A literary O.J. hosts a return to the scene of the crime

MAJOR news events, like stampeding elephants, thunder by us in a flurry of dust and ear-splitting noise, to be followed by a silence that is almost equally disturbing because we don’t know when they will return.

War, politics, scandals, murders and various other human indecencies are a part of the herds that occupy the jungles beyond our perception, waiting their turn to capture our interest by their brief and awesome presence.

The stampedes seem to come more frequently these days, creating a kind of attention overload that leaves us exhausted and bewildered. Sometimes the same elephants return and we are surprised to see that one, at least, seems to enjoy the discomfort he causes, lagging at the rear of the herd, taking his time, playing it cool.

His name is O.J. Simpson.

He is a news event that has never gone away, his face taunting the families whose son and daughter he was accused of killing. Simpson beat the guillotine, as one observer remarked, and plays the golf courses of the land with impunity.

And now he’s written a book that is almost, but not quite, a confession, that got him a $3.5-million advance. He’s likely to make considerably more through sales, speeches and appearances. Included in the package is a two-hour interview on Fox.

The book is called “If I Did It.”

It purports to reveal how he would have killed Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman had he taken a mind to, which, of course, he never had, according to his insistence during a long trial and to the judgment of an adoring jury.

He walked free, smiling sweetly to the crowd and giving justice the finger.

Judith Regan, whose imprint the book bears, told the Associated Press, “I consider this his confession.”

If so, then we have a killer who, having relieved himself of guilt’s heavy burden, can now sleep peacefully, both richer and emotionally at ease in the wake of his lucrative literary atonement. Who says crime doesn’t pay?

Families of both Simpson’s ex-wife, Nicole, and her friend Ron Goldman, unable to fill the losses in their lives, are naturally upset over the fact that the man who was found responsible in a civil trial is benefiting from their deaths. But then, that’s just the literary world for you. What plays, pays.

And this may not be the end of it all. Hollywood rarely misses an opportunity to make money on disturbing events, whether they involve war or civil mutilations, benefiting from the uneasy obsessions of a populace that just can’t get enough gore. And then what? Broadway? A television series? Folk ballads?

What rankles is that even if the book is the confession that its publisher thinks it is, Simpson cannot be retried for the murders under the rule of double jeopardy.

And even though there is a $33.5-million civil judgment against him that he has never paid, smart lawyers can find ways that would allow him to keep the literary windfall.

I suppose that it shouldn’t surprise anyone that a case as strange as it is interminable has created another outrage. The book is just one more oddity in a series of many. How can we forget the long, pulsing ride through L.A. by Simpson and his friend in the white Ford Bronco? How can we forget the glove that didn’t fit, the prosecutors who may or may not have been having an affair, and a press corps that itself was a herd of stampeding elephants in its size and eagerness to seize on the bloody details of a trial that had both?

And yet I find it a little scary and terribly sad that, in the name of profit, a man would speculate on how he would have committed the terrible murders of two innocent people and how a publishing company would produce a book that no doubt carefully outlines the details of the “supposed” killings. This isn’t a fictional murder mystery and it isn’t the musings of a professional writer observing in hindsight a historic event.

This is a crime still fresh in the minds of the public and in the hearts of the victims’ families, and he’s taking us to the night of horror he was charged with perpetrating. It is a gloating tour de force of a man who has beaten the system.

If the book sells well, and I’m sure it will, we will have once more chipped away at the moral sensibilities of a culture almost barren of any empathy with those in pain. The passing thunder of stampeding elephants will have trampled upon our abilities to perceive irony and the horror that it so often embraces.