Interview Bin Laden? I Won’t Be Watching

Late one afternoon about three years ago, I was walking on Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica when I saw O.J. Simpson going into a party supply store.

My first thought was to introduce myself, offer to buy him a drink at the old Red Setter pub, and get him liquored up enough that he’d confess to everything.

Then I thought: Do I really give two hoots what this clown has to say about anything?

Of course not, so I walked on by. And if you’ll allow me a somewhat absurd leap, I kind of feel the same way, only more so, about Osama bin Laden.

CNN has kicked up a controversy over its efforts to get an interview with the Al Qaeda leader who has practically taken credit for the Sept. 11 deaths of thousands of innocent civilians.

The network revealed it had sent six questions to Bin Laden through an intermediary. Among the queries: Do Bin Laden and his followers have weapons of mass destruction, and if so, do they plan to use them?

If he says no, do you believe him?

On the other hand, if he says yes, do you believe that?

And does it change anything either way?

Of course not. It’s kind of like conducting a Q&A; with Pol Pot, which, speaking of CNN, is the kind of thing Larry King would have done. “Cincinnati, Ohio, you’re on the air with Pol Pot, go ahead with your question for Mr. Pot.”

Here’s another of CNN’s actual questions for Bin Laden:

How can he and his followers advocate killing innocent people?

I’m sure this one has Bin Laden quaking in his boots. Is there anyone with a measurable pulse who can’t predict the non-answer on that one?

Bin Laden might bring up Hiroshima again. Or he might once more accuse the United States of killing thousands of Iraqi children through sanctions, conveniently failing to mention that no one is more responsible for death and suffering in Iraq than Saddam Hussein.

Be that as it may, other networks were in a panic over the possibility of being scooped by CNN. But some network execs, and even some at CNN itself, at least pretended to wonder about the propriety of an interview in which you lob a few softballs and let Bin Laden take batting practice.

I’ve got a scoop for everyone, and I don’t need a Bin Laden video in my hands before breaking the news.

The man’s got nothing to say. Nothing that any of us can trust. Nothing that comes within a million miles of sane.

On Oct. 7, while we were still digging for bodies in the rubble of New York, Bin Laden put out his first video, and in it, he did the mother of all grave dances.

“There is America, hit by God in one of its softest spots,” he said. “Its greatest buildings were destroyed, thank God for that. There is America, full of fear from its north to its south, from its west to its east. Thank God for that.”

God attacked us, he says. God killed 6,000 people for the crime of going to work. And CNN wants to know how he responds to criticism from other Muslim leaders?

Look, I’m in the news biz, where we all love to believe that the right questions will bring illuminating responses, and we all compete for the interview no one else gets.

But this is not a man from whom we’re going to get a rational explanation for anything. And reasonable questions have the unintended consequence of validating, if not dignifying, a madman.

Bin Laden is in cahoots with a Taliban regime that treats women like dogs, trains young boys to kill, hangs suspected dissenters from stadium goal posts, perverts Islam to justify genocide, and makes every one of America’s sins of hypocrisy and excess seem almost saintly by comparison.

There is nothing he can tell us.

Interview over.

Thank God for that.

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Steve Lopez writes Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He can be reached at steve.lopez@latimes.com.