If I had blogged about O.J.'s book and TV special, this is how I'd have done it

I'm shocked — shocked, I say — that News Corp. has canceled O.J. Simpson's speculate-all book, If I Did It, and the accompanying television special due to be broadcast on FOX next week.

You'd think Rupert Murdoch woke up this morning with ethics in his cornflakes.

Although that might be expecting too much.

Setting aside the overwhelming ick factor in having a man describe in graphic detail how he murdered his wife and her paramour — hypothetically speaking, of course, I'm mostly relieved that any potential success on the part of News Corp.'s abortive O.J. project won't lead to a slew of like-minded self-exposes by other alleged celebrity malfeasants:

• If I Knew It by President George W. Bush.
  
  
• If We Sang It by Fab Morvan, the surviving half of Milli Vanilli.
  
  
• If I'd Written It by Stephen Glass (who actually more or less did this number already, in his novel The Fabulist).
  
  
• If I Did It, Then Had It Done to Me, in a Denver Motel by Pastor Ted Haggard.
  
  
• If I Had Sexual Relations with That Woman, Whom I Did Not Have Sexual Relations With by former President Bill Clinton.
  
  
• If I Took My Handgun to My Favorite Italian Restaurant by Robert Blake.
  
  
• If I Made Home Movies, an anthology featuring the collected works of Rob Lowe, R. Kelly, Paris Hilton, and Britney Spears.
  
  
• If I Was Anti-Semitic by Mel Gibson.
  
  
• If I Was a Racist by Michael Richards.
  
  
• If I Were Gay by [insert the potential author of your choice here].
  
  
• If I Were a Moron by [insert name of your Congressional representative here].

This whole O.J. confessional debacle is yet another entry in the ever-growing pop culture category, "Who Thought This Was a Good Idea?" — the same category that brought you Crystal Pepsi, mullets, and the Iraq War.