Society Shouldn’t Let Simpson Off Hook

Whatnow? What does O.J. Simpson do now?

More specifically, how will he fit back into the athletic community? How will people accept him if he shows up at a Hall of Fame gathering, for instance?

“He is now one of the most famous people in the world. He is even bigger than he was before the trial. And what sells? Celebrity,” said a former NFL player who knew Simpson well.

“We are a culture interested in celebrity, no matter how a person comes to be a celebrity. If Hitler were alive, he would be a mega-celebrity. O.J. is a mega-celebrity. You can hardly talk about him in terms of the sports community any more. Anyone who didn’t know who O.J. was before, knows him now.

“He’s going to be turning down deals right and left. He’ll have the pay-per-view deal (an exclusive interview that reportedly will pay him $20 million), book deals, movie deals. He’ll never have to worry about making a living again.”

But what about on a personal level? Many of his former colleagues and friends have said they believe he is guilty of the murders. Will they ostracize him?

“Are you kidding?” said this former player, who talked on the condition of anonymity. “If you were having a dinner party and you told your guests that O.J. was coming, they’d be falling over themselves to come. If a charity was having a function and announced that O.J. would be there, they wouldn’t be able to sell tickets fast enough.

“I think O.J. had something to do with the killings, but if I saw him on the street and he said, ‘Hey, come on over for dinner,’ I’d be there in a minute. Wouldn’t you?”

No, as a matter of fact.

One could make the argument that Simpson’s acquittal stands as the most extreme example of how famous athletes get a free pass on life. Our national heroes have been taught all their lives that the rules don’t apply to them. Flunk a class, don’t worry, we’ll fix it. Assault a woman, don’t worry, we’ll get the charges dropped. Total your car, don’t worry, we’ll get a new car. Kill two people, don’t worry, we’ll round up the finest team of lawyers money can buy.

I know I’m not supposed to say he killed two people because a jury of his peers declared him not guilty. Sorry. Write me a letter. He did it and he got away with it. He is not being held accountable, just as he was not held accountable for assaulting his wife for so many years.

But this is not the frightening part. The frightening part is that O.J. Simpson might now rise as a larger hero than ever before. Some in the African-American community seem to be embracing him as a prodigal son, and perhaps he is. He left the black community behind when he got rich and famous, marrying a white woman and living in an affluent white community. “He’s going to have to come back home now,” said another former NFL player, who is African-American, “because that’s where the support is. The brothers are going to be there for him.”

The cheers that sounded through pockets of Los Angeles at the announcement of his acquittal were the cheers, I think, of people desperate for heroes, of people sick of racism in the Los Angeles Police Department, and of people who, in the wake of the Rodney King verdict and others, wanted to see a black man walk out of court a winner, no matter what.

I recognize their frustration with a legal system that sends African-Americans to prison in disproportionate numbers and with a police department that employs a man like Mark Fuhrman. If the jury and the defense team wanted to send a message to LAPD to clean up its backyard, great. It’s a message that needed sending.

But I hope you’ll join me in sending a message to O.J. Simpson. If he’s on pay-per-view, don’t buy it. If he’s at a public event, picket it. If he writes a book, ignore it. Don’t let him do what he has done all his life. Even if you don’t believe he killed two people, you know he is a vicious wife-beater. Don’t hold Simpson up as a symbol for anything but what he is: a criminal who got away with murder.