OJ & TMZ: Seems like old crimes

We're still trying to figure out this one. OJ Simpson is arrested at the same time that phony confession book is released? Charged with stealing his own property? And the alleged victim and witnesses are funneling their stories and evidence through the corporate porn-pushing website TMZ.com?

Who's profiting from this one?

The bizarre story has suddenly become the latest unexpected obsession on the TMZ site, steamrolling aside the bare-chested McConaughey softcore photos for endless updates in the same manner that TMZ went overboard with posts on Paris Hilton's ride home from jail. Which leads to the question of whether TMZ "main on-air personality" Harvey Levin and his consultants are turning to the Celebrity Justice fallback after the embarrassing first-week camp and irrelevance of TMZ TV-- or if Harvey is running from the New York Times' reminder last week that "in a reputation-jeopardizing move, he once falsely accused Mr. Simpson’s prosecutor of a firing offense based on what he later excused as a misinterpretation of a video."

That "misinterpretation," by the way, was Harvey's attempt to copy the history-making correct video interpretation by the TV show Premier Story that revealed pal Robert Kardashian making off with Simpson's Louis Vuitton garment bag the morning after the murders of Simpson's ex-wife and her friend. As a local news reporter, Harvey repeated the bag story-- and took credit for it-- only to be hoist by his own petard when he tried to copy it.

See Tabloid Baby, chapter 28, "Where's the bag, Mr. Kardashian?", for this secret history of today's media scene.