THE O.J. SIMPSON MURDER TRIAL : The Name Game: How Many Times Can We Say O.J.?

Coverage of the O.J. Simpson trial is having a big impact on television. Massive preemptions of regular programs to cover all or some of the trial are paying off in the Nielsen ratings. Apparently, so is the daily deluge of O.J.-related stories on news programs.

In fact, because the mere mention of O.J. can attract public attention these days, many broadcast entities have begun inserting his name gratuitously, just to titillate and capture viewers. Only the most vile, disgusting creature would do something that cynical and self-serving, however.

The print equivalent would be me urging you to read on merely because the remainder of this column contains 63 more exciting mentions of O.J. that you won’t want to miss, imploring you to read at least my next paragraph just because it contains seven blockbuster mentions of O.J. that everyone will be talking about. Excuse me, but that’s where I draw the line.

In the first place (where O.J. often ranked in rushing when he was a pro running back), I didn’t become a journalist so that I could pander when it comes to sensational stories like the O.J. trial. In the second place, my editors--who, like O.J., walk on two legs and speak with their mouths--would never allow me to exploit the O.J. case in such a manner. In the third place, such pandering would enrage my readers, especially those in Los Angeles, where the O.J. trial is occurring, in contrast to Nepal, where the O.J. trial is not occurring and where O.J. never scored a touchdown. But enough of that.

I was very happy that the O.J. trial took Monday off, because that meant that even if I had wanted to write about the O.J. case, there was nothing that I could exploit.

I awakened Monday, the day after the birthday of Abraham Lincoln, who was taller than O.J., and picked up the newspaper, turning to the sports pages, where I used to read about O.J. when he played professional football for San Francisco, O.J.’s hometown, and earlier for Buffalo, where O.J. lived while he was playing football there, miles and miles from Denver, where O.J. once traveled as a sports commentator for ABC, in contrast to CNN, for whom O.J. never worked.

My reading was interrupted when my phone rang, as O.J.’s did many times before he was jailed. It was my mother calling from Kansas City, where O.J. never played for the Chiefs and also never played for the Royals, because O.J. didn’t play professional baseball. My mother, who has never met O.J., said she had spoken to her friend, Lionel, who, unlike O.J., was never an All-American running back at USC. My mother had also spoken to her friend, Henrietta, whose initials are not O.J., and to my cousins Herman and Dorothy, neither of whom is one of the O.J. jurors who on Sunday visited O.J.’s estate and the townhome of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson, whom O.J. is accused of murdering along with Ronald Goldman.

After conversing with my mother, who never rented a car from Hertz, for which O.J. once made commercials, I turned on a TV talk show whose guests naturally did not include O.J. Bored, I picked up a book that was not written by O.J. or by any of O.J.’s relatives, O.J.’s friends or O.J.’s enemies. Naturally that was boring, too, so I called one of my editors, who is not O.J., and asked him what he thought I should write about.

“You can’t write about O.J.,” he said.

“Because the O.J. trial has taken the day off?” I asked.

“Yes, because the O.J. trial has taken the day off,” he said about the temporarily suspended O.J. trial that resumed Tuesday with O.J. in the courtroom.

“I could write about not writing about O.J.,” I suggested. “That wouldn’t be exploitative in the manner that other members of the media are exploiting the O.J. case.”

“Or in the manner that O.J. used to shrewdly exploit the defenses of opposing teams with his great speed and athleticism,” said my editor.

“Such O.J. opponents as the New York Jets,” I thought to myself while watching footage of O.J. on a newscast that also was trying very hard not to exploit the O.J. case.

After slamming the telephone receiver down the way O.J. used to slam into opposing players on the field, I continued watching the newscast, which was running special live chopper coverage of the absence of news about O.J.

On another channel, a lawyer who did not live in the Brentwood neighborhood where O.J. lived and an anchor who had never blocked for O.J. on the field were analyzing the courtroom, which on this day was as empty as the brain of Lt. Frank Drebin, the dim protagonist of “Naked Gun 2 1/2,” a movie in which O.J. had a prominent role.

I switched to another channel that had no relationship whatsoever to the English Channel that O.J. never swam. Before me was another newscast on which a political commentator was predicting that House Speaker Newt Gingrich would not be running for President, just as O.J. had never run for Speaker. Gingrich, whose mother is as doting as O.J.’s, was soon replaced by some experts speculating about the Oscar Judging (O.J.) concerning movies in which O.J. did not appear.

On another channel I found an old movie starring Dane Clark, no relation to Petula Clark, Dick Clark or O.J. prosecutor Marcia Clark, who probably makes less money than O.J.’s defense attorneys, Robert Shapiro and Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., but more money than the police officers who arrested O.J. and many Americans who have not personally met O.J.

I was running out of ideas, and desperation was setting in. But just as I was becoming convinced that I would never think of a way not to exploit the O.J. trial in my column, my phone rang. The voice on the line was not O.J.’s. It was my editor, who never tackled or threw a pass to O.J.

“You can write about O.J.,” he said. “But use restraint. Don’t mention O.J.’s name more than 66 times.”

“Not to worry,” I assured him. “I’ve got integrity.”