Suck On This, Juice

On Nov. 27, Fox will air the first of a two-part interview titled "O.J. Simpson: If I Did It, Here's How It Happened.''

No, you are not reading The Onion. No, I'm not making a joke.

O.J. Simpson, a man who murdered his wife and her friend, will be on TV explaining how he would have killed his wife and her friend if he hadn't killed his wife and her friend.

Simpson, you may recall, was acquitted of the 1994 murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. In 1997, he was found liable in a civil lawsuit brought by the Goldman family for the wrongful death of their son. The Goldmans have yet to receive more than a pittance of the $33.5 million decision Simpson owes them.

In this country, fair-minded, sincere Americans can disagree about how our government should treat abortion. We can disagree about the best way to fight terrorism or cope with the war in Iraq.

But after more than 10 years since the verdict, can't we agree that O.J. Simpson is a murderer?

A Gallup/CNN/USA Today poll from 1995 showed 33 percent of Americans agreed with the not-guilty verdict, including some polls that showed up to 78 percent of black Americans supported his acquittal. Ten years later, an NBC News poll found 12 percent of whites and 70 percent of blacks still think Simpson is innocent.

I won't get into the galaxies of evidence against Simpson here. People can only see the world through their own eyes, drawing from their experiences to help them reach conclusions. When I see a proven wife batterer drip his own blood and the blood of two separate victims all over the crime scene, his car and his home, that's all I need to know.

So I'm looking forward to the interview and Simpson's charming new book, ""If I Did It,'' to be released Thursday. Fox knows people will watch. And they should, if only as a lesson in American injustice and the gall of deep self-delusion. The fact that Simpson would even entertain a book with that title and premise should convince any sensible person of his guilty conscience. But there is one man who knows the absolute truth, and I direct this to him.

Because you, Orenthal James Simpson, didn't just hypothetically kill two people. You butchered them with an awfully big knife. And killing with a knife isn't like pulling a trigger as you drive by, is it? No, I figure you needed to get in pretty darn close and deal with some awfully violent squirming and defensive thrashing while you hacked away and sliced as the life you clutched spurted blood and agonizingly jerked from frantic panting to gasping anguish to lifeless stillness.

And that's just the first victim. The other one was stronger, yet ultimately just as helpless. After all, even in your advanced age and with arthritis, you were a Heisman Trophy-winning, hall-of-fame professional football player with surging adrenaline pumping slash after slash in a supercharged rage.

Despite Fox's sick spectacle, you likely have no book-ready recollection of that evening. At least no memory that your conscious mind will permit you to recognize. But don't tell me that the horror doesn't claw at you in the stark darkness of your sleep. Those nights when maybe the coke isn't plentiful or powerful enough to bury your worst instincts and pain. Because memories that intense never really fade. They just become harder to access and retrieve. Kinda like your once-exalted place in society, eh?

So peddle your lies and fantasies. Play your public golf courses and complain about the tee times while searching for "the real killer.'' Use your poor, motherless kids as sympathy crutches and ready-made excuses to exploit anything, anyone, anytime.

Walk through life like the pathetic ghost you are. Insignificant and starved for attention. Almost too sad to be truly evil. And try to keep pace ahead of those hellhounds on your trail.