OJ Again
I was thinking about the whole race relations thing in the United States as it played out during the OJ trial and it really was pretty amazing how that "Not Guilty" verdict took the wind out of everyone's sails.
Serendipity was that glove what didn't fit.
Because, initially, none of it had to do with black and white. Everybody wanted OJ to be innocent, or, at least, to get away in his Ford Bronco. I mean, it was pretty obvious from the getgo that he brutally murdered, in cold drugged up blood, Nicole Brown Simpson and... the other guy... - but still, he'd been the cutesy co-worker in The Naked Gun movies.
He must have been a better actor than we thought, too, because he seemed so... smart opposite Leslie Nielsen.
Oh - and the football hero bit. Of course, there was that, too. Even *I* knew OJ Simpson had been a football star. And not just a football star - a recognizable one. Like Joe Namath (I had to google his name to get the correct spelling - do you believe it?)
So, here was this likeable actor/sports hero who was clearly guilty, trying to escape justice in his Ford Bronco, and pretty much everybody was rooting for him. What the hell. What had Nicole Brown Simpson ever starred in?
Later, when we found out about her repeated calls for help, and that the LAPD, instead of charging OJ would party with him, most of us decided he was one pretty repellent guy surrounded by depraved hangers on and some of us even refused to watch the trial. (I was at home with toddlers at the time, though, and did catch every episode of Sharon, Lois & Bram. Bram did it. He stole the cookies from the cookie jar.)
Anyway, I remember a defence lawyer friend even saying in OJ's defence (defence lawyers - ya gotta luv 'em) "Oh, what was Nicole Brown Simpson, anyway, except another parasite". To which a non-defence lawyer might say, "Well, that doesn't give him the right to kill her, ferchrissakes". But such were the arguments in those days - between white people, anyway. I don't know what black people were arguing because, well, I didn't know any to argue with about OJ. I'm guessing a couple of black co-workers I'd had would not likely feel any differently than I did. They were both women, though.
And I had a friend, a white friend, who still believes OJ was innocent. But she's a woman, too - and crazy.
So I really think it was the LAPD people were reacting to, and not OJ. Nobody in their right mind could possibly believe that OJ wasn't guilty as charged. No one. But the LAPD was guilty, too. In a way, the LAPD had been so negligent, that maybe a good lawyer (not Marcia Clark) could argue it was as responsible for Nicole Brown Simpson's death as if it'd backed over her in a cruiser leaving one of OJ's coke parties. Afterall, she had called in a few 911s and they had responded essentially by partying with OJ. Mark Fuhrman? I've heard people argue, convincingly, that he was in on it - the killings, I mean. Maybe, even, that he murdered them, contract-style, for OJ.
Whatever. The thing is, it only became all about race relations because that's where the media steered it. Had that trial not been televised, there wouldn't have been any racial tension. It would have been a celebrity found guilty - or not - of murder. So it was doubly delicious to me (having missed the whole damn thing) when the jury came up with "Not Guilty".
"Okay, everybody. Put down your molotov cocktails. Party's over. Go home. Nothing to blow steam off about here. We're all not guilty now."
And, of course, there was the added bonus of the celebrity outrage, black on one side, white on the other that went on for months afterward. Not to mention the civil suit that was so "justice NOT denied" that - gosh - sometimes I think the OJ Simpson trial was the one thing Americans DID get right.
And now this. Caught again. Oh my. If CNN didn't have OJ, it'd have to invent him.
