It seems to me that the racial aspects of the O.J. Simpson affair, and what Allan Siegel rightly calls the network fetishization of the affair, are only just now emerging, with whites and blacks polling very different numbers on such questions as guilt/innocence, and whether one supports O.J. EVEN IF he is guilty as charged. The racial divisions, and often willful differences of perception (see the "Tawana told the truth!" graffiti in Spike Lee's "Do the Right Thing") that have grown out of three centuries of oppression and hostilty. Two other aspects: What did Nicole Simpson represent to O.J. as embodiment of the American dream -- the nordic beauty our media usually validizes? And the side of that question which addresses media fetishism: To what extent are we watching a hihg-tech lynching (the term much more applicable this round than with Clarence Thomas, who coined it)? The evidence received through the media seems so damning to O.J., and it may very well convict him (remember, innocent until proven guilty), and the crime he is accused of goes so deep into the violent American psyche -- black man, white woman, sex, murder -- that the most disturbing feeling I've gotten from this extremely fetishistic orgy of wall-to-wall hearings/wall-to-wall O.J. infotainment (did anyone see Dan Rather shamelessly exploiting the case on 48 Hours this Friday?) is that we're at some global village Klan rally and some atavistic scenario buried deep in the U.S. collective unconscious is being played out, in all it's agony. --Mark Netter, Los Angeles