Two years after murdering his ex-wife Nicole and Ronald Goldman and eight months after being acquitted of those murders, O. J. Simpson recently made front-page news. He hosted his friend A. C. Cowlings, two former trial jurors, and various gang members and philanthropists at his Brentwood mansion to support Stop the Violence-Increase the Peace, a gang-counseling foundation that was for some inexplicable reason raising money for battered wives. A week later, it was reported that Simpson would seek custody of his two children on the grounds that the Brown family was not raising them in an ” interracial environment.” A week after that, a 1992 letter was released in which Simpson blasted his former sponsor Hertz for employing a “cripple” like Bo Jackson and the HIV-positive Magic Johnson.

Why on earth has O. J. been in the news in recent weeks? Does anyone really care about O.J. anymore? As it happens, yes. And passionately. “I have never seen any story with the legs that this one has,” says Geraldo Rivera. “It is as compelling today as in the second half of the trial.” After his nightly CNBC show began aggressively running O. J. coverage, Rivera’s ratings rose by a factor of seven. He still covers the Simpson case whenever the smallest news breaks, and his two nightly airings now draw as many viewers as Larry King, once the unassailable Leviathan of cable talk television. CNN’s coverage of l’affaire O. J., meanwhile, raised its own ratings fivefold. King himself has done seven Simpson shows in recent weeks. Burden of Proof, a lunch-hour daily show launched right after the trial’s conclusion, is still largely about the case.