The Media Get Juiced

I was having flashbacks yesterday.

Did O.J. do it? Is he guilty? Is he being railroaded? Is he a moron? Did the stuff belong to him?

I spent a good chunk of my life between 1994 and 1997 writing and yakking about the Juice--a guy who I once rooted for, when I was a college student in Buffalo and he broke the 2,000-yard barrier for the Bills. The brutal knifing of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman (a crime whose perpetrators Simpson is still ostensibly seeking) took over American society to a degree that, even now, seems difficult to comprehend.

I remember writing about that cultural watershed when the New York Times quoted the National Enquirer on the O.J. case. I remember, no joke, when the New York Post ran a story on Marcia Clark changing her hairstyle to a "softer do." I remember the talent-free sidekick Kato Kaelin getting a radio show. I remember "NBC Nightly News" doing two and sometimes three O.J. pieces a night. I remember being unable to watch a talk show, night after night, without guests yelling at each other about the Simpson case. I remember that when O.J., post-verdict, canceled an NBC interview with Tom Brokaw and Katie Couric at the last minute, it was a front-page story for me.

We'll get to my report on the Las Vegas heist--excuse me, the alleged heist--in a second, but I think it's fair to say that O.J. isn't real popular on the blogs.

The Right State: "Nothing new there. O.J. is a sociopath bent on self destruction. He should have been convicted in the deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman in 1994. The police had all kinds of forensic evidence linking the former football star to the murders, but alas, the incompetent twelve strike again. The jury bought the 'race card' put forward by Simpson's attorneys and so they let a killer walk free.

"This time O.J. may not be so lucky, because his own words will convict him. By his own admission, Simpson broke into a hotel room with the intent to retrieve items he believes were stolen from him."

Eviltwin2: "When the Robert Blake trial went on, I observed to many folks that one would think that Blake would have learned something from OJ: hire professionals. Whacking a waiter and an ex-spouse are not do it yourself projects, hire pro's. [Apparently] OJ learned this and did hire pro's this time, but his desire to micro-manage led him to be on the scene as well, hence the seven felony charges."

Doodlebug: "Well . . . it looks like after all this time, OJ is going to be headed to prison after all. I had a chance to hear him exploding on the audio tape going around. It sure sounds like he has a big-time temper -- even if he had a reason to be upset. Enough of a temper to kill someone if the conditions were right? Well, I won't go there -- but it will be rather ironic if after all this time he is booked for armed robbery."

Here's my take, with an assist from my colleague Sonya Geis at Camp O.J. in Las Vegas:

Moments after President Bush announced Michael Mukasey as his nominee for attorney general yesterday, the cable networks jilted him for an old flame.

O.J. was back. O.J. was proclaiming his innocence. O.J. was doing the perp walk. The Juice was under arrest, and television was magically transported back to the mid-1990s, when all of America argued about every facet of the double-murder case.