Posted 1:13 PM by Gene

Does anyone here remember LORD KOPPEL? You know, the indispensable oracle who, since he lost his throne, hasn't seemed quite so indispensable? Every time I hear about O. J.'s "book" or his collectibles groupies I somehow think of the Lord. I can see him now (I should say Him, before he lost the privilege of capitalizing his pronoun), back in '95, standing before a hastily-built set, his hair neatly whipped, his voice properly baronial -- and if he didn't speak exactly this way The Man who Freed Mandela must still have displayed the most fully developed conscience this side of Aaron Sorkin:

Tonight, America is a nation divided. The verdict in the O. J. Simpson trial has seen the emergence of two Americas: one white, one black, one insisting the former football star was guilty as charged, the other celebrating the acquittal of a man who (they believe) was unjustly maligned by overzealous prosecutors. Two Americas: one white, one black. Jeff Greenfield looks at how these two Americas could come to two entirely different conclusions, and what it portends for the future of criminal justice and race relations.

TRANSLATION: O. J.'s guilty as hell, but I'm a zillionaire news hack, and I'm liberal, so if certain mediagenic blacks say he was not guilty thanks to his skin color that's fine with me, as I can lay down a guilt trip on the peons, and the MENSA man Jeff's my lapdog. 1995 was about the time the Lord made a sharp turn from a fine reporter to a pompous ass, although God knows anyone so devoted to the memory of ST. EDWARD OF MURROW always had it in him. He didn't exactly stop his decline into irrelevance when last month he declared Walter Cronkite "dead." If UNCLE HHWWALT is dead, and he isn't, but the former Lord of Latenight can think him so, what does that say for him?

I can further imagine poor Lord now, champing at an increasingly withered bit to drool over The Wizard of Oz. Don't you have his phone number? You can always compare taxes.

P. S. It would appear O. J.'s latest saga may not have a happy ending.

(Cronkite link via Jossip.com)

(Slightly rewritten on 9/17)