THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, February 17, 1997 TAG: 9702150051
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Larry Maddry
LENGTH: 69 lines
THE SOCIETY to Find Meaning in the O.J. Simpson Trials held its final meeting last week at the home of Fred Glazer and ended with a unanimous vote.
The society voted 13-0 that there was no meaning in the trials, the analysis of the trials, the years of motions, the mountain of evidence.
Meaningless, all of it, we concluded.
We were all saddened by our vote. We had formed the club in deep earnestness feeling that the case had all the elements of a Greek tragedy. Clearly we had failed in our mission.
A national hero with a magnetic personality accused of a heinous murder. It had to mean something, surely. The nation's best journalists and most famous criminal prosecutors and defense lawyers yammered endlessly about the Simpson case.
The SFMOJT followed the case as closely and steadily as the L.A. patrol cars on the freeway that pursued the O.J's white Bronco.
Al was to clip newspaper stories, Skeeter was to watch daytime TV on regular networks, Hank watched the cable channels, Fred agreed to tape anything he heard about the case on the radio, I clipped magazines and Floyd - who has a glass eye in one socket - kept the good one fixed on anything that turned up in the supermarket tabloids.
It took a lot of work to keep up with all it. The rest of the guys stood in for us if we were unable to perform our tasks because of a death in the family, or major surgery.
Sad to see so much effort wasted. Meetings don't get much more depressing than the one we had last week when the second trial ended. I felt sorry for everyone there when we took our vote.
If we could have found one scrap of meaning in the Simpson case we would have felt so much better. Before the vote we laid out all the newspaper clippings on the floors of Fred's house in boxes, using the attic and the garage too, because there was so much newsprint.
But meaning was not to be found among the discussions of race, wife abuse, legal justice reforms.
Sadder than the failure to find meaning was the failure to even find why there was no meaning. But several tried.
Skeeter had a magnetic-personality theory. He explained many events have a magnetic personality involved whose influence is so pronounced it changes the nature of events around that person the way a magnet passing around a compass will cause the needle to spin out of control.
I thought he was talking about O.J. at first. Not so.
``I knowed this game was going to turn crazy the moment Kato Kaelin became a player,'' Skeeter said. ``The boy looks like a Keebler elf that done popped out of a tree to testify. Hoo-boy. There ain't gonna be no meaning coming of anything that feller's connected with. If he were a pinball machine his lights would flash `Tilt.' ''
Hank said he didn't know whether there was anything to Skeeter's magnetic-personality theory. But he thought finding meaning had become impossible once Judge Ito took the criminal case.
``That judge was a real beauty. He may have had all his marbles, but they wobble with square corners. During the trial Ito had enough hourglasses with sand in 'em up there beside his seat to open an egg-timing museum.
``I guess they were all there to remind him to hold one of the longest criminal trials in the history of the world. You wanta talk about Crrrraaaazy.
We disbanded after the unanimous vote, agreeing it was pointless to continue our weekly meetings. We had been unable to solve the great puzzle of meaning, even with all the pieces at hand.
I guess Fred put it best.
He said, ``If it don't fit you've got to quit.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photos