Whatever O.J. Simpson may or may not have done last June, he has, since then, shifted reality.

Consider this: You are about to read a story in a newspaper reporting about radio announcers watching television and telling their listeners about what they, the radio people, are seeing. Which is the O.J. Simpson trial. The reality shift has knocked the foundation from long-standing social taboos. Such as making fun about an event created by two grisly murders.

Nine months after tragedy, it is OK to joke about O.J.

"It's the dark side of us all coming to surface," said South Florida deejay Greg Budell.

When he filled in for Randi Rhodes on WJNO-AM recently, Budell did gags such as inserting taped dialog from the movie My Cousin Vinny into live testimony from the Simpson trial. It was the day defense lawyer F. Lee Bailey badgered Detective Mark Fuhrman. Budell called the afternoon broadcast "My Cousin Bailey."The next day's show was "Disorder in the Court."

A few days later down the AM dial at 1400 WFTL, Cliff Dunn segued from the trial to a commercial for a mattress company. It went something like this: "If Kato had been using a Dial-A-Mattress, he'd have been sleeping too soundly to hear those thumps ..."

On WIOD (AM 610), deejays Rick and Suds were dialing a 900-number phone service that offers jokes for pay. On the day they dialed, one joke was about O.J. and flatulence.

WFTL's Dunn likens the joke-telling over bloodletting to people slowing down to look at an accident on the interstate.

Dunn used to be a traffic reporter and frequently used the term "concerned onlookers."

"It was my way of saying that [onlookers) were a bunch of bloodthirsty [undesireables)," Dunn said.

In that case, O.J. Simpson is a major pileup on the information superhighway and the whole nation is rubbernecking.

"The fact that two people were brutally murdered has faded," Dunn said.

It didn't start that way.

The famous white Ford Bronco "slow-speed chase" happened while Rhodes, then at WIOD, was doing her evening show.

"It was so depressing," Rhodes said. "I remember quoting F. Scott Fitzgerald 'Show me a hero and I'll write you a tragedy.' "Comedy always comes from tragedy, but that night, I wasn't emotionally prepared to take it to the next comedy level."

But now "it's better to be wanted for murder than not to be wanted at all," Rhodes says.

Late last June - shortly after the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman - radio "shock jock" Howard Stern appeared on David Letterman's TV show wearing a "Free O.J."T-shirt. Stern accused wiseguy Letterman of selling out because the late night comic hadn't told any O.J. jokes.

Letterman responded: "I guess I just don't find double homicide as amusing as I used too."

The audience loudly backed Letterman.

Eight months later, O.J. is common Letterman fodder. One recent Top 10 List was: "Judge Lance Ito Pickup Lines."It ran the gamut from No. 10: I'm gonna slap you with a love subpoena to No. 1: I'm Ito, you're neato!

Another: "Surprises in Kato Kaelin's Testimony" ranged from No. 7: Repeatedly called Marcia Clark "mommy" to No. 2: Stumped when asked to spell O.J.

Last week, among Letterman's opening remarks, "This is amazing: Earlier today, Rosa Lopez worked out with the Chicago Bulls."

And: "I don't know what this means, but today Kato Kaelin moved into Rosa Lopez's pool house in El Salvador."

And: "The television ratings are down for the Simpson trial. So next week they're bringing in Ted Danson to play the bartender from Mezzaluna."

Somewhere between June and January, Letterman, Jay Leno and other comics had a change of funny bone. Most rarely make it through a monologue without a joke about a previously off-limits subject. Usually it's about O.J.

For instance, Leno has featured a trial parody with "Marcia and the Dancing Itos" while Saturday Night Live features a running bit that shows a panel of "experts" whose discussion of the trial always ends with "He's guilty anyway."

"The trial has become a microcosm for everything that is everyone's pet peeves and grievances."Dunn said. "I crossed the line as soon as I realized that the defense was not interested in seeing justice, but just in seeing their client exonerated."

Florida International University professor Bernard Saper teaches a course called "The Psychology of Humor."He says he'll have loads of material for next semester, gathered from the Simpson trial.

"Sex, violence, celebrity, male-female relationships and topicality are all major criteria for humor," Saper said "[The Simpson trial) meets all those criteria.

"All of us have some feeling of mastery when celebrity people get their comeuppance. Of course O.J. qualifies on that level."

WJNO's Rhodes says she started poking fun when "we got to watch and see how ridiculous it all is. It's a comedy of errors, which makes it not only permissible to laugh, but [joking becomes) the antidote to crying."