O.J. Simpson was a wife beater, if not more.

ESPN’s highly publicized five-part documentary on O.J. Simpson is compelling, but is also a confusing amalgam of story lines. Through the first two parts, Simpson is portrayed as a kid who escaped the San Francisco ghetto and took college football by storm at Southern Cal, where he won the Heisman Trophy in 1968.

Simpson’s stardom on the field and charm off it made him a black hero in a white world. He dodged questions about his own race by saying smoothly, “I’m O.J.” He became the most popular student on a pristine, gated campus that, ironically, sits only blocks from the then racially charged Watts section of Los Angeles.

The shooting of Eula Love and the beating of Rodney King by the LAPD recounted horrific crimes that went unpunished, and the cold-blooded murder of a black teenager by a grocery store owner triggered another in the series of race riots. But as the piece jumps back and forth from crooked cops and courthouses to the no-good narcissist, it is unclear where these parallel stories are going. Is this a doc about O.J. — or LA in the ’60 and ‘70s?

Yes, the scumbag became part of Hollywood’s upper crust, befriending mostly wealthy white businessmen who took him to once-segregated golf clubs and joked about his blatant cheating on the course. But once exposed as a boozing womanizer and vicious wife-beater, his color changed in the mind of Southern California  society. One promo for coming episodes says, “Suddenly, he became black.”

Before we even get to the brutal slaying of his wife and her friend, it is apparent that superstar status would blind many of all races into rooting for acquittal at O.J.’s murder trial. But I keep wondering why even feature the deplorable conduct of the police department? That’s a separate documentary. O.J. received the same shallow support as many other star jocks, even though now the majority of people believe he did kill Nicole Brown and Fred Goldman. The police protected him and then turned on him, but where is the real connection to the scorching streets of LA?

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