Whether villain or victim, O.J. commands spotlight
O.J. Simpson turns 70 Sunday. Wishes sent to him will be sorted into two equal piles, marked “Happy Birthday” and “Roast in Hell.”
When Simpson was running wild for the Buffalo Bills in the mid-’70s, it was his offensive line, the Electric Company, that turned loose the Juice.
Soon it will be a parole board that could turn him loose. Simpson has a parole hearing this month in Nevada. If at least four of seven board members believe Simpson is fit for release, he will walk free Oct. 1.
San Francisco’s native son (Potrero Hill, Galileo High, CCSF) has done nine years in a medium-security prison in Lovelock, Nev., 93 miles northeast of Reno via Interstate 80, for using an armed posse to retrieve memorabilia items he believed were his.
In prison, Juice is a gym janitor and softball ump, and something of a life coach to fellow inmates. He shares a 125-foot-square cell and sleeps on the bottom bunk, according to a story in the Los Angeles Times.
The big question is, if Simpson is paroled, how would he be received? With open arms? Slammed doors?
He’d get both. Much of his reception would break down along racial lines, like the way folks rooted for the verdict in his 1995 double-murder trial. And that’s just what we need in these trying times, another racially divisive issue.
Endless debate would ensue. He would be retried a million times in the court of public opinion, gossip TV and social media. Psychopathic murderer or frame-up victim? Rehabilitated soul or consummate con man?
Simpson told a 2013 parole board (which wiped out some of his convictions), “I advise a lot of guys, and I like to think I keep a lot of trouble from happening.”
Simpson loves fame, money and adulation, so he’d be ripe to star in a reality TV series. Because he’s O.J., with all that entails, viewers would be charmed or repulsed. Either way, how could you not watch?