IF I WROTE ABOUT IF I DID IT -- THE O. J. SIMPSON COOKIES

The challenge for any humorist is to find humor in everything. It's also, usually, the easiest part of the job, because most everything about us as a species is either standalone funny or has elements of humor that can be mapped out without too much difficulty.

Comedian Lewis Black expertly demonstrated this when he appeared onstage recently, looked blankly at his audience and said two words: "Dick Cheney."

Laughter erupted, and he rested this case in point, adding that there was no need to say another word to elicit a laugh. Just "Dick Cheney" coming from the mouth of a premier satirist, is its own punch line.

"O. J. Simpson."

I'd wager my arsenal of rubber chickens that the first reaction to hearing or seeing that name these days is not laughter, and that Dave Barry will never suggest that "O. J. And The Runaway Broncos" is a good name for a rock n' roll band.

"Dick Cheney And The Bird's Eye Bush Whackers," maybe, but not the former.

This is why, as a humorist, I will never write about O. J. Simpson's failed "If I Did It" interview and book. But, if I did....

I'd never understand how anyone, in this justice system of ours, could be found criminally innocent and civilly guilty for the same offense. Something is upside-down about that logic. Something is terribly wrong with it.

Please, no letters from lawyers on preponderances of evidence or the invisible legal satellites circling out beyond the rarified airs of reasonable doubts.

Blood is blood.

I wouldn't understand why, as a child -- if my mother conceded that I hadn't emptied the cookie jar -- that my father could attach my allowance to replenish the Chips Ahoy until I was an old man. Either I would want a new father or I'd find another cookie stash – inside my jar collection of dead frogs – where both of them would never look.

Especially if I'd taken the cookies.

It's not that I don't subscribe to inverted reason – it's the foundation, after all, for the best humor. All a humorist need do to generate laughter in these confines, is to take something seriously that others find funny, or vice versa, and flip it over. But, fooling a fool is never funny.

As one charged with tickling your funny bones, if I did write about O. J. Simpson's attempt to cash-in on the missing cookies, I'd say something like:

Yes, Mom & Dad, if I did it, it's true that you might've found that same trail of cookie crumbs leading from the kitchen jar to my bedroom pillow, but the dog could've done it, and you know how he slobbers everything around.

Yes, I know it would've been difficult for him to put the cookie jar back and replace the lid, but didn't someone once teach an elephant to tap dance in ill-fitting leather boots?

No, I'm not claiming that I don't have a recorded history of eating cookies, but I didn't eat THOSE cookies.

Dick Cheney, Mom! Dick Cheney, Dad!

It took us a long time before anyone even imagined that Hitler could be used in a comic vehicle, but he was, as the dancing dictator in Mel Brooks' "The Producers," and there are those among us who will never see the humor in it, even in its darkest hour, where humor often prevails.

I'm sure that, in time, there will be a similar theatrical and cinematic treatment on the low life and high times of Orenthal James Simpson. It's our nature, and we will come around to it.

But, if O.J writes it, he shouldn't go to see it, and if he does see it, he won't think it is funny. If he does think it's funny, he won't take money for it. If he does take the money....

He'll send it to the Goldman/Brown Cookie Company, and never show his face again.

The perpetrators in The Producers were not found guilty. They were found "incredibly guilty."

If I ever have an opinion on If I Did It, I will find it there.

Copyright 2006 B. Elwin Sherman. All rights reserved.