OJ Changed My Life
O.J. Simpson's arrest in Las Vegas has PJM CEO Roger L. Simon reminiscing about the trial that changed his life - or at least his political leanings - forever.
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“OJ Changed My Life” may sound like a headline from the National Enquirer, but it’s true…partially anyway.
When people ask me about my relative soft shoe to the political center after decades as a dedicated left-liberal, they usually say something like: “You’re one of those 9/11 Democrats, aren’t you? Like your buddy Ron Silver.” I mostly nod. It’s hard to deny 9/11 altered my view of things considerably. But what I almost always don’t tell them is those views were already changing - because of the OJ Trial. In a sense, weird as this may sound, the Juice prepped me for 9/11.
Now, with Simpson reappearing in Vegas like one of those childhood nightmares that won’t go away - Tales from the Crypt, as it were, or The Mummy Returns - memories of the trial and that time in Los Angeles are flooding back to me. It’s also worth noting that just a few months ago, I was introduced at an event to one of the Simpson lawyers, Peter Neufeld. He seemed a pleasant, friendly guy, but I remembered how during the trial his and his partner Barry Scheck’s actions especially disturbed me - more below on that. Memories were flooding back even then. (At that recent event, I asked Neufeld, perhaps a bit disingenuously, to write a Simpson Trial Retrospective for Pajamas Media. He declined.)
It’s hard to believe how the OJ Trial dominated our lives, particularly in Los Angeles, during those halcyon pre-9/11 days, now a long thirteen years ago. It was as if a whole city stood still for the latest news of what Johnnie Cochran and his legal team were up to - whether the glove fit and you must acquit, what the latest dish on that allegedly racist (now celebrity) cop Mark Fuhrman might be, whether LA homicide detective Phillip Vannatter had completely bungled the investigation or where Kato Kaelin cut his hair. And this went on for the better part of a year.
I had had my own very glancing brushes with Simpson - whom I had met at parties and thought, like most people, to be jovial, handsome and harmless - before that night of June 12, 1994 when Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were stabbed to death.
Besides doing my own writing, I was teaching screenwriting earlier that year at the American Film Institute. The students came to my house and I would ply them with cabernet to keep us all distracted. (There’s not that much you can teach about screenwriting - you can do it or you can’t.) One of the students was OJ’s personal assistant and, on my recommendation, worked on a screenplay to star the Juice. One of the things I could teach was how to use your connections - obviously of value in Hollywood. In this case the connection was clear: he was the writer’s boss.
As a class exercise in creating a protagonist, I had the student tell the group what Simpson was like. Apparently, he was non-stop womanizer (no surprise there) who liked sports and fast cars (again not much of a surprise). He was also self-centered (ditto). What evolved was a rather humdrum script about a retired NBA (not NFL - that was the clever fictional disguise) star who lived in Malibu, drove a Porsche and solved crimes. I can’t remember exactly what those crimes were, routine stuff, I think, like cocaine busts. But the script was clearly designed for Simpson, perfect for his limited range as an actor, even though his most recent films had bombed. Of course nothing happened with the screenplay. A comeback, as it turned out, was not in the cards.
At the same time, I was about to get married. Sheryl and I were already living together on June 12, looking forward to our wedding day slightly more than a month off. Like most of the rest of the known universe, we watched the Bronco chase on television in stunned amazement, never having seen anything quite like it in history and assuming (correctly, as it also turned out) that OJ was guilty. What innocent man would be behaving like that?
We were both then pretty conventional political liberals (Sheryl had helped make videos for the first Clinton campaign), although I, twenty years older than she, had had somewhat more of a radical past, participating deeply in the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements, even contributing my “Hollywood alms” personally on occasion to the Black Panther Breakfast Program in the seventies.
Still it never crossed our minds at the outset that the black community would be such staunch defenders of Simpson. He lived, if anything, an upper class white lifestyle, hanging out at swanky Brentwood parties in the company of well-tended California blondes; if not an “oreo cookie,” he was the closest thing you could be to it after having spent your life in professional sports. (Nothing I heard ever came out of OJ’s mouth similar to the racist diatribes recently credited to Isaiah Thomas.)
How wrong we were. By jury selection, Los Angeles was again a racially split city. But this time the roles were reversed - it was the African-American community whose behavior was racially motivated. All evidence being equal, it was hard to imagine the white population of Brentwood voting to acquit a white celebrity who had murdered his African-American wife and a bystander.
And that evidence… As a crime writer who had spent years watching trials for professional reasons, I could not remember a single murder case where there was even remotely as much. DNA alone would convict Simpson a thousand times over.
Of course we all know it didn’t. Soon enough Cochran was making a fool of the hapless Lance Ito and the befuddled Chris Darden. Marcia Clark, who was supposed to be such an ace prosecuting attorney, proved to be a paper tigress.
But worst of all for me were the aforementioned Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld. These young lawyers had been doing God’s work, only a couple of years before founding The Innocence Project, which used newly-developed DNA evidence to free innocent people on Death Row. Now they were turning that on its head, exploiting their august reputations in the field, feeding false evidentiary distortions to a confused and eager jury, helping make this group of black women believe in “reasonable doubt” when Scheck and Neufeld knew bloody well the “reasonable doubt” they were selling was a trillion to one shot and that racism alone made the sale. What a shameful betrayal of their own good work. And for what? A moment in the sun? Of course they would defend themselves by saying everyone is entitled to a fair trial with a vigorous defense. But how vigorous? And at what expense? I wonder how they feel now with OJ, as I write, in custody, charged with multiple felonies.
And no one, as we all know, has since found even a remotely possible suspect in the Brown/Goldman murders other than OJ, not even someone “from the world of Faye Resnick,” as Johnnie Cochran posited in a shameless act of blatant dishonesty and character assassination.
But one thing you can say for Scheck and Neufeld - they weren’t racially or ethnically motivated. Those two Jewish men had no trouble making sure the Jewish Goldman family would be tortured for life - or if this did bother them, they certainly did a good job of hiding it.
Of course Sheryl and I and everyone else we knew in LA debated these things endlessly. We spent a lot of time personally on the OJ trail as well. We would drive by the Mezzaluna Restaurant on San Vincente, where Ron Goldman worked as a waiter, and retrace his steps to Nicole’s nearby condo, trying to make our own evaluation of events. As it happened, the home of a producer friend of mine, Paul Witt, abutted OJ’s manse on Rockingham, so I had a pretty good idea where that was and could trace the run from there to Nicole’s as well.
Even the Ritz Carlton in Laguna Niguel, where Sheryl and I had our all-too-short honeymoon that July (I was on the committee doing pre-strike negotiations between the Writers Guild and the studios and had to return), figured in the trial. As it turned out, OJ had arranged for Nicole’s father to own a Hertz franchise at that very hotel.
Not surprisingly, we had a great desire to attend the trial ourselves. But it was the hottest ticket in town and we weren’t high enough on the food chain. Early one morning, though, we decided to go downtown anyway with our friends David Freeman and Judy Gingold to see the spectacle at the courthouse. A small city of satellite dishes and media trucks had apparently been erected to accommodate the immense global interest in the trial and that alone would be worth braving LA traffic.
When we got there, however, we found there was a lottery for, as I recall, about a dozen remaining seats. Judy won and we all got in. There we were in the small courtroom sitting only feet away from people who were then more famous than movie stars or even most rock musicians - Ito, Cochran, F. Lee Bailey, Robert Shapiro, Clark, Darden and, of course, OJ himself. The witness on the stand that day was LAPD criminalist Andrea Mazzola, a poorly spoken woman whose testimony could not have helped the prosecution very much.
As she droned on, OJ, about ten feet away, turned around and smiled broadly at Sheryl. It almost seemed like he winked. Sheryl didn’t know how to react. We both agreed later on that he was flirting with her. I felt a twinge of jealousy. Wearing an expensive suit and designer tie, the man had clearly not lost his looks. At that point in the trial too, he was feeling confident of acquittal and it showed. Eventually, the sociopath turned away and fixed his attention, at least superficially, on Mazzola.
I remember looking over at the jury. The women were sitting there stone-faced, probably trying to hide their boredom with peripheral testimony. This was the fourteenth week of the trial. I started to feel sad. What had happened to America that things had come to such a pass that a group of black women were about to free a rich black celebrity who had butchered his white wife and a friend of hers? (Yes, it was pretty clear at that point that that would happen.) This wasn’t 1934 but 1994. We weren’t in the world of Richard Wright - or were we?
I searched around for an explanation … still do … for why the promise of the Civil Rights Movement had never been fully realized. These women, largely from South Central Los Angeles and similar neighborhoods, lived lives light years from OJ and his friends and yet they still bent over backwards to defend this man who essentially deserted them. The psychological reasons (shame, rage at the white bitch, etc.) were clear enough, but this stuff was as old as the American subconscious. Surely these women could rise above it. But they couldn’t.
Of course, the obvious answer, the cliché, was that we had not done enough, not enough aid, not enough affirmative action. But sitting there that day, and in the weeks to come, I started to consider that the reverse was true. Well, not quite the reverse. We had not done too much, but we had done well enough. At the point of history America had reached, probably had already reached some years before, affirmative action had become an albatross around the neck of those who received it. Aid given to people - no matter who they are - when it is not earned carries with it a level of insult and denigration. It comes from on high to down low and carries with it an implicit message of lowness.
I began to think of Johnnie Cochran as condescending to the African-American community, as their enabler, treating them like children who would believe something as imbecilic as “If the glove doesn’t fit, you must acquit.” Cochran was in a way the racist in how he dealt with his own people. He was certainly a racist in the way he dealt with white people.
I didn’t say that out loud in those days, at least not very often, but I began to think it. It was the first chink in my very traditional liberal armor, the first time I thought outside a conventional wisdom that I had never questioned in my life. The groundwork was prepared for a larger questioning after 9/11. The OJ Trial began it all.
Many years later, after I had started blogging but before Pajamas Media came into existence, I was contacted via my blog email by a man who said he was a major campaign organizer and fundraiser for the Democratic Party. He invited me to lunch. I won’t reveal who that man is here, because he has asked to remain anonymous and I have an acquaintanceship with him that I wish to continue. But trust me - he is responsible for many very successful campaigns for politicians whose names you would recognize.
At that first lunch, he asked me whether I had changed my views because of 9/11. I said yes reflexively, thinking that he had done the same and not having digested, yet, the impact of the OJ Trial. To my surprise, he said he was many years ahead of me. I asked him how that came to be. “Because of what the Democratic Party did to black people,” he said, going on to talk about Maxine Waters, Jesse Jackson, et al, and how they profited from the fact that African-Americans maintained victim status.
He sounded like Larry Elder or even, in his good moments, Barack Obama.
Roger L. Simon is an Academy Award-nominated screenwriter, novelist and blogger.
Art by Oleg Atbashian
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42 Comments
Lou Gots:The prosecution took a dive in the Simpson trial. It jumps out at this, and, I should think, every other former prosecutor
The jury venue issue should never have been conceded, and Furman should have been prepped for an attack on his supposed racial bias.
I wonder, had anyone ever “followed the money” with respect to the charletans who threw this case?
Sep 17, 2007 - 2:11 am stu:As an attorney of 30+ years experience in a trial practice I had never seen as strong a circumstantial evidence case. Your conclusions were mine as well. Is there a part 2 to this article,given your conversation with the politico?
Sep 17, 2007 - 3:55 am Pat Pending:Great and powerful posting. However, you misquoted Cochran. He didn’t say “If the glove fits, you must acquit.” He said “If it doesn’t fit, you mist acquit.”
Sep 17, 2007 - 5:50 am chris hogan:So much for, What happens in Vegas stays there!
Sep 17, 2007 - 5:55 am Teplost:I too left my reflexive “left-liberal” attachment to the Democratic Party because of what it did to Black people. I saw it first hand in my own neighborhood. White liberals talk a good line, but when schools reach a tipping point, they panic and run away. Affirmative action benefits 2 groups only, white liberals who use it to reduce the competition for their own children, and Democratic politicians who use it to get elected.
Sep 17, 2007 - 6:00 am David Thomson:Affirmative action is just about as realistic as basketball as a ticket to success.
I am convinced that we must reevaluate the life of Martin Luther King. Most people are stunned when I dare even bring up the subject. A few look upon me as if I’ve lost my mind. King is supposedly above criticism. The harsh reality is that he was contemptuous towards the United States during the Vietnam conflict. He literally declared the Communists to be victims of white imperialism. MLK encouraged much of the self-hating Americanism widely seen in today’s Democratic Party.
It is usually (and conveniently) forgotten that Reverend King was something of a utopian socialist. He candidly admits in his autobiography how his views concerning America and the West were changed while visiting India. MLK remained forevermore loyal to the principle of nonviolence. Nonetheless, he allowed—and even encouraged—non-violent political radicals to join his movement. They are the ones greatly responsible for the self-pity and sense of victim hood found so prevalently in our minority communities. The destruction these people have caused is mind-boggling to say the least. They set the table for the outrageous events of the O.J. Simpson trial.
Sep 17, 2007 - 6:11 am Susan:I had the same experience, though for me it was my exposure to the education system in this country while my three kids were in school that alerted me to the perils of state controlled “liberalism”. 9/11 was not the real tipping point for me, it was the growing anti-Israel slant of Democrats, despite the horrors of the second intifada, that did it for me.
Sep 17, 2007 - 6:25 am RJH:Thats a good read and I have heard several variations on that theme from others. Not so much OJ specifically but people that had been life long liberals that changed their beliefs after taking a long hard honest look at what affirmative action and other Democrat causes had done to the black community. The black family structure was the strongest in the country. Today it has been decimated by Democrat “compassion”. I doubt they could have done more damage if they had tried.
Sep 17, 2007 - 7:01 am Ollie Jayne:Great lament! My eyes were openned wide prior to OJ with the debacle of government education seen up close and personal, like Susan above. Liberalism has damaged or destroyed every thing it has touched all in the name of “doing good” and “feeling better”. It rapes the soul and spirit.
Sep 17, 2007 - 7:18 am Charlie:John Kerry precipitated my mid-70s rupture with Democrats courtesy of his denial of and indifference to the carnage in SE Asia after he had broadly assured that no such would occur.
Early in the OJ sequence a small piece by a veteran prosecutor clued me that a conviction would be unlikely, given the absence of any of the pillars a case is usually built on… witness, confession, weapon, etc. I lost interest. Still, your depiction of the vibes and emanations from that trial captures what I did see of it. And you are certainly correct about the pathetic racial pandering and stereotyping that Dems engage in.
Sep 17, 2007 - 7:23 am David Thomson:“I doubt they could have done more damage if they had tried.”
Martin Luther King most certainly did not plan to cause enormous damage. He simply failed to comprehend how radical leftist ideology always turns those decreed as victims of an “imperialistic system” into self-pitying and whiny individuals. O.J. Simpson’s lawyers merely took advantage of this insanity.
Sep 17, 2007 - 7:28 am Bob In Pacifica:Goldman’s body was found in a sitting position against a tree stump, a knife wound in his back puncturing the artery in his chest cavity. But only about a half cup or so of blood had collected in the chest cavity, meaning that that wound was delivered post-mortem. Did Simpson lift up the body and stab after Goldman had bled to death from another wound? Did he wait for ten minutes for Goldman to bleed out?
There was no aspiration (inhalation) of blood in Nicole Simpson’s body. There was no blood in her mouth or her sinuses, even though the massive cut bissected the epiglottis. That is, not even the flesh in her head was bleeding when the throat slash was made. She was neither breathing nor bleeding.
Both victims had died and their bodies bled out when additional wounds were added to their bodies. Does anyone have a theory why Simpson would stand around a crime scene in downtown LA for ten minutes to wait for two victims to stop moving, bleed out and be stone dead and THEN add meaningless wounds? To make it look like a crime of passion?
Fake crime scene, fake reporting, false propaganda: the basis for a political credo.
While cogitating on the autopsy evidence, go back and read Barry Scheck’s summary at the end of the trial. If you really want to hate Simpson, his restatement of the evidence should make you angry–at the false prosecution you allowed yourself to believe.
Sep 17, 2007 - 8:05 am Webutante:This is right on in so many ways.
I believe the genesis of conservatism–be it political, social, economic, parental and gender/feminism—is realizing that helping others should always be to the point of helping them help themselves….beyond that, it becomes an insult, even if it’s not realized as such at the time.
This should be a cautionary tale to us for illegal immigration and many other political correct issues of our time.
The system—tribal, political correctness, etc.—has falsely maintained OJ at a stratsopheric level into middle age. But in truth it’s not nice to fool mother nature. His fall back to the humbling ground of planet earth may be hard at this point, but who would deny it’s about time.
Sep 17, 2007 - 8:29 am Sissy Willis:A totally riveting read, and you’ve put your finger on what’s always been wrong with the liberal project, big time:
“Aid given to people - no matter who they are - when it is not earned carries with it a level of insult and denigration. It comes from on high to down low and carries with it an implicit message of lowness.”
Sep 17, 2007 - 8:42 am klrtz1:The verdict in the Simpson trial was no suprise to me. I knew that juries could return a verdict I didn’t agree with. What surprised me and changed my view of black culture forever was the celebration by blacks all over America when O.J. was acquited. I think polls at the time showed that while whites mostly believed O.J. should have been found guilty, almost all blacks were glad he was acquited.
I saw that race is far more important to blacks in America than I had thought. Race is more important to blacks than it is to whites. I realized this black attitude is far more of an obstacle to a color blind America than is the remaining racist attitudes by white America. Whites can’t solve racism in America unless and until blacks change their racial attitudes.
Unfortunately, black leaders and white liberals all profit from “America is a racist society.” They’ve gotten rich and powerful from pushing that button. They are not going to lift a finger to end racism. So racism will not be ended in America. Period.
Sep 17, 2007 - 9:41 am Dan:I read Bob in Pacifica’s comments and I have to rebut his ill-informed comments on Ron Goldman’s autopsy. In the first place, a forensic pathologist will declare whether or not wounds are pre- or post-mortem. All of the fatal stab wounds suffered by Goldman: the neck wounds, chest wounds and the abdominal wound which penetrated the aorta were ante-mortem and any of which could have been fatal. The fact that he died before very much blood accumulated in his thoracic cavity speaks to the savagery of the attack and the multiple injuries, not any kind of police conspiracy. I am a physician with 25 years of practice. No, not a pathologist, but I bet I have seen more autopsies than Bob. I bet he has some interesting ideas about 9/11 also.
Sep 17, 2007 - 10:25 am Sissy Willis:Simon says
Sep 17, 2007 - 10:55 am Sissy Willis:Simon says
Sep 17, 2007 - 10:56 am dclydew:A well written piece Roger!
I think, however, that you’re exploring a piece of a much bigger pie. The Civil Rights movement began as a good cause, but it became a dogmatic, unchangeable position. MLK’s dream was an inspiration, until it became a mantra, repeated without thought. Crowley once said that every answer(!) should be followed by the next question(?). Anytime we didn’t see the next question, it wasn’t because we’d discovered the full truth, only that we’d missed the next question.
In my opinion, this appears as the main problem among both of our major political parties today (and some of the minor ones). It seems that the Party takes a position and no one who wants be be considered part of the party can question it. Your examples with OJ and affirmative action prove the point well for Libs. On the conservative side there are many similar examples.
It’s the same flaw that develops in religions… protecting the validity of the tribe/group/society/party becomes more important than questioning the tenants of that party which might need tweaked. Until one can be a Liberal and still question Affirmative Action, until one can be a Conservative and still question the War… then we will likely continue down a path where OJ’s verdict will appear as sane as anything else.
Sep 17, 2007 - 11:16 am Dr. Mercury:Dear Bob in Pacifica:
I used to have a girlfriend in Pacifica. At the time, I lived a few hundred miles down the coast, in the tiny hamlet of Oceano.
Together, we were the Pacifica Oceano.
It appears you may have forgotten a few things about the OJ Simpson trial, Bob, so allow me to refresh your memory. First, a few comments and questions:
“Does anyone have a theory why Simpson would stand around a crime scene in downtown LA for ten minutes to wait for two victims to stop moving, bleed out and be stone dead and THEN add meaningless wounds?”
Sure. He might have snapped in jealous rage and killed them within seconds of each other, then, in horror at the realization of what he’d done, slumped to the ground in tearful agony. Then, realizing that her cheating ways had driven him to kill them in the first place, thus it was all her fault, he stood up in a manic rage and proceeded to mutilate the bodies.
That sounds fairly reasonable. The reason they call it “blind rage” is because it’s blind. If you had stopped OJ just before he plunged the knife in the first victim and said, “Hey, listen, buddy — you’re rich and a famous celebrity and all that. Do you really want to end it all over some dame?”
He might have reconsidered.
But, blind rage being blind, his emotions got the better of him and out came the knife. As soon as it was over, he probably sobered up, realized what he had done, and slumped to the ground as it all sank in. Eventually, he would have come around to blaming her for it all, and that’s when he really got pissed. Now it wasn’t just his pride that had been hurt, but his entire life had been ruined. What greater anger could there be?
“Fake crime scene”
Do you mean the bodies were fake, or that some disgruntled Bills fan who lost money on a game OJ played poorly in had set the whole thing up in order to exact his revenge?
“fake reporting”
Do you mean the reporters were fake, or that the news was fake because the whole thing never actually happened, or that they were lying to us by telling us they had been murdered, when, in fact, it was just an angry discussion after OJ lost a heated round of Gin Rummy?
“false propaganda”
Isn’t all propaganda false?
If it’s true, then it’s not “propaganda” — it’s merely the truth.
“the basis for a political credo.”
Isn’t everything?
“While cogitating on the autopsy evidence, go back and read Barry Scheck’s summary”
Yeah, now there’s an impartial source.
As to his guilt, perhaps you’ve forgotten a few facts. (That would be “facts”, Bob, not “propaganda”.)
- The glove with Nicole’s blood all over it that was found outside OJ’s residence was a very expensive type of Italian glove with a very distinct stitching.
OJ was shown wearing the exact same style of glove, with the exact same unique stitching, doing a sideline interview at a football game a year before.
Side question: If (A) the glove had shrunken slightly from the drying blood, (B) OJ had taken some ‘inflamatory’ pills that morning which made his fingers swell, and (C) he had prior training as a professional actor, would it be possible for it to appear to the jury that the glove didn’t fit?
- Footprints at the crime scene came from a size 12 Bruno Magli loafer. Italian, very expensive. Only two outlets in the U.S. sold them, one on the East Coast and one in L.A. And, as you know, size 12 isn’t very average.
According to sales records, only one pair of size 12 Bruno Magli loafers had been sold by the L.A. store in the previous year, to OJ Simpson.
What are the odds that the killer would wear the exact same type of expensive glove that OJ owned?
What are the odds that the killer would wear the exact same type of expensive loafers that OJ owned?
What are the odds he’d wear both?
- The coroner stated that Nicole’s head had been pulled back as the killer stood behind her and a large, sharp knife, such as a ‘commando’ knife, had cut her throat with such force that it almost severed her head from her body.
Two months before, OJ had been rehearsing for an upcoming SEALS movie and had been trained in how a commando cuts an enemy’s throat from behind.
But, with all of the “propaganda” being spewed out by the “fake reporting” at the “fake crime scene”, you’ve probably forgotten these key facts, Bob. As one of the prosecutors said afterward, “We had enough evidence to convict ten men.”
Sep 17, 2007 - 11:24 am Roger L. Simon:dclydew: It’s the same flaw that develops in religions… protecting the validity of the tribe/group/society/party becomes more important than questioning the tenants of that party which might need tweaked. Until one can be a Liberal and still question Affirmative Action, until one can be a Conservative and still question the War… then we will likely continue down a path where OJ’s verdict will appear as sane as anything else.
As we said in the old days: right on!
Sep 17, 2007 - 11:49 am BMoon:When the verdict was announced, my wife and I were at the Puerto Aventuras resort near Cancun. We had sauntered into the thatch-roofed restaurant that evening along with a smattering of other mostly Hawaiian shirt-clad American tourists, to grab a bite and hopefully get some closure on this ordeal we had all collectively been put through.
On hearing “Not guilty,” myself and two or three others stood up and yelled in protest, while the rest just sat there in stunned disbelief. I simply had no stomach to watch Simpson and his shysters smile and congratulate each other, at having not only got away with butchering his ex-wife and Goldman, but at having raped and sodomized the US legal system. My wife and I walked quietly back to our rented condo, and I said to he after some time pondering the events, “I do not think I want to live in a country where that could happen.” Little did I know that at that moment approximately 15% or more of the citizenry of my country were dancing and whooping at the ability of a black man to murder whites with utter impunity.
We have sinced changed our citizenship.
Sep 17, 2007 - 12:24 pm David Thomson:“Until one can be a Liberal and still question Affirmative Action, until one can be a Conservative and still question the War…”
Your last wish is already reality. There is not a monolithic opinion concerning the war within the GOP. The same cannot be said about the Democratic Party’s doctrine regarding affirmative action. The latter is nonnegotiable if one wants to run for any serious office. Moreover, I doubt very much if there are a handful of Democrats who dare dissent from the status quo. If memory serves, even Joe Lieberman had to capitulate during the 2000 elections.
Sep 17, 2007 - 1:47 pm mockmook:OT, I think most supporters of the war “question the war”, but keep coming to the conclusion that it is worth continuing (at this time).
We should all keep polling our beliefs to see if they hold up to real world data.
Sep 17, 2007 - 2:33 pm La Enchiladita:To Bob in Pacifica:
Brentwood is not in downtown L.A., but 12 miles west. That calls into question the rest of your scenario, none of which I have read or heard before.
Sep 17, 2007 - 3:03 pm Jamie Irons:Roger,
That was a terrific piece! Like everyone else, I hadn’t been thinking much about OJ for some time. Your analysis helped me to sort out some of my own confusion about the trial which, at the time, I found very distressing.
Jamie Irons
Sep 17, 2007 - 4:59 pm Jim Rockford:Here’s a shock. Blacks are racist. Wow, color me surprised.
Just like racist white juries would not convict KKK people of anything, so too Black juries won’t convict Blacks of anything. This is a huge problem in New Orleans and why that city is doomed — criminals won’t be convicted of anything by Black juries.
Overall, Segregation’s end has been very traumatic for Blacks and has led to a cultural and political meltdown.
Obviously, Blacks FEAR assimilation and inter-marriage, wanting to maintain cultural and racial identity. Acting “white” and not being “black enough” ought to be huge flags indicating that fear.
Secondly, Blacks OBVIOUSLY want criminal gangs around as shock troops to fend off both white gentrification of their neighborhoods and Latino gangs with unlimited manpower. Blacks voted down in South Central the police bond measure, and kick up a fuss whenever some black gang member is shot by the cops.
Black unity in the face of white oppression in Segregation is gone. Now the big threat is that whites could MARRY them, and their community could go the way of the Irish or Jews or Italians.
As far as Dr. King goes, Blacks have decisively and irreversibly rejected his assimilationist ideology for racial separatism.
The corollary — Whites today are not racist. Don’t have any personal responsibility at all for segregation which died more than FORTY YEARS AGO. Support for Affirmative Action given (the OJ Verdict) undeniable evidence that Black people are just as racist as Segregationist Whites is only a marker of class status.
Those uninterested in showing off status by driving to Trader Joes or Whole Foods in the Prius or Lexus are not going to support AA.
What does this have to do with the Dem Party? Not much. Other than Dems are a collection of racist minorities, various gay and man-hating feminists, and upper class Lexus drivers obsessed with status.
Sep 17, 2007 - 8:09 pm John Moore:Roger,
A very interesting piece, and this is the first time I knew you weren’t a 9-11 conversion.
Affirmative action, nasty as it is, hardly explains the shocking event. You miss a critical point that other commenters have hinted at: the civil rights movement degenerated into a victimology culture. No matter what happens to blacks (or you name it “minority group/females/LGBTs”), it is the fault of the oppressive white majority, or (for our generation) “the establishment”. Always! This lesson has not been lost on the formerly proud, now angry and deceived black community.
The left is intimately tied to the cult of the oppressor/oppressed, explaining most misfortune with that narrative. Multiculturlaism, also a repellent descendant of the civil rights movement reeks of it (along with general American culture hate).
Of course, the white majority, or Americans in general, or “the rich”, or whoever are always the oppressor, evil in motive and deed.
I suspect this distortion ultimately derives from the influence of Marxist class theory and other hard left ideas.
Today, the Democratic party cannot exist without adhering to this poisonous ideology.
Sep 17, 2007 - 8:14 pm Ginny:The soft bigotry of low expectations.
Sep 17, 2007 - 9:51 pm Boogey_Man:Civil rights changed things for blacks, but changed thing in whites. For whites it engendered shame that we were not living up to the creed “all men created equal”. But in far to many blacks it created the mythology of perminent oppression.
As a kid in grade school in Aniheim I had no idea there was a “racial problem” until our fith grade teacher took a day out to teach us about it. I had friends and class mates from nearly every ethnic backround you could imagine. Black, white, hispanic, east asian, Inian/Pakistani, Samoan… you name it. I remember looking around my class as our teacher told us about how white people had been so mean to black people, the civil rights era, yadda yadda yadda. I also remember looking around at my class mates and each of us shrugging our shoulders thinking “yea, so what? That was my grand parents deal. How long til lunch? I want to finish that game of kick ball.”
Civil rights changed things in whites. Racism was purged from us inso far as being exceptable behaviour and allowed us to move into the future free of its disgusting grip.
While that movement freed most whites, it trapped blacks, trapped them in the past. For to many blacks it is always somewhere between 1950 and 1969. For them policemen are always waiting with attack dogs and fire hoses, the Klan and lynch mobs are always nearby, and most whites are conspiring against them.
If I lived with such a mindset I to might embrace the thuggish hip-hop culture, hate all police and cheer when one of my tribe got away with murdering the hated other.
Sep 17, 2007 - 10:06 pm Ike Andrews:I’d forgotten how powerful writing can be when it comes from the gut. It takes courage to recognize when your comfortable paradigms about the world aren’t worth a damn, and even more courage to break away from them and establish your own identity based on the higher truths that you learn from the trials you undergo in life.
Sep 17, 2007 - 10:14 pm Carol K:Someone made a comment about black folks not wanting to “act white”. A racist attitude in itself.
In some public schools in NYC today, minority kids who get good grades are chastised by their peers for “acting white”. I know this from my nieces’ experiences (we’re Puerto Rican).
Seems to me these kids are truly screwed up in the head if they feel they are “selling out” their culture by being successful, i.e. “acting white”. This attitude did not exist among the minority kids when I went to grade school in the late 60s/early 70s.
Great legacy for the Civil Rights movement. For many of today’s youths, being black or minority means acting like a failure. This is what the culture of victimization has engendered.
Sep 18, 2007 - 1:45 am PatrickH:Roger,
OJ wasn’t an oreo cookie, he was an oreo cookie wannabe. His heart was never white at all. When he snapped he showed that all those years in Brentwood, tended to by well-heeled blondes, hadn’t changed him at all. His heart was what it had always been…purest black.
Which was why the jury acquitted him. They didn’t think he was innocent of the charges. They knew he did it. But they also knew that it was the right thing to do. Roger, you still don’t understand how much many blacks hate white people. Really, truly hate them.
When OJ slashed and stabbed two white people to death, he’d shown that in the end he really was black, really was ‘one of them’. By ridding the world of two white people, OJ had declared his truest loyalties. The prodigal son had come home.
The acquittal and subsequent celebration was just black America’s way of saying, “Welcome back, our wayward son! Oh, and nice job on those honkies.”
Sep 18, 2007 - 7:23 am Eagleeye:Roger,
As a screenwriter don’t you think that you also ought to reflect on Hollywood’s not inconsiderable contribution toward many of the baleful changes that have occurred in America over the last several decades.
As I see it, Hollywood was and is an essential participant in the “long march through the culture” that Marxist theoretician Antonio Gramsci preached prior to WWII. The success of that devastating march through our culture has resulted in the cultural wreckage we see all around us; black pathology, OJ and a host of other unsavory things being merely a few indicators of the depth and breadth of the victory of Gramsci’s strategy.
Sep 18, 2007 - 8:57 am Sour Juice:The “Trail of the Century” was not about OJ but of the frailties and greed of humanity. To some, it was a payback for social inequity; to others, a stage to strut one’s wares. Hopefully those passions are somewhat abated and OJ’s fate is now in the hands of true justice.
Sep 18, 2007 - 9:43 am Jeremy1Esq:I think most of the readers who visit this site are pretty intelligent so its no shock that with the exception of a few posts, that the comments are accurate and indicative of how many people feel. I was even glad to see someone post the black version of why he was acquitted. I dont totally agree with that because I dont think most blacks are smart enough to analyze it other then lets avquit OJ because we are upset at all the years of injustice to the black community by whites. OJ never came back to the black community, he just faked being white to benefit. While the blacks let a guy like this go to support a cause that they feel ruins them still many years later, they insult young blacks who try to succeed in a white world.
The black community is a failure because it cant make up its mind what it wants to be. Do we work and stop being doormats and become more acceptable in society or do we keep playing victim and use it to get free stuff, perpetuate laziness, and take revenge where we can against whites, many of which are the same liberals who want to keep them down.
While its easy to be young and bitter and hateful of conservatives and their priciples because of what you see and read, I think the author of this piece is just the latest example of maturity, awareness, and experience, putting him on the right path of thinking and understanding of how the world works and what liberal whites do to stay in power and keep minorities so filled with hate.
The revelations of these people who go from liberal to conservative must far outweigh those who go from conservative to liberal.
Some of us are lucky and we get it from the start but Im glad to see that an event, even one such as OJ, can help you get it. Great article and thanks for sharing.
Sep 18, 2007 - 10:40 am pj johnson:Sir, You are in very large company in your conviction that OJ is guilty but a jury of his peers found him not guilty, which must mean you reject a system of justice that uses the jury system. All can comment, and many do, re court decisions made by jury but in our system of law they give the final word, therefore despite your strongly argued conclusion, OJ is “not guilty”. You don’t speculate on the actions of the LA police and the possible evidence tampering (pretty widespread when, the claim is made, “to insure the conviction of a defendant” obviously guilty. Also the possible involvement of drug deal gone wrong added to the likelihood that OJ was there to spy on his former wifes activities, discovered the crime went to the bodies to confirm what he saw then returned hurriedly to his house to make his booked chicago, flight knowing he would be the prime and probably only likely suspect. Well my speculation is I suggest as good as any other. But I am glad that time has brought you a measure of maturity, politically speaking!
Sep 18, 2007 - 11:23 am Allyson:Roger, the OJ story is so interesting, and I want to read more! Please, don’t keep me hanging! I am fascinated!
Sep 18, 2007 - 12:42 pm Russ:PJ,
Sep 18, 2007 - 4:09 pm Sour Juice:If what you’re saying about O.J. being found not guilty is true, and those in disagreement must, therefore, be rejecting the jury system, then conversely, you must believe that there has never been a jury mistake in all the “not guilty” verdicts returned by juries. The point of most of these posts is the opinion that a generally sound American jury system still gets it wrong from time to time. A “not guilty” jury verdict does not mean that it was proven that the defendant did not commit the crime. Rather, it only indicates that, in a court of law, the jury (whether mistakenly or accurately) decided that the case was not made “beyond a reasonable doubt.” That’s a far sight from that verdict proving some kind of objective innocence. By the way, what do you do with the civil trial verdict? There, he was found civilly liable.
Russ,
Excellent summation!
I served as jury foreman on a murder trail and was a first-hand witness to the mindset of the jurors through the deliberations. The eyes of twelve independent and diverse thinking individuals cast a broad perspective upon the facts and evidence under evaluation. Though examination and deliberation of this material, the collective wisdom of this empowered panel can, in most cases, reach unanimous agreement
Our society must divorce ourselves from a presumption of guilt or innocence and must let the facts and evidence decide the case. No system is perfect but with tricks and deception, not all juries are smart enough to filter out the emotions and biases and come to a legitimate verdict.
If I have a complaint about our judicial system, it is the means used to select jurors. “Cherry Picking” jurors to match the case’s profile seems unjust. Unfortunately, in OJ’s murder case, I do believe that happened.
Sep 18, 2007 - 6:42 pm Ed Fuji:As you have undoubtedly heard, the correct wording was, “If the glove don’t fit, you must acquit.” I believe that I saw a video (probably from the preliminary hearing) where Simpson can be seen mouthing to Cochran, “The gloves are too small.” as he viewed the dried, crumpled gloves from a distance. The problem is that he was too far away to be able to tell that without actually putting them on. I have never heard anyone else mention that scene.
Sep 18, 2007 - 11:33 pm Jinahh:Basically, the OJ trial fits a tried adn tested rule: any black accused of a crime is guilty! The reverse of this is that any time a black accuses a white of a crime, like Tawana or Duke U, it’s a lie. The worst cities and countries have one thing in common, a black majority. So racism is not bad, it’s realism.
Sep 23, 2007 - 6:52 pm