Looking Back on O.J.

How my old conversation with O.J. Simpson showed us our future, by way of his past

It was a hard week for sentimentalists, if what you’re sentimental for is celebrity double-homicidal maniacs who literally got away with murder. Because prostate cancer/the Lord took O.J. Simpson home this week at the not-so-tender age of 76, if by “home,” you mean God sent him to Hell. Here, I should stipulate with Christian humility that I don’t actually know if O.J. went to Hell. Even if there was no outward evidence that he ever sought redemption, I suppose it’s possible that he asked for late-innings forgiveness and was covered in the Blood of the Lamb, much like his Bruno Magli’s were once covered in the blood of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. They would now be 64 and 55 respectively, if O.J. hadn’t nearly decapitated them 30 years ago, then walked when a jury acquitted him.

But no worries. I’m not going to walk you through the blow-by-blow of yesteryear’s media freak show. For those of us who lived through it 24/7 for eleven solid months, re-living the greatest hits of the O.J. trial is kind of like re-living the Macarena, or frosted tips (in the Boy-Band style), or dial-up internet. Things we overdosed on in the nineties, that we’d rather pretend never existed, now.

But the O.J. murders did happen. And the circus that ensued left us with all kinds of enduring, unfortunate legacies. It was a story that helped blur the line between fame and infamy to such an extreme, that the two are now indistinguishable.