes Of The Week: Barnes & Noble

If you're hoping to buy O.J. Simpson the murderer's If I Did It, don't expect to find a copy at Barnes & Noble. The chain said the book would only be available by special order or for purchase online through Barnes & Noble.com. (I wish they'd gone one step further and refused to sell it at all.) Borders said that it would stock the muderer's book, a fictionalized account of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. A Borders spokeswoman explained they "will not promote or market the book in any way." Sorry, Borders, not good enough.

Simpson's book was originally scheduled to be published last November by ReganBooks, an imprint of HarperCollins, with an announced printing of 400,000. But If I Did It was dropped in response to widespread outrage. ReganBooks founder Judith Regan was later fired and her imprint disbanded.

Last month, a federal bankruptcy judge awarded rights to the book to Goldman's family to help satisfy a $38 million wrongful death judgment against Simpson.

Beaufort Books, a small New York-based publisher, is reissuing If I Did It in October, with Simpson's original manuscript intact and commentary included. The Goldman family is calling the book Simpson's confession — the same description Regan offered in justifying the original publication. Denise Brown, Nicole Brown Simpson's sister, has accused the Goldmans of hypocrisy for publishing a book that he had called "disgusting and despicable" when Simpson first planned to publish it.

Can't Americans scrape this piece of shit off their collective ugly-ass Bruno Magli shoes?
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