OJ: Juicing the Past

It was the summer of 1994. I remember my family and I had gone out for dinner. It was a few weeks before school started up again and I was officially going to be a senior in high school and my brother would be entering my high school as a freshman. We were seated in an area that had several televisions but the sound was drowned out by the general din of the place and the music that was conveniently played to create atmosphere though how people are supposed to keep food down with schmaltzy love songs in the background is beyond me. But I digress. We are just finishing dinner when we see what appears to be a scene out of the movie "Speed".

A white Ford Bronco is racing down a highway, apparently in California and it is being pursued by cops. Thinking that perhaps this is just a regular old police chase, we leave and head home. Turning on the TV there we find the same story is all over the news. Apparently OJ Simpson, whose ex-wife had been murdered several weeks earlier along with a friend of hers, was fleeing from the police after he claimed that no one would believe him or that he was innocent. There was a sort of macabre desire to watch simply because no one seemed to know what would happen next. Simpson apparently had a gun but would he kill himself or shoot his way to freedom. He returned home and eventually was arrested and thus began the trial that was lambasted and ridiculed and that lasted for my entire senior year and most of my first semester in college.

Like it or not, the trial divided the country along racial lines with people claiming that Simpson was being treated unfairly because of his race. Be that as it may, there were so many other problems in the case that no one came out looking good. The criminal case resulted in Simpson being declared not guilty while the civil trial several months later returned a verdict of guilty. However, the civil trial was meant as more of a show to prove that the chain of evidence was sufficient to convict him. Again, whatever the case, whether he was guilty or not is for the individual to decide and not me. Still, after the trial, Simpson proclaimed that he would continue his hunt for the killer or killers of his wife and her friend. He immediately went to play golf. It's been a decade since this whole thing happened and still no results.

However Simpson did have time to write a book. In the history of mankind there have been multiple good ideas. Sliced bread is definitely one of them along with velcro. The wheel is also quite important as far as ideas go too. But when half the country believes you to be guilty and the other doesn't, why fuel a fire by writing a book about how you would have perpetrated the murder of your wife and her friend if, for the sake of arguement, you would have done it? Doesn't this sound like nothing more than a desperate attempt to get back into the limelight after your career and reputation are ruined? It sounds just like that to me. Simpson continues to claim his innocence and has stated that this book is only meant to provide the reader insight into how he would have done it.

Now this just strikes me as very odd. Supposing for the sake of arguement he's writing this to prove that he would have been much more methodical than the actual perpetrator of the crime. He sat through hours of testimony and evidence about how the murder was supposedly done. He had evidence of the murder in his house and he knows where and when mistakes were made. Of course the book will present a case where none of these mistakes are made. He's had a decade to plan out and use 20/20 hindsight to make his decisions clearly. I guess Simpson thinks that perhaps people will read the book and say, "Wow! The original murder was sloppy, Simpson would have been more like a ninja. Less mess, quick death." Somehow I don't think that's what the reaction of most people will be.

Bookstores and many publishers have stated that this is a truly stupid idea and that it's ridiculous to even contemplate the rationale behind wanting to publish this. Families of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman (her murdered friend) have stated that this is sort of like OJ confessing his crime. Perhaps it is a sanitized version of the truth but I am again wondering what the point is. The people who think he's guilty will still think he's guilty and the people who think he's innocent will still think he's innocent. To go across racial lines is something we're not really capable of doing. I mean look at the semi-mixed reactions to footballer Michael Vick's crimes.

Whatever his motivations for wanting to write the book, it's clearly for nothing more than making a quick buck or two. I honestly can't think of anyone who would be interested in reading a book like this. The case has been out of the public's mind for a long time. While it was culturally significant in terms of clearly defining race relations in this country, it wasn't a landmark case that changed the course of history in this country like Roe vs. Wade or Brown vs. The Board of Education. It was simply a case of a man who apparently had a mountain of evidence against him being found not guilty through extremely fine defense work. This is nothing more than Simpson's attempt to stir controversy and make a few bucks on the side. I guess it beats pan handling.