rip oj simpson

Michael Jordan killed someone?

We have an ex-President and current nominee going on trial in multiple venues and it creates about a hundredth of the public interest that the Simpson trial did.

we're all so much in our own media silos now.. there's a certain percentage of the population that are like 'Look at Hunter Biden! He's obviously guilty!' and the rest of us are like 'Who? Wut?' That wasn't so much the case in 1995, though Fox was starting their campaign

I remember for the civil trial in 1996, E! Entertainment Television would air a nightly 30min reenactment of the days courtroom highlights based on trial transcripts with actors playing all the different parts, like a soap opera happening in real time. It was utterly bizarre.

Would like to see a where-are-they-now? update in one place on the 1,001 peripheral characters, those involved in the case and those on TV. I know what happened to Jeffrey Toobin...what about Paula Barbieri?

I think the civil trial caused a lot of confusion overseas, about the U.S. system: 'so he's not guilty of the murders, but he is responsible for their deaths and has to pay up?' It is a weird system, tbf

I wonder if the people celebrating the verdict actually believed he was innocent or were just thrilled to see one of their own beat the system for once.

This was very my CB the case among the people I knew; there hadn’t been a high-profile case like this in our lives that we could remember or anything we could readily point towards in history that showed the rigged system that buoyed rich and famous white people would do the same for rich and famous Black people, so while this verdict was not just it was by the rules of the system fair (the rich person used his wealth and fame to get away with some egregious shit).

OJ’s subsequent behavior made everyone pretty happy about everything that happened to him after the trial.

it feels a lot like what you're seeing with Trump right now.

Typed and deleted a few responses to this and I think it’s better for me if I pretend it was never written

I do wonder how many of those involved with the defense actually believed he was innocent. clearly Kardashian didn't.

surprised he didn't go back to the well in his Vegas trial and say he blacked out that one time and woke up surrounded by sports memorabilia

The keto diet still makes me think of kato kaelin … the guy i was dating at the time was totally fascinated by kato kaelin’s existence moreso than anything else about the saga. Honestly that’s the only thing I remember… I missed all of it somehow

LA Times with quite the typo in its obituary for OJ Simpson pic.twitter.com/s4RXDN4znF

— Dan Berger (@dnbrgr) April 11, 2024

Typed and deleted a few responses to this and I think it’s better for me if I pretend it was never written

― Cemetry Gaetz (DJP), Thursday, April 11, 2024 3:21 PM (sixteen seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

look I realize it's a tortured analogy but these people have it pounded into their heads 24/7 that every Democrat is a criminal and the system is stacked against conservatives, whenever I actually engage any of them on Trump's criminality it's pretty clear they dont really care if he committed crimes or not

I do wonder how many of those involved with the defense actually believed he was innocent

I think F. Lee Bailey was the one guy who was adamant till the day he died. He was either too heavily invested to recant, or he really did believe this.

O.J. Simpson Allowed To Remain Living After Coffin Doesn’t Fit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlvuLF6UlMQ

At least twice on Larry Sanders: The great season-opener where everyone's sitting in Larry's office, silently watching the trial (before it became a joke--couldn't get a clip), and this, the episode where Phil's exasperated by Hank's failure to see O.J.'s guilt.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8iwqR1Niiw

Also remember another Seinfeld episode, the one where Kramer had to talk down his friend fleeing from the golf course in a Bronco after some misdeed or another.

over 30 minutes of Norm OJ jokes in here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SSVIg4Noqc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCSCJtuyfUY

xp Someone stole Jerry's Saab and Kramer chased it in a mail truck.

I don't know if that was an O.J. reference, though--this is the episode I meant.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIsG_TEFqE8

Unfortunately not on YouTube: the cold open from the first SNL after the verdict

https://i0.wp.com/onesnladay.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/10-7-1995_0.03.47.00.jpg?quality=89&ssl=1

xp Ah yeah got mixed up... the car thief episode involved golf also.

slow clap of a headline https://jalopnik.com/ford-bronco-sport-oj-simpson-recalled-on-same-day-1851403905

pretty good

I don't think anybody is doing it here in an effort to minimize OJ's culpability so much as examine the role of CTE in societal ills - however, Twitter is awash with people saying "check OJ's brain" today and regardless of motivation, that collective behavior appears like people are trying to give OJ an out on a day when a lot of people are just happy another abuser is finally gone.

just a simple doctor here, the CTE thing is certainly relevant, but there’s no way to definitively determine culpability vis a vis the murders, which he obviously perpetrated, considering the event was 30 years ago. that said I don’t think it’s a huge stretch or anything to say he clearly is, and was, a sociopath, and whether that’s a mitigating factor is a question for others

Wasn’t he also a cocaine user? That would complicate any attempt to blame CTE too.

I guess they can crack open his skull now and take a look

I remember liking this movie on HBO as a kid.. wonder how it holds up now

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/headhuntersholosuite/images/8/86/Capricorn_One.jpg

the CTE thought-exercise is “interesting” in the same way that Trump is an “interesting” corollary to OJ …

u_u

i know it was an innocent question but his abuse of Nicole wasn’t public **because there was no venue to push a different narrative about the one of the country’s most famous sports celebrities**

the prevailing conventional wisdom was all you got!! from every news and tv outlet

it didn’t become apparent until the details from the trial started to come out

anyway thank fuck he’s finally gone, talk about outstaying a fucking welcome - that was what, like two decades of pure garbage time of him just waving at us lamely from inside of cars
& commenting on shit no-one cared about like omg YOU CAN GO NOW

xps I was surprised Norm changed his tune about OJ late in life. IIRC this happened on whatever show Dennis Miller has now (or maybe just then), but Kevin Nealon, David Spade and Norm were there as guests at the same time (probably to reminisce about SNL and their work on Weekend Update). Norm's merciless OJ jokes came up and he told them he actually changed his mind and didn't think OJ was guilty. I don't know how the discussion went, but they were obviously surprised and Norm's argument was simply "he was acquitted by a jury of his peers."

Found the clip - it was actually a show hosted by David Spade, and JFC did everyone in SNL from that era turn into a reactionary nut after they left?

https://www.facebook.com/lightsout/videos/norm-macdonald-reacts-to-oj-simpsons-twitter/1588955581245043/ 2:45

(Go to 2:45 for the relevant part)

I think Norm's being dry, I don't think he seriously changed his tune.

"maybe I was the greatest rusher to judgement" lol. Nice to see Spade and Miller getting annoyed anyway

Norm's standup special from like 2006 had a bunch of OJ jokes in it

Something I think I remember correctly (and concede that it's frivolous): along with Hugh Grant, O.J. jokes were part of how Leno was able to jump out in front of Letterman. He was making them almost immediately, starting with the (really lame) "Ito Dancers"; Letterman wouldn't go near the subject for a while, the idea being that murder wasn't especially funny. But at a certain point the Alan Alda rule kicked in--"tragedy plus time"--and he also had to jump on board out of self-preservation.

Prostate Cancer is releasing a new book: "If I Did it"

xp A quick google search confirms your memory:

https://www.baltimoresun.com/1995/06/11/dear-jay-since-when-is-a-double-murder-something-to-make-jokes-about/

In one show, Mr. Letterman cut off the noxious shock jock Howard Stern, who attempted to tell O. J. jokes during a guest stint, saying he just didn’t find much humor in double murder.

But even Mr. Letterman, whose ratings have fallen in recent months, is now telling O. J. jokes, and poking fun at Judge Ito.

Also:

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2008/06/a-kinder-gentle

In the mid-90s, Letterman at first refused to tell jokes about the O. J. Simpson affair, explaining that he didn't think a double murder was funny—this at a time when Jay Leno had Judge Ito clones tripping over their robes in silly sketches.

I think Norm's being dry, I don't think he seriously changed his tune.

― jmm, Thursday, April 11, 2024 9:12 PM (thirty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

outside of people directly involved with the case or the family are there actually people out there who still seriously believe he didn't do it? or at least will say they believe he's innocent in public?

Yes. I saw archival news coverage around the time the ESPN series came out (I don't remember it being used for the series) and they had sound bites of O.J. supporters who were actually in tears and feeling vindicated about his innocence.

Should clarify, these were on-the-street interviews in L.A. when they announced the verdict.

oh, I meant like recently. I am sure a lot of people worked themselves up into actually thinking he didn't do it at the time but I'm guessing most of them looked back and went "naaah, come on"

One other thing that bothers me whenever I come across a claim of innocence - typically from someone who still adores him - is how they completely ignore his long and well-documented history of physically and violently assaulting his wife. How the fuck do you get around that even if you, say, believe in some conspiracy against O.J., and you still want to maintain some bootlicking friendship with him? It's really sickening.

Jesus, Laura Coates has Kato Kaelin on right now.

Kato is a huge Milwaukee Bucks fan he's alright

xxpost otm

Too many people had seen The Fugitive perhaps

two days ago my wife and I were watching an episode of Seinfeld which had several OJ references - it's the one where Kramer tries to sue a lady for wearing a bra in public

since she's from Mexico and didn't know anything about the OJ trial (she only knew the basics - he was a famous athlete who killed his wife but was found innocent) it made me hyperaware of how many OJ references there are in like, every comedy within the span of a decade. so many jokes she just didn't get. hard to imagine anything like that ever happening again, where even the minor details became huge elements of pop culture lore. you'd think the 2020 election/insurrection stuff would be like that but outside of the QAnon Shaman and the Rudy/Dildo shop thing it really hasnt

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWjKHuCca9Y

Wow, that joke went way over my head.