O.J. Simpson is too small. I knew O.J. Simpson, and Cuba Gooding is no O.J. Simpson.
And isn’t that the guy who used to mope after Jennifer Aniston on TV? To think that John Travolta would age into whoever that is makes you stop feeling bad for Sylvester Stallone.
Like Lizzie Borden, Simpson just won’t go away. Even locked up for another crime, he is with us, and doing well in the ratings from early reports on FX’s “The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story.”
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There is a generation now, maybe a generation and a half, that knows nothing of Simpson the celebrated murder defendant or Simpson the celebrated running back, but TV will correct all of that just as it endlessly does World War II.
The newly curious get to see something the rest of us missed at the time, O.J. sobbing in the back seat of a white Bronco, wanting to see his mother, a pistol at the ready, safety on I’m guessing.
Whether all of that was true or not, it is now. And the part that we did see, the trial and the glove that didn’t fit, all of that is to come.
The fascination with all the parts of this, with Simpson being the centerpiece, took up a good part of the summer of 1994, starting in my case with the opening of the World Cup at Soldier Field, Germany against Bolivia.
I was seated in the press area next to Ron Rapoport, then with the L.A. Daily News, and we swapped opinions about the Simpson we knew. I don’t recall Ron’s conclusion, but mine was: “He didn’t do it. He wouldn’t do it. Why would he do it? He couldn’t have done it. No, he didn’t do it. Not O.J.”
This conversation was more interesting than anything happening on the field below us, and I do remember that Germany won and that I felt shivers when I heard the German anthem being played in a place dedicated to dead American soldiers.
But that was just the beginning, wasn’t it? While I was filing my nonsense about a soccer game, I also was watching a white Bronco crawling along deserted L.A. freeways.
That is a common American memory, that Bronco. Certainly more so than any football game Simpson ever played, or any silly movie he ever allowed himself to be embarrassed in.
And the image is more memorable, too, than a very remarkable sports summer. Arnold Palmer played his last round in a U.S. Open that day (and Tiger Woods later became the youngest winner of the U.S. Amateur). Michael Jordan was in Birmingham attempting baseball, allowing the Knicks finally to make the NBA Finals and lose to the Rockets. The Rangers got their first Stanley Cup in 54 years, Pete Sampras was at the peak of his power at Wimbledon and Tom Trebelhorn tried to mollify Cubs fans by meeting them at the Waveland Avenue firehouse.
I managed to fit in the NBA Finals and Wimbledon while Simpson’s story transfixed the real world and still was able to make it to the World Cup final between Italy and Brazil (won 0-0 by Brazil) at the Rose Bowl before Simpson entered his plea of “absolutely 100 percent not guilty.”
Why? Why then, why now, why again? There is no news peg, no particular anniversary of the event that left two human beings dead in a condo entryway. Simpson himself is not out on parole, nor about to be.
Sadly, and typically, it would seem this is about exploiting emotions for commerce, the memories of then, the climate of now, the re-stirring of a stale stew. And it works. Doesn’t it always?
There is something about fallen heroes, more so than their fallen victims, that distorts normal humanity, and all the incidental industry that was created by the Simpson circus still chugs along, taking what it can from wherever it can get it.
For a column, I told myself, I retraced the O.J. route when I was in L.A. for that World Cup final, Bundy to Rockingham. I wrote the column, felt like a fool then and here I am doing it again. There’s a lesson in here somewhere.
Bernie Lincicome is a special contributor to the baiduhai.