Bye-Bye, O.J.

target="_new">http://news.bostonherald.com/track/celebrity/view/2008_12_06_O_J__Simpson_put_away_for_up_to_33_years/srvc=home&position=also

LAS VEGAS - A broken O.J. Simpson, headed for the slammer for 9 to 33 years for an armed hotel robbery and kidnapping, admitted to being “stupid” but insisted he meant no harm, while the relatives of his slain ex-wife Nicole Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman took comfort in his sentence.

The 61-year-old football Hall of Famer stood shackled and stone-faced as Judge Jackie Glass rattled off the punishment. Moments before, Simpson made a rambling, five-minute plea for leniency.

“I didn’t want to hurt any of these guys. I know these guys. These guys have eaten in my home. I’ve done book reports with their kids. I’ve sung to their mothers when they were sick,” Simpson said. “You know I wasn’t there to hurt anyone. I just wanted my personal things and I realize that was stupid of me. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to steal anything from anybody and I didn’t know I was doing anything illegal.”

The notorious grid star had said he was simply trying to retrieve sports memorabilia and items such as his first wife’s wedding ring from two dealers when he stormed a Las Vegas hotel room on Sept. 13, 2007.

Glass said her sentence had nothing to do with Simpson’s 1995 acquittal in the slaying of his ex-wife and Goldman.

“I’m not here to try and cause any retribution or any payback for anything else,” Glass said. But she noted O.J.’s cockamamie scheme led to a violent confrontation in which at least one gun was drawn, and someone could have been shot. Simpson could serve up to 33 years but is eligible for parole in nine years, the judge’s clerk said.

Simpson was immediately led away as Glass refused to let him go free on bail while he appeals. Co-defendant and former golfing buddy Clarence “C.J.” Stewart was sentenced to at least 15 years.

Ron Goldman’s father, Fred Goldman, said, “We are thrilled, and it’s a bittersweet moment. It was satisfying seeing him in shackles like he belongs.”

The Goldmans took a measure of credit, saying their relentless pursuit of O.J.’s assets to satisfy a $33.5 million wrongful-death judgment “pushed him over the edge.”

I normally don't bother with sports starts turned celebrities but this story is pretty sad and tragic, no matter how you feel about O.J. Simpson. Here was someone who had it all (in terms of wealth, fame, public adoration, and power) and he casually chucked it all away because he couldn't control his destructive impulses. I was too young to fully remember his career as a football star but I do remember the years when he was a celebrity when he made ads touting a rental car company, made guest appearances on numerous TV shows, served as a sports commentator, and even acted in a few films--the best of which were the three Naked Gun movies where he was pretty hilarious as the detective who kept on getting injured on the job.

In public he projected himself as this easy-going guy capable of some self-deprecating humor, which made him into a lovable celebrity. This is why I was so shocked when the Los Angeles police found a bloody glove in his yard so soon after his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman were found brutally murdered in her home.

In the years since his murder trial (which he was acquitted), the civil lawsuit filed by the Brown and Goldman families (which resulted in a $33 million judgement against O.J.), and now this armed robbery trial, I've gotten over the idea of O.J. being a nice goofy guy. There's nothing about this man that shocks me anymore.

I've long felt sorry for the two children O.J. had with his ex-wife. It's bad enough they had to spend the rest of their childhood without a mother while knowing the fact that she was brutally murdered. But it is definitely a heavier burden to know that their father has been accused of murdering their mother and he was held liable in her death in a civil court.

I'm glad that this new court case didn't produce the media hype like his murder trial did (when CNN broadcast his nine-month long trial on a daily basis). There were cameras in the Las Vegas courtroom but no cable news channel broadcasted it like a soap opera. I think it's because, unlike the 1990's murder trial, there are far more urgent issues that the U.S. is going through (like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the declining economy) than the trial of some celebrity being done in by his own arrogance.

The silver lining of this new jail sentence is that now that Simpson is in jail, there won't be any further attempts to offer him money based on his notoriety by shady sleazy people. (Remember book publisher Judith Reagan encouraging O.J. to write that If I Did It book where he "imagines" how he would have murdered Nicole Brown SImpson and Ron Goldman had he really done the murders that he has denied ever committing? She lost her job over that incident.)

I don't ever want to hear anything else from O.J. Simpson until the day he dies.