O.J. Simpson: Karma comes calling

Rarely have “human law and karmic justice” been in such perfect alignment, said the Los Angeles Times in an editorial. O.J. Simpson last week was sentenced to from nine to 33 years in prison for bursting into a Las Vegas hotel room with some armed thugs to seize sports memorabilia he claimed belonged to him. Back in 1995, of course, the former football great was acquitted in the brutal murders of his ex-wife Nicole and her friend Ronald Goldman. His behavior since then—from trying to dodge a civil judgment the Goldmans won against him to writing a “pseudo-confessional book” for money—have only enhanced the impression that he got away with two murders. “That SOB,” Ronald’s father, Fred Goldman, said last week, “is going to be in jail for a very long time, where he belongs.”

Most Americans probably harbor that same “visceral reaction,” said Rex Huppke in the Chicago Tribune. “But is it fair?” The judge and the prosecutors in Nevada repeatedly stressed that the earlier trial was irrelevant to the robbery case, but that claim strains credulity. The judge admitted references to Nicole Simpson’s murder into the robbery case, and the Goldmans made a big point of attending the sentencing hearing, at which the judge repeatedly said she wasn’t punishing Simpson for what he may have done in 1995. But clearly that infamous trial “wasn’t far from her mind.” Simpson’s lawyers plan to raise those issues on appeal, along with the fact that there were no blacks on the jury. “Regardless of where one stands on the earlier verdict,” said The Philadelphia Inquirer, the two cases should not have been allowed to co-mingle. “That’s not blind justice.”

Still, no one’s crying except O.J., said Jonah Goldberg in the Los Angeles Times, and that’s pretty telling. In 1995, Simpson’s murder acquittal ripped the country apart along racial lines, leaving most whites flabbergasted and most blacks feeling that the “racist” justice system got what it deserved. This time, very few Americans—black or white—saw the pathetic Simpson as a symbol of a “racial divide,” or of every oppressed black man, or of anything else. The African-American who now stands uppermost in the national consciousness was just elected president; in 2008, the nation’s dominant “racial story” is about hope and “unfolding success,” not oppression. So O.J. Simpson gets sent to jail and Americans shrug. We have indeed come a long way.

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