How dare anyone out there make fun of O.J. Simpson after all he's been through! He went through a murder trial, he lost his civil suit and now he's going through court battles with the Goldman family.
Even when he was planning to buy a house across the street from my old high school a few years ago, it was easier and much more convenient to make a joke about it. It was very rare to find someone who was actually angry over the fact that they were going to allow the infamous celebrity to move in across the street from a public high school.
Even though he never bought it, probably because he couldn't afford it with all of the legal fees he's been dodging for years, my buddies and I still sentimentally refer to it as "O.J.'s House."
Seriously though. How can anyone defend this guy after all of the stupid things he has done over the last few years? They told me it couldn't be done, but since Johnny Cochran and his Chewbacca Defense aren't around anymore, I figured I'd try it anyways.
Ladies and gentlemen, O.J. Simpson is not the bad guy. Really. He's not.
Remember the movie, The Sandlot? The one where the kids hit that Babe Ruth-autographed baseball over the fence and do anything in their power to try and retrieve it?
That's all O.J. was trying to do when he was arrested in Las Vegas this weekend. Of course the cops said that he was trying to rob the hotel. They've had it out for him since the murder trial. Would you trust the same guys who busted you for stealing DirecTV?
He was just trying to get his stuff back. He was invited to a meeting with some collectors who were looking to sell some memorabilia. Simpson was suspicious of how they got his items in the first place and went to the meeting to try to get them back. The police can't even prove that the collectables in question belong to the potential sellers.
The Juice didn't have an erector set and PF Flyers to try and get his ball back from the Beast. He just had a group of guys that he met that night at a wedding cocktail party and (allegedly) some guns.
But is O.J. really even capable of doing that sort of thing, especially at the grandfatherly age of 60? This is the same guy who lost out on playing The Terminator because audiences wouldn't have been able to accept him as a villain, isn't it? The police can't even prove that he was armed on Thursday, the night of the alleged break in, so what's to say that these allegations aren't being blown way out of proportion?
If you listen to that audio clip that TMZ.com released, Simpson didn't do anything wrong. He wanted his possessions returned and went directly to the people whom he believed stole them. So O.J. gets arrested for confronting the thieves, but the people who had been so cruel by keeping his possessions from him get off scot-free?
None of this makes sense! Simpson made sure that nobody left the room they were meeting in and tried to solve the problem man-to-man. How is O.J., the only person trying to find a solution, the one who's being held without bail?
Thursday was also the release day for If I Did It: Confessions of the Killer, the book about how O.J. would have hypothetically murdered his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ron Goldman.
Is it a coincidence that O.J. was arrested on the same day the book came out?
Maybe Fred Goldman, who now owns the rights to publish the book, is just looking to get a few more copies sold. Maybe he helped set The Juice up for a nasty fall to generate even more publicity for the ghostwritten "confession."
Goldman also now wants the merchandise that O.J. was trying to return to its rightful owner. On Tuesday, Goldman won a ruling that gave him ownership of Simpson's Rolex watch. How heartless is this guy that he's going after these petty things. Despite the fact that Simpson still owes the Goldman family a share of $33.5 million from the decision of a civil court in 1997, does that give Goldman the right to just take O.J.'s things? If I were Fred, I would be wary of this because Simpson come to his house looking to get it back.
Now people also say that O.J. is a bad father, but at least he rescheduled his daughter's bankruptcy hearing in Miami so he could be in Vegas. He didn't skip it; he told the judge that he wouldn't be in town and had it moved. Bankruptcy hearings can always be put off until tomorrow, but once those collectibles are resold, you'll never find them again.
O.J. really does have his priorities in order. He took care of his kids first, then himself. It's what any good father would do.
Simpson is just a poor, 60 year old man. He can't even afford a pair of gloves that fit him. If those collectors were as nice as Mr. Mertle in The Sandlot and offered some sort of trade, then this I'm sure O.J. would have accepted and this situation never would have occurred. O.J. maintains his innocence in the entire matter, and he should. I mean, he didn't do anything that you or I wouldn't have done in that situation.
O.J. is no drug dealer and he was not trying to steal drugs. All he wanted was his stuff back and for the meeting to be kept between him and those greedy collectors. And now the Juice could go to jail for up to 30 years for an offense he may not have even committed. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the real crime. I mean, it's not like O.J. killed anyone, right? Right?
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
