SPILLING ON O.J. MIKE LUPICA:
So it will again supposed to be normal that O.J. Simpson is a free man, at least as of Oct. 1. It just shouldn’t be. Normal is where Simpson remains for now, behind bars, which is where he belongs. This is someone who shouldn’t be an ex-con. Just a con.
He doesn’t see it that way, of course. He continues to see himself as a victim of life’s circumstances, even as he kept telling us the other day that he hasn’t made any excuses for himself across the past nine years.
Maybe the most troubling part of it all on Thursday afternoon, even more troubling than the fact that Simpson was able to defend his sorry life without having to talk about the June night in 1994 when Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman were murdered in cold blood, was how he really does seem to think he’s still The Juice, as if celebrity still sustains him; as if all the guys in the room still want to hang with him and all the attractive women still want to leave with him.
It’s why there were moments when he reminded you of some aging, seedy Vegas lounge act, just playing a small room up in Carson City. He didn’t just want the members of that parole board to set him free. He wanted to charm them. He wanted them to like him.
In a world where celebrity can even get you elected President of the United States, here was one of the seediest celebrities this country has ever produced, back on stage on Thursday afternoon as if somebody hadn’t just opened the door to his cell, but lifted up a rock, right before we all watched him come limping out.
He was a show again, this guy whose celebrity and life have been given more meaning than they deserve, and certainly more than he could ever comprehend himself. No matter. People were watching him again. There he was on your television screen, laughing, crying, trying to get laughs himself out of an audience of four parole board members, reminding you again how limited he really is. He even dropped his guard once and showed real anger, when he wanted everybody to know that he was in that hotel room back in 2007, backed by men with guns back, to get property that belonged to him.
For the last time, Simpson acted like he was falsely accused on armed robbery the way he’s always maintained he was falsely accused of murdering his ex-wife and Ron Goldman in cold blood. He even spoke of having lived a “conflict-free life.” He must think Nicole Brown Simpson used to beat herself up back in the day.
Simpson still wanted the parole board to pin a gold star on him because he’d been a model prisoner, and even the commissioner of the prison softball team. He used religion as cover, too.
The next morning, though, he was righteously called out by Ron Goldman’s father, Fred, who went on CBS and reminded everybody that Simpson was ordered in 1997 to pay over $20 million in punitive damages to the Goldman family as a result of a civil suit the family filed against him. To date the family says it has seen less than one percent of that money. “I believe without a doubt he’s the same person,” Fred Goldman said. “I think he showed it clearly during the parole hearing. His snickering about things. The arrogant looks when they’re reading things. The way he snapped at one of the commissioners on the parole board. I think he is exactly who he always is.” Who he always is and who he will always be, despite making it sound as if he is some kind of changed man because of an Alternatives to Violence course he took in prison. You would talk about irony with Simpson, except that it’s always folly to use irony in an underdeveloped country. Meaning his. Once he was a football star. Now he has become the star of award-winning television movies and Oscar-winning documentaries. In so many ways, then, he has become one of the most celebrated bums in the history of this country. We are still being told that he was acquitted in his Trial of the Century because of race, because it was Los Angeles, because it was L.A. after Rodney King. No. More than anything, more than the way the prosecution was botched, he was acquitted because of his celebrity.
Somehow, all this time later, we see polls telling us that nearly 60% of African-Americans now think Simpson murdered Nicole Brown Simpson and murdered Ron Goldman in cold blood. It means that the other 40% or whatever it is, are still watching the wrong O.J. Simpson movie.
It is always worth remembering what Jay Leno said after the jury found in favor of the Goldmans in that civil suit, about how it was heartening to find out that murder actually still was against the law in California.
You listened to Simpson’s latest lawyer the other day, the last in the conga line of lawyers he has employed, still complaining that his client hadn’t been in jail for the past nine years because of armed robbery, but because the judge in that case saw a chance to put him away for murder. For the record, that judge’s name was Jackie Glass. If it is true that she took it upon herself to at least provide some measure of justice for Simpson, good for her.
For now, Simpson gets to be a star again. He was a star Thursday afternoon at his parole hearing. He will be a star again when he leaves prison in October. After that we will once again see images of him on the golf course, smiling for the cameras, this pathetic 70-year-old ex-con still imagining himself as The Juice.
“I was always a good guy,” O.J. Simpson said on Thursday afternoon.
He didn’t sound like a changed man in that moment. He sounded like one more ex-football player who took too many shots to the head, just the one for whom no one feels sorry except himself. O.J. SIMPSON