The Simpson case.

For those who have just come back from Bhutan, the O. J. Simpson story combined pity and terror, fascination and revulsion. Its appeal as a tale required zero explanation. The news media, unable to leave it at that, will bring on the professional explainers, who will sift the story for its relevance to: Athletes (and the depraved culture of fandom); Poverty in America (and the impossibility of truly escaping from it); Justice in America (different for celebrities); Blacks and Celebrity (and how the latter, nevertheless, cannot help the former); Black Men and White Women (unsafe at any speed); Battered Women (and how we ignore their plight); Battered Women and Sports (their plight gets worse during the Super Bowl).

These generalizations will be buttressed by statistics, most of them false. Christina Hoff Sommers's Who Stole Feminism?, excerpted by NR last issue, debunks the Super-Bowl-fan-as-wife-beater myth, and supplies correct figures on battery generally: 3 to 4 per cent of wives are victims of it (feminists' guesstimates float as high as 33 per cent); husbands are as likely to be beaten as wives; less than 1 per cent of women are victims of severe violence, and the number is declining. But even if the pundits using the Simpson case to push their pet theses made their arguments with integrity, they would still somehow be beside the point. Long before pro football, or racism in America, or America itself, jealous lovers were killing each other. The grotesque flight down the freeway was straight out of a Childe ballad. Because we are human, the deed strikes a chord in us, and because we are human, it appalls us. If O. J. Simpson is found guilty, he should suffer the fate the monstrous crime deserves.