• by George Simpson , Featured Contributor, December 1, 2006

It has never been easy having Simpson for a last name. When, as a newborn, you look at the English root, Son of Simp, you know that from the silver nitrate onwards, you are in a lifelong world of hurt. There are no cool nicknames, only ones you'd wish on your worst enemy, like "Simpshit" and "Simps." And the only notables to share your name are dorky cartoon characters and a guy who hacked his wife to death and, thanks to a jury as stupid as the celluloid Simpsons, not only escaped the hangman or a life sentence, but thought he might wring a few million out of his handiwork with a tasteless-and-thoughtless-beyond-all-human-comprehension book called If I Did It.

Now that News Corp. has learned that its affiliates and a few on-air employees have something of a moral compass (at least one that functions better than those rusted in the direction of the nearest dollar used by its book publishers and network programmers), the recalled If I Did It has become this season's most desired forbidden fruit. A few purloined copies are showing up on auction sites asking and getting thousands.

Although I know that YOU would never have watched the televised interviews or bought the book because, well, that would have been tasteless-and-thoughtless-beyond-all-human-comprehension, so as I am wont to do in times of ethical crisis, I have taken the expected low road and obtained a copy of If I Did It that I herewith précis:

Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman were having milk and cookies and discussing the fine points of Friedrich Nietzsche's influence on Adolf Hitler when O.J. burst into the living room shouting: "The irrationality of a thing is no argument against its existence, rather a condition of it." To which Goldman laughed and responded: "In the sphere of thought, absurdity and perversity remain the masters of the world, and their dominion is suspended only for brief periods!" That would have been enough to enrage anyone, but Nicole piled on by adding: "In the consciousness of the truth he has perceived, man now sees everywhere only the awfulness or the absurdity of existence, and loathing seizes him."

That put O.J. over the top, and he roughly duct-taped Nicole and Ron to the sofa, turned on the TV and put his commercial highlight reel on infinite loop. For the next 24 hours Nicole and Ron were forced to watch as O.J. endlessly leaped over luggage and other obstacles in an effort to catch an airline flight while pitching Hertz rental cars, and starred in spots for Pioneer Chicken, the Southern California fast-food restaurant chain subsequently defunct in the United States.

When O.J. returned, he found them both soundly asleep, bored to exhaustion. Madder still, he forced Nicole and Ron to ingest methamphetamines he had left over from his football career and made them watch looped scenes of his performances in "The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!," "Goldie and the Boxer Go to Hollywood," and "Back to the Beach." That did it. After about six hours, they both cried out that they'd rather die than watch O.J. act for another minute.

O.J. concludes that had he really been the killer, he'd have beaten them to death with the Heisman Trophy--but that, as the jury must have concluded, they died of self-inflicted ennui.