Late one night during the O.J. Simpson criminal trial last year, prosecutor Marcia Clark let down her hair and indulged a fantasy: getting the chance to cross-examine Simpson herself. The accused murderer's defense attorneys, after all, kept dangling the tantalizing prospect before her. "It'll never happen," Clark said. "But I would love it." Striking a hungry, heavy-lidded pose at her desk, she cooed, "Good morning, Mr. Simpson. I have a few thousand questions to ask you."
Simpson may or may not have actually wanted to answer those few thousand questions--he has insisted he did--but in the end, his lawyers decided it would be unwise. Now, however, as the defendant in a wrongful-death suit filed by the families of murder victims Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, Simpson has no choice. So like some promise of light emerging from the fog of an obscure and unpredictable trial, there he was on the witness stand in a Santa Monica, California, courtroom last Friday morning, impeccably dressed, a little nervous--and who wouldn't be?--answering the first of what may indeed turn out to be thousands of questions. This is real life, so there was no made-for-TV bombshell--no weeping O.J. confessing, no furious O.J. tripped up by damning contradictions. But merely watching him up there, at last being called to account for his actions in his own words, provided its own sort of climax. It was as if, after several acts of a melodrama with a convoluted plot and a cast of thousands, the protagonist finally took center stage.
When The People v. Orenthal James Simpson concluded last October, America's silly season ended. Gone was O.J., nothing but O.J., from television and from the tabloids. What lingered, though, from the most avidly discussed criminal trial in the late 20th century was not fond memories of the Dancing Itos but bitter divisions and unanswered questions. Simpson was acquitted in a matter of hours by a mostly black jury after a yearlong proceeding tainted by race baiting and muddied by mountains of evidence and theories of police conspiracy. Nothing seemed the same: not juries, not police departments, not the reputations of anyone who came near the trial--and not civil discourse.
Every time one thinks the country has wearied of O.J., evidence arises to prove that plenty of people still find the subject compelling. Books about the case keep climbing best-seller lists; erstwhile O.J. friends still give prime-time interviews to the likes of Barbara Walters; dozens of cameras greet the parade of witnesses who have been entering the courtroom since the civil trial began on Oct. 23. And last week, with Simpson on the stand, the tangled tale was back on the front pages, back on Nightline and Larry King Live, back as a staple of our dinner-table conversations.