Into the gutter again with O.J.

If you practice journalism long enough, you begin to develop a mental list of characters you hope never again to type in a particular sequence.

Take, for example, the letters that spell "O.J. Simpson."

Like most sensible people, you've probably been doing something useful with your time recently -- figuring out, say, what "field dressing a moose" actually entails, watching your 401(k) implode or setting up a rescue program for rabid skunks. You haven't, in other words, been following the latest legal melodrama in which the one-time football star turned superstar defendant has managed to embroil himself.

Just to bring the sane up to speed: Simpson is being tried on armed robbery and other charges in Las Vegas. Authorities there allege that the former USC and NFL running back and a number of gun-wielding confederates entered a hotel room and held up two dealers in sports collectibles, making off with an estimated $100,000 worth of memorabilia, some of it from Simpson's career, some of it related to other professional athletes. The former Heisman Trophy winner denies guns were used and says he simply was reclaiming items -- some of them family photos -- that had been stolen from his home. If convicted, Simpson could spend the rest of his life in prison, which surely would make a lot of people happy and probably wouldn't bother that many others.

So what makes all this more than a curiosity -- or, perhaps, a minor-key argument that justice deferred isn't always or necessarily justice denied?

Well, if you take a step back for a second, you may recall that Simpson's trial for the murder of his estranged wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ron Goldman -- a young waiter out to do a customer a good turn -- was more than just another "trial of the century." The Simpson case was a journalistic battering ram that breached the wall between the celebrity-obsessed tabloids and serious mainstream news organizations, leaving gaps in values and practices that never have been adequately repaired.

Suffice to say, everybody -- including this newspaper -- decided to jump through the breach and into the swamp, and, to an extent too easily accepted, there we all have remained. Thus the various frenzies over Anna Nicole Smith or Michael Jackson or Paris Hilton or this month's missing blond.