O.J. Simpson and accountability

Times have certainly changed, said The Philadelphia Inquirer in an editorial. Hardly anybody blinked Friday after former football star O.J. Simpson was sentenced to nine to 33 years in prison for his part in a “bungled armed robbery” in Las Vegas. Simpson’s 1995 acquittal in the murder of his former wife, Nicole, and her friend, Ronald Goldman, “gripped the nation and divided it on racial lines,” but we have bigger things to worry about now.

Call this "karmic justice,” said the Los Angeles Times in an editorial. Simpson's lawyers plan to appeal and say that their client got an extra tough sentence because so many people think he got away with murder in his first trial. But Simpson showed himself to be a “remorseless liar” who thinks that, as a celebrity, he can do anything he wants, so the sentence seems “cosmically just.”

It’s also a big victory for accountability, said USA Today in an editorial, which is just what this country needs as the economy tanks thanks to “corporate titans” who fleeced their own companies. With O.J. going to prison, with Blackwater guards facing manslaughter charges for killing Iraqi civilians, and with voters casting out Rep. William Jefferson, who was caught with $90,000 in cash in his freezer, it looks like “those who deserve a compuppance” are finally getting it.

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