and when the glove didn't fit, i had to acquit.

E! gave me a new hero: johnny cochran.

Blacks were rooting for OJ because he represented a Black man on trial. not only that, but of a Black man killing a skinny young blonde white woman. none of us wanted to believe that any of that was true.

currently i am telling myself that it was drug dealers who killed nicole after she built up a healthy habit that oj might have financed in the past, but for whatever reason had stopped paying for. this would explain why oj went on the slow speed chase with a passport, cap, fake moustache and wallet (he thought the drug dealers were going to kill him too) crying to his mother. Because OJ is Black (his emphasis), Tony is willing to bend over backwards to not think him a murderous, hypocritical, duplicitous coward: a model black man on the outside, a boiling cauldron of resentment and seething rage on the inside.

This is the first race-specific thing I have ever heard Tony say, and it shows how deep racial identification goes, even in someone as race-neutral as Tony. I understand it, and I can certainly empathize with it, but I still find it startling and a little bit scary. Here's why:

OJ isn't The Black Man - no one is - he's just A black man, who, based upon a mountain of admittedly circumstantial evidence, had a real bad temper, had real ownership issues with women, and in a fit of rage, killed his wife and her hapless male companion. It's as ugly as it gets, but for all of its societal overtones, is still just the story of a handful of specific people and their interrelationships - happens all the time, unfortunately.

As Tony admits, he believes OJ because he wants to believe OJ, so he's not really deceiving himself, but the remarkable thing is that his desire to believe is the overriding factor in the matter. We still have some issues to work out in this country.