O.J and The Bus

(With apologies to Jerome Bettis...and football fans who don't glorify murderers)


So...less than a month after my O.J. and Coffee post, I got to see someone else sporting an O.J. Simpson jersey in public. This time on the Culver City bus. Even Johnny Cochran would be rolling over in his grave - laughing. "Hee-hee. Man, that race card beats everything else in the deck. Hee-hee, they're still buying it. And merchandise, too! If the glove don't fit...then buy the jersey! Damn - I was good." Which is more than you can say for his knife-wielding client - a guy who had more in common (money, celebrity, ego, entitlement, connections,"juice") with every white, millionaire limo-flashing scumbag in Beverly Hills than any young brother riding the bus. Seriously. The guy in the photo above probably spent the better part of his hard-earned weekly salary (ie. a couple of Bills) to champion the worst of all the Bills: a jealous, privileged, woman-abusing, murderous millionaire with blood on his hands and a Dream Team of lawyers to make it all go away. Talk about being Buffaloed. Doesn't he know Simpson wasn't innocent? That he carved up his wife the same way he knifed through all those NFL defenses? That people (women, especially), of all races and walks of life might not exactly appreciate his very public form of sartorial free-expression? Either he (and the woman in the coffee shop) doesn't know. Or, worse: THEY DON'T CARE. What's next? White boys and rocker girls busting out Phil Spector Throwback Jackets? Turnabout's fair play - but not justice...

Coffee and O.J with local flavor...

Wake up and smell the ignorance. It was Monday morning and my wife didn't know why my jaw had dropped into my java. Gulp. We had just done our sleepy-eyed morning walk down to Culver City's Conservatory of Coffee, and were enjoying the fresh-roasted brew and view of our fellow city stumblers when I saw her. Forty-something. Upscale, well-coiffed and accessorized and put-together, having a smiling, lively conversation with her friend as they she got into the coffee line. In an O.J. Simpson jersey. Not an ironic, snarky "FREE O.J". t-shirt. No. A vintage, limited-issue, long sleeved, very expensive-throwback kind of jersey. 32 in putrid yellow on a field of maroon blood red. (Sorry - couldn't resist the overkill.) I had to explain to my wife that "No, no. It is THAT Simpson."

I was stunned that somebody so apparently all-there would go there. HERE. In the city where it happened. Where was Fred Goldman when I needed him? He could tell her everything that was wrong about it. He might even get through to her or get an answer as to Why Her and Why That Outfit? Who was I to ask and what could I do... except tell you.

Frankly, my head is still shaking - and it's not the caffeine. Maybe she has her reason. Then again, maybe she should use some. Or maybe she likes scream in her coffee.