WHY DID O.J. SIMPSON CARRY ON FOR 30 YEARS? IT’S AN EVIL PART OF LIFE
He is dead of prostate cancer at age 76, but most are asking today how Simpson survived a horrific murder trial and left troubling questions about society, the judicial system and racial relations
When did we lose sight of brightness? The world started to crash, some insist, on Sept. 11, 2001. Others blame wreckage from the dot-com bubble. One of my days was at Soldier Field in Chicago, during the opening ceremonies of the World Cup, where I’d written about Diana Ross singing the national anthem when — before a 1-0 game — she should have told players about a goalmouth not being wide enough.
Minutes later, no one cared about soccer or sports or the rest of life. That’s when every eyeball was dragged into a sort of hallucinogenic debacle, on Interstate 405 in Los Angeles, where Al Cowlings drove O.J. Simpson in a white Ford Bronco while a fleet of police cars followed them. Once a football hero, Simpson was a hot brand centered on television, movies and advertising. He was bigger in Hollywood than he was as a record-breaking running back, becoming the first star in a celebrity-dappled country to cross over race. Was he Black? Was he White? Was he Both?
He was O.J.
Now, instead of smiling at a party with his blond wife, he was in a getaway car as Cowlings called 911 and said Simpson had a gun and was threatening to kill himself. They were off to the Sunset Boulevard exit, where they headed to his home at 360 N. Rockingham Avenue in Brentwood. He was arrested and assumed on his way to prison forever until, in a trial that almost sent us all to mental institutions, he was acquitted of slaying Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend, Ronald Goldman, with a knife.
Thirty years later, Orenthal James is dead of prostate cancer at 76 in Las Vegas, where his demise seems apropos. “An incredible moment in American history,” CNN’s Wolf Blitzer said when detailing coverage Thursday. Simpson continued to carry on and have fun when most of us thought he should have lapsed, except for Black supporters in LA and elsewhere who saw him as a strike-back godsend. Simpson played golf, chatted about the NFL with followers on social media and, every so often, tempted publishers by suggesting he was guilty of the killings. He lost a separate civil trial in 1997 but never paid most of the $33.5 million owed to family members of Brown and Goldman. Later, in Nevada, he was sent away to nine years of prison for armed robbery in a sports memorabilia scam. It was bad karma, long overdue and befitting.
Few of us knew he was so ill. So the news was stunning and prompted reflection when his family wrote on his social media site: “On April 10th, our father, Orenthal James Simpson, succumbed to his battle with cancer. He was surrounded by his children and grandchildren. During this time of transition, his family asks that you please respect their wishes for privacy and grace.”
Privacy. Grace. Simpson left us with no peace, only misery, while wondering what happened to the judicial system and racial relations and the godforsaken media.
“We don’t need to go back and relive the worst day of our lives,” Simpson told the Associated Press five years ago. “The subject of the moment is the subject I will never revisit again. My family and I have moved on to what we call the ‘no negative zone.’ We focus on the positives.”
Even in February, when reports circulated he was undergoing chemotherapy, he refused to acknowledge a prostate cancer fight. “Hospice? Hospice? You talking ‘bout hospice?” he said with a laugh. He always seemed to smile, though why?
All the while, including now, I think about Goldman’s father, Fred. His son was known as an alumnus, sadly, of my daughters’ high school in suburban Chicago. He was a waiter at a trendy restaurant and returned Nicole’s glasses at her home. One night, he was dead on Bundy Drive. “This is just a reminder for us of how long Ron has been gone, how long we have missed him and nothing more than that,” Goldman, 83, said after the death notice. “That is the only thing that is important today. It is the pain from then until now. There is nothing today that is more important than the loss of my son and the loss of Nicole. Nothing is more important than that.”
To this day, I have visitors from the East and Midwest who want to see Simpson’s Rockingham address. He lived in the corner lot until it was completely razed in 1998. It’s still part of the city’s Tragical History Tour, down the street from the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air Mansion. When he left the area, he said, “It's not my house, and I could care less. I walked out of that door, and I've never been back. Rockingham is history.”
Finally dead, no longer with us, Simpson also should be history. I drove past the old place today, close to the Brentwood Country Mart ridiculed by Larry David on “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” where I eat lunch. I was the only person there at noon, where the street number has changed to 358 and “Dogs Will Bark” signs warn. Sometimes I pass the offices of defense attorney Johnnie Cochran, who died in 2005, after he told jurors about gloves that Simpson said were too small. “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit,” he said. I hear the name of Christopher Darden, the prosecutor, who ran for judge and lost. The daughters of another Simpson attorney, Robert Kardashian, are everywhere and very much nowhere.
Otherwise, there is nothing more to report. Let Orenthal James rest.
In hell.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.