But then, Ms. Regan has actually been in the celebrity business her whole career, with her ability to sell the tatty and salacious elements of contemporary culture. She formed those skills as a reporter for The National Enquirer, but in a world where many office workers spend their days surfing for a shot of Britney Spears sans panties, that work history was a credential, not a knock.
Ms. Regan always lived her public life as if it were one big MySpace page, which she filled with outrageous personal and professional behavior and intemperate words. Part of it seemed like shtick, but she seemed to cross a line bordering on mania after her motives in interviewing Mr. Simpson were questioned.
First, she issued a statement that compared her own alleged victimization as a battered woman with that of the murdered Nicole Brown Simpson. ?The men who lied and cheated and beat me ? they were all there in the room. And the people who denied it, they were there, too.? (It sounded a little crowded in there.)
Instead of saying sorry about that, Ms. Regan went ballistic in a statement that read like an autopsy on an open deadly wound. Her nonapology apology approached absurdity, a biblical Act of Contrition written (at times) in the voice of a young girl.
?I made the decision to publish this book, and to sit face to face with the killer, because I wanted him, and the men who broke my heart and your hearts, to tell the truth, to confess their sins, to do penance and to amend their lives. Amen.?
Ms. Regan then reflected on her time with Mr. Simpson: ?Thought process disorder. No empathy. Malignant narcissism,? she wrote as if she had been looking in a mirror, not conducting an interview.
NEW YORK TIMES: Oh No He Dih-Int!
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