I left California soon after Simpson’s trial in October 1995. Like many, I wanted to move on. So for a respite from a city obsessed with sex, violence, race and celebrity I moved to… New York. Futile: last September I found myself back in L.A.–just in time for Simpson redux. When the fateful question of the melting time of Nicole Brown’s ice cream was raised again, I felt a strange sense of vertigo. Once again the parallel universes of black and white America viewed it all largely in opposite ways. It is the conventional wisdom that the almost-all-white Santa Monica jury will find Simpson liable for the two murders. But the legal system is unable to resolve the larger issues at stake. As in 1995, no jury will bridge our two universes.
