Liberties;O. J.'s Second Act

The inescapable drone of the double-murder trial, echoing from car radio to car radio, from TV to TV, has ceased. But the most famous defendant who ever lived is still with us.

O. J. Simpson has broken creative new ground in celebrity -- becoming a zillion times better known than he ever was. A gorgeous monster.

In a culture where fame and infamy are interchangeable, it is easy for Mr. Simpson to be reabsorbed into the giant, churning media cycle.

His rehabilitation began, aptly, amid the din of everyone else cashing in: Marcia Clark has a team of agents at William Morris working on her book, TV and movie possibilities. Jurors have cut deals for the inside story of the deliberation that wasn't. (The Los Angeles Times reports that a group of jurors demanded $100,000 for an appearance on "Inside Edition," but the show declined.) Barry Scheck is developing his own television show for CBS ("DNA Man"?). Judge Itomaniac, as the TV critic Tom Shales called him, is mulling his offers. No deals yet for the Akita.

Referring to Alexander the Great, Hamlet described the human food chain this way: "Alexander died. Alexander was buried. Alexander returneth to dust, the dust is earth, of earth we make loam, and why of that loam whereto he was converted might they not stop a beer barrel?"

Modern media work on the same recycling principle: O. J. gets in trouble. O. J. dominates the news. O. J. makes tabloid media and checkbook journalism stronger than ever. When O. J. is acquitted, he has his own photographer present at the homecoming celebration with his friends and family, and those "spontaneous," "heartwarming" pictures, according to The L.A. Times, have been sold for six figures to the tabloid The Star. Then O. J. Simpson from Brentwood calls in to the Larry King show while Johnnie Cochran is the guest, to complain that the prosecution distorted some of the chauffeur's testimony.