Memo to Everyone: Get. Over. OJ. Right. Now.

I'm going to make this one short, because no one should be spending a single minute of their lives -- which are changing for the worse in so many ways -- by talking, debating, or gossiping about OJ fucking Simpson. He's one man who is seizing our hyperreal culture with a metafiction about the murder of his wife and her lover, and a Brentwood douchebag to boot. For those of you who don't know, Brentwood is a glitzy Los Angeles suburb brimming with celebs, gold-diggers, surgically enhanced jokes and boutiques that charge insane amounts of money for crap. In other words, it's a perfect place for has-beens like OJ and his ilk to hole up or murder someone. In fact, there's not a day I walk down the street that I don't feel like killing someone myself. I'm leaving the town soon, and have never been happier. I feel like a noxious oil slick has been lifted finally from my entire body.

But this is all backstory. The future is now, and OJ doesn't belong in it. Nor does he belong on the front page of anything, whether that is the Huffington Post or the New York Post. If only because doing so gives Rupert Murdoch -- a war criminal in any other life for his media cheerleading of the Bush regime's disastrous campaign for world domination -- more press than he could ever deserve. Hate Fox News? Stop talking about OJ. Hate Bill O'Reilly, Chris Wallace, Brit "The Living Dead" Hume and the rest of Fox's talking-head robots? Stop reading about OJ. Worried about the war in Iraq, rampant global warming, the declining value of the American dollar, or the
outsourcing of national identity? Stop paying attention to OJ.

Just. Stop. It.

This story has no value. It teaches no major lessons. No one walks away from this media orgasm with any lasting love or intelligence. There is no there there. Period. Anyone who wants to challenge me on this, bring your best. I will take an argumentative knife to your throats and make it hurt. Seriously. I welcome the walkover. Because that's what it will be.

Look, just yesterday a decrepit geezer named George Weller walked away a free man, after plowing down a Santa Monica Farmer's Market and killing 10 innocents with his careening automobile. I was on the scene in a flash after it happened, and it was a bloodbath. If you're not used to seeing plasma, bodies, helicopters and mayhem in a well-heeled consumeropolis like the Santa Monica Promenade, it's a shock to the system. But it gets worse: Not one of the several witnesses I talked to at the scene said it was an accident. In fact, most of them said he blew down the closed-off blocks to avoid a hit-and-run he got into up near the post office on 5th and Arizona, and thought he could pull off a getaway down a street filled with pedestrians, kids and old people poring through vegetables and fruits. Those who think this was an accident need to get off the crack pipe. Weller had his foot down on the gas and didn't let up until his car couldn't go forward any more, mainly because it had a dead body beneath it. Evidently, the dead body on his windshield wasn't enough incentive for him to lay off the gas.

More than one person at the scene told me it looked like Weller was purposely mowing people down. Even Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Michael Johnson concluded that "In fact, he steered [his car] amazingly well. There were places along the farmers market where Mr. Weller literally threaded the needle." I'm sure that comes as some sort of relief to the victims -- 10, dead, 68 injured, according to the LA Times -- even though Johnson put Weller on probation rather than send him to prison. Even though Johnson knew it was the wrong thing to do: "Mr. Weller deserves to go to prison, but because of and only because of his rapidly declining health, I will place him on probation." That's called tragic defeat.

Why? Judge Johnson, who should be next in line for the OJ slasher treatment after Weller if there is any justice in the world, explained that Weller showed zero remorse for his actions, at the scene of the crime. "In plain sight of all this," he explained while laying down the so-called sentence, "Mr. Weller said, 'Just think how I felt,' and 'Why didn't you get out of my way?' These are unbelievably callous statements."

It gets worse. Read some of Johnson's excerpts, and tell me you don't feel like killing a senior citizen yourself:

"There were places along the farmers market where Mr. Weller literally threaded the needle through very narrow gaps between structures and vehicles, and in wider areas he steered his car from one side of the street to the other. Given the choice between stopping his car by steering into an empty truck or continuing to move down the street by steering into people, Mr. Weller chose to steer into the people."

"The fact Mr. Weller's advanced age and weak condition contributed to his reckless driving is not a mitigating circumstance. That is because all drivers have the same responsibility to control their vehicles and avoid injury to others, regardless of age or physical condition."

"Yet he has never once expressed in court any remorse for his actions. I have received letters and statements on his behalf from others, but not one word from Mr. Weller himself…. I will never understand Mr. Weller's indifference to the victims in this case, and I will never understand his stubborn and bullheaded refusal to accept responsibility and help put this matter to rest for everyone — including himself."

I understand it just fine, Johnson. It that's empowering dose of privilege, of knowing you're untouchable. Brentwood and Santa Monica has that in excess. Most of the people I have met in both towns cannot see past their own nose jobs. And so they dither their lives away on gossip and scandals like OJ. In the latter case, they're beyond excited that some tragedy has finally slithered into their routinized luxury, so that they can become the victims they love to play in virtual reality, on screens and streams. Or talk about it ceaselessly, as if the world will be any better because of it. It's something to do in the salons, cafes and eateries while invisible Mexicans, whose real lives are twice as newsworthy as OJ, labor beneath their condescending love.

And then they get old, and get behind the wheel, thinking no one can tell them shit. They plow through crosswalks, into other cars, into each other, stubbornly refusing to believe that they're irrelevant and not in control of anything at all. They're too medicated, too stupid, too drugged to realize what the hell is going on. Because the world before their eyes -- the real one, not the hyperreal one -- exists outside of their windows and their meds. One day looking out my balcony, I saw an old man in a car the size of Hollywood swerve around a guy turning left into our driveway and plow right into a row of parked cars. When his friend showed up to take him away, she told my wife he's senile and shouldn't be in a car at all.

Another time I saw, no lie, a codger crash into a stop sign...going 5MPH. I narrated the whole thing from blocks away, while my wife stared in shock and amazement. He just couldn't see the sign coming, even though it was coming at a crawl. Because he was disconnected, even in his own mind, from the world-at-large, which could give a damn. It's simply too busy with wars, death counts, climate crisis, corruption, elections, genocides, the usual. Insignificant matters like washed-up football jackoffs and past-it senior citizens don't register on the radar. And they shouldn't. Ever. And if they do, you have no one to blame but yourselves.