The other night, Fox aired a previously-unaired 2006 interview with O.J. Simpson, with the network doing everything possible to sell it as Simpson's confession to the 1994 murders of ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend, Ron Goldman. It wasn't exactly that but this is my confession that I watched it and I probably feel more guilt about that than Simpson does for the murders.
I guess you could take what came out of Simpson's mouth as a confession if you wanted to but at no time in it did he say, "Yes, I murdered those two people." What he did so was to talk about the crime in "hypothetical," if-I-did-do-it terms and with enough specificity that just about owned up to being present for the murders without making the ultimate admission.
Unfortunately, it's hard to tell what's true and what isn't because he contaminates his account with loads of obvious lying, mostly involving a non-existent accomplice named Charlie. How can we be sure Charlie is fiction? I'll let Jeff Toobin explain it.
So if someone wants to know what really happened that night and hear O.J. Simpson admit he dunnit, it ain't there. For me, the major surprises were that I watched it at all…and that I found myself not caring very much about any of it. There was a time when I really obsessed on that story, read all the books, watched all the specials. Now, I lack any emotional connection to the story.
I do not think what Simpson has endured since — time spent in jail awaiting the first trial, going through the second, financial penalties paid both to the victims' families and to lawyers and court costs, damage to his rep and serving time for the Vegas crimes — adds up to proper justice. Still, it's a lot more than we see in many murder cases where no arrests are ever made. Something is better than nothing, I guess. But I ain't watching any more O.J. Simpson confessions until he actually confesses. I wonder if anyone has said to him, "You know, you have nothing to lose…"