Simpson, eh? Doesn't ring a bell...

Every time I read about another of the seemingly endless series of scrapes that O. J. Simpson gets himself in to, I wonder -- what would have happened if he hadn't sliced and diced his ex-wife and her boyfriend? (Yeah, I know, he was found "not guilty", yadda yadda. But he was also ordered to pay $33.5 million in a civil suit. So you tell me who did the slicing and dicing.) And... what would have happened if he hadn't even gotten to that point, i.e. if he hadn't been driven mad by fame and fortune? Would he have still turned out to be a badass, who can't stay out of trouble with the law for more than a few months at a time? This is, ultimately, one of those "heredity vs. environment" questions. At what point did O.J. part company with the rest of humanity, and become a psychopath who never sheds a tear for anyone or anything, and seems to show no remorse for anything he's ever done? Would he be the same way if he'd wound up being a truck driver, or construction worker? Or is there something about fame and fortune that puts certain people over the edge, who would have otherwise remained more or less normal? Of course, there are habitual felons and overall losers who never have a dime in their pocket, so it can't be only that riches corrupt, and poverty ennobles (although this has been a basic pillar of humanism from Rousseau to Obama).

In any case, all of my indignation as to the results of his murder trial has been appeased, first by the finding of his liability for the deaths in a civil suit (albeit, he has yet to pay a dime on the judgment), and second by the fact that, ever since, he has been, basically, the living dead -- shunned by the media and by one and all, except for a few hard-core sycophants whose pathetic lack of ego strength is hardly worth mentioning. This may, in fact, have been better punishment than life in the slammer. At least in the slammer, there is a _reason_ you don't get out more often, and see more people, and get invited to more parties. If you're a dead man walking as far as society is concerned, it's clearly no one's fault but your own -- not that that ever necessarily occurred to O.J., who probably still thinks he was badly misused by the justice system. Of course, a "guilty" verdict would have had most of L.A. up in flames, and I suspect that was the main reason he was acquitted. But that only condemned him to a worse fate -- that of being in the world, but being a total non-person who no respectable person wants anything to do with. There are many ways of punishing evil deeds, and when the "system" fails, occasionally the rest of the world steps in to fill the gap.