Blame it on battered women.

• Author: Douglas, Susan
• Position: O.J. Simpson case aftermath - Pundit Watch - Column

I was going to write about health care, about the demonization of "single-payer" as socialized medicine that would force rationing and a behemoth bureaucracy on us (unlike our current system). I was going to make fun of the discussions around this breakthrough idea, the "employee mandate," the most preposterous, counterintuitive health-care gambit yet.

But then there was O.J. Simpson's lawyer and best friend on prime time, trying to get us to think about their man as if he were Harrison Ford in The Fugitive. And then there was the slow-speed chase, with Larry King trying to talk over the voices of the chopper pilots. So much for health care.

For four minutes, the O.J. Simpson case was about the epidemic of domestic violence in the United States. Los Angeles D.A. Gil Garcetti, in his appearance on This Week with David Brinkley, emphasized that, while this case was receiving frenzied attention, thousands of women and children around the country were being battered, even killed, by their current or former husbands and boyfriends. Even George Will started sounding like a feminist in his concern over the plight of these women, when he insisted that there was something "morally repellent" about the Simpson case getting so much attention while thousands of others are ignored.

Eleanor Clift hoped that the Simpson case would be to domestic violence what Anita Hill was to sexual harassment, that in the aftermath of this hideous murder, domestic violence finally would be taken seriously.

Fleetingly, I hoped so, too. After all, O.J. Simpson is the embodiment of what experts on domestic violence have been saying for years: that the problem cuts across class lines and occurs even in the so-called "best" families; that the guy who beats may seem, outside his home, like the nicest guy you ever met; that the batterers (and too often the police) regard the crime as a private family matter even after the woman is dead.

As of this writing, though, the spotlight has moved back to him, the football star, the big question being whether, with an entire offensive line of the highest-priced legal talent in America, he can get a fair trial. While well-dressed attorneys and reporters discuss this issue, the battered women of America and their terrified children remain largely in the shadows.

What we need is a much more thorough public examination of why men beat. Even on the Brinkley show, which did a decent job of using the Simpson case to draw attention to wife...