O.J. Cashes In James Lileks

With the recent "liable" verdict in the OJ Simpson case, the other shoe has dropped - and not surprisingly, OJ denied that shoe was his as well. This doesn't mean the story is over, or that the case will ever go away; when OJ expires they will probably have to have two autopsies by coroners of different races to decide if he's dead.   The jury concluded that OJ Simpson could possibly make $25 million over the course of his lifetime - and that he would attempt to make this money knowing that the entire sum would be handed over to someone else. (This is the same line of thinking that gave England 90% tax rates. Confiscate nine out of every ten dollars, and people will work really hard for that final buck.) Such faith in OJ's earning power is almost touching.   How can Mr. Simpson make $25 million? He's a pariah to polite society. He could make money promising never to do certain things, for example. Imagine the headlines: McDonald's Pays OJ $1 Mill never to enter their restaurants. Nike pays OJ undisclosed sum to wear Reeboks. Florida Orange Producers pays Simpson to legally change his first name to "Grapefruit." But none of this would be enough. Simpson faces a lonely old age of penny-pinching in a downscale townhouse, staring at the TV set as he shovels down a supper of ramen noodles and store-label tuna.   Unless he does the one thing that would endear him to America, catapult him back to his former place of glory.   Confess, and start cashing in.   He could write a book, one that people would actually read. Call it something like "Okay, Okay, I Did It: OJ's Most Personal Story" or "Ten Stupid Things Smart Murderers Do." A book tour would provide one more trip on the celebrity train.   Criminality was redefined a few decades ago from aberrant anti-social behavior to a righteous protest against that ungodly hell Amerika, man. We shifted from a punitive society, which has rules and penalties for breaking them, and a therapeutic society, which seeks above all to understand and cure. The OJ case itself is old news, but our appetite for new patients to slap on the talk-show couch and ask for our understanding is unslakable. If OJ confessed, we would be encouraged to move past judgment - which is, after all, just the moral version of partisanship. And we know how how of favor that is today.   Imagine the inevitable Barbara Walters interview:   "You must have been filled with . . . with twemendous wage."   "Ah was, Barbara. Ah was at a point in my life where anger just ruined over everything. My golf game suffered tremendously. But killing my wife was the first step to overcoming that rage, and this book is another step."   Too bad Bryant Gumbel isn't around.   "OJ, you said that you committed the crime. But that doesn't change the fact that since Ronald Reagan, African-Americans have had excellent cause to distrust the police." "No, it doesn't. In fact, as a black man in America driving a car with a white woman, Ah might have been pulled over on the way to the studio here. If Ah hadn't killed her first, that is."   Absurd? You haven't been paying attention. The reason Dick Morris' book flopped is not because he hired a prostitute. It's because he looks and acts like the kind of guy who hires a prostitute - a tiny-souled needy nerd. Hugh Grant, by contrast, bounced back nicely, because he has good hair and an English accent.   This week's U.S. News and World Report has an interview with Aldrich Ames, the man who sold out CIA covert operations to the Russians and caused the death of many agents. WHY HE DID IT says the cover. You expect to open it up and find the world MONEY printed in large type over several pages, followed by "The End." Who cares why he did it? He did it, which should be enough to merit the blindfold and the cigarette.   In a culture such as this, a confessed and repentant OJ would be a renewed object of compassion. Of course, he could always remain insistent on his innocence, and complain that the cost of the punitive damages hamper his ability to find out who really killed his wife. Apparently in Brentwood, mirrors are incredibly expensive.