Wealth & Money Quote by Christopher Darden

A rare kind of candor from a figure we’re used to seeing behind the armor of “public service.” Christopher Darden doesn’t dress his motive up as civic duty or noble truth-telling; he leads with money, then admits the more complicated moral math underneath. That blunt “I suppose” is doing quiet work: it softens the confession just enough to be survivable, a hedge against the accusation that he’s cashing in. He’s telling you what everyone suspects about post-scandal memoirs while also insisting the suspicion isn’t the whole story.

The context is the O.J. Simpson trial’s afterlife, where reputations became commodities and the people who carried the case found themselves targeted, mythologized, or flattened into symbols. Darden’s subtext is defensive and practical: writing as legal self-defense when the legal system can’t protect you from public narrative. “Protect myself and my family” reframes profit as security, not greed; it’s a lawyer’s framing, moving from motive to necessity.

The specific intent is to preempt moral judgment by owning it first. By labeling his reasons “selfish,” he controls the indictment and blunts its force. It’s also an implicit critique of the media economy that made his privacy untenable: if your name becomes property of the culture, selling your version can feel less like opportunism than reclaiming stolen agency. The line exposes how trauma gets monetized not because people are soulless, but because life after the spotlight is expensive, precarious, and unfair.