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O.J. Simpson: Gettin’ Even.

O.J. Simpson: Gettin’ Even.

Twitter is the sump pump of social media. It’s also where a lot of us spend - er, waste - a lot of time.

Oh, the platform has value. Twitter’s an excellent place to catch breaking news and sports scores. Twitter also connects people to support groups, gives us puppy videos and links to clever writing.

But Twitter can be a dank place where hate and misinformation breed. Among the 261 million users are celebrities who abuse their fame and cowards who hide behind aliases to spill their bile.

Just when you thought Twitter couldn't get any worse, O.J. Simpson decided to take time out from searching for the real killer of his ex-wife to join in.

Suddenly, there he was on Friday, grinning for the camera, like someone who’d just come back from a long vacay:

Hey Twitter world,” he chirped, “this is yours truly. Now coming soon to Twitter, you’ll get to read all my thoughts and opinions on just about everything. Now, there’s a lot of fake O.J. accounts out there, so this one, @therealoj32, is the only official one. So this should be a lot of fun. I got a little gettin’ even to do. So God bless, take care.”

A little gettin’ even?

Is that the best choice of words for someone who was accused of slaughtering his ex-wife and her friend in a jealous fury?

And does anyone really care what OJ thinks about anything, let alone everything?

Finally, why do you suppose he made his splashy announcement almost 25 years to the day after his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend, Ron Goldman, were murdered?

Just a happy accident?

Look, I’m old enough to remember when O. J. Simpson was one of the most beloved athletes and celebrities in the country. He was a stud football player with movie star good looks who turned to TV commercials and movies once he retired from football.

Then, in 1994, he was accused of a bloody double murder and most of us fell out of love with him.

His murder trial, which lasted 11 months and was called The Trial of the Century, turned the lawyers, the judge and some of the colorful witnesses into stars. Briefly, anyway.

As a court case, it was a clown show.

Oh, O.J. was acquitted of murder, all right, but the victims’ families won a wrongful death suit against him two years later in civil court. They claim they’ve only gotten a fraction of the $33.5 million owed them by Simpson.

Simpson went to prison in 2007 for armed robbery and kidnapping. He was released in October 2017 and had the decency to stay quiet for more than a year.

Twitter proved irresistible. A place where O.J. seems to think he’ll find redemption.

Unlikely. Replies to his first Tweet were brutal:

“This account’s gonna be killer,” one Twitter follower responded.

“Hey, O.J., my wife just left me and took the kids. What should I do?” snarked another.

“About time you took a stab at social media,” quipped someone else.

If Simpson thought people had forgotten his history, he was wrong. Sure, it’s been a quarter of a century since he was accused of that horrific crime.

But it’s still too soon for a comeback.

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