June 12, 2014, - 6:03 pm
20 Years Later: Ron Goldman & Nicole Brown Simpson, RIP; How the Kardashians Learned OJ Trial Branding
Twenty years ago today, O.J. Brown Simpson murdered Ron Goldman, a waiter, and Nicole Brown Simpson, Simpson’s ex-wife. Sadly, a mostly Black jury in his criminal trial acquitted the former pro football player, even with overwhelming evidence that he did it (and absolutely no evidence implicating anyone else or even showing a motive for anyone else). But America–and the Kardashians–learned from the O.J. trial and not in a good way. It was the end of telling the truth about race in America, and the beginning of the intensification of White guilt that paved the way for Barack Obama’s election.
Last night, NBC News “Dateline” had a two-hour special on the case, which was somewhat interesting in that it showed a lot of the screw-ups of prosecutors Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden, and a lot of the stuff the jury never got to hear. Most notably, the special featured a lot of insightful observations by the spunky then-LAPD detective Tom Lange. If you were murdered, you’d want this guy to be the investigator. But if you believe any of this–anything that wasn’t put forth at trial, and there was a lot that should have been–would have made a difference, you do not understand Black racism in America and the jury’s desire to “get Whitey” by allowing a rich, famous Black man to get away with the murder of two crackaz. That is where the NBC special failed (and wouldn’t dare tread). And while asking O.J. Simpson to try on the gloves–which he predictably faked and pretended did not fit (plus he was wearing surgical gloves underneath, so of course they wouldn’t fit)–was a mistake, the racist jury wanted this man to go free no matter what, and they were determined to make that happen. It was Rodney King-inspired revenge.
If you were alive and old enough to understand what was going on then, you remember the chase in the White Ford Bronco, in which O.J. Simpson had a disguise and cash. He was headed to Mexico and also wrote a “farewell note,” which was apparently a suicide or escape note. These weren’t the actions of an innocent man. Neither was his farewell note, which jurors weren’t allowed to hear about, thanks for attention-seeking, celebrity-wannabe Lance Ito, who had no control over his coutroom and bent over and assumed the position for the grandstanding O.J. defense team. O.J.’s army of competing egomaniacs–Johnnie Cochran, Alan Dershowitz, Robert Shapiro, and F. Lee Bailey (who was later disbarred in Florida).
Robert Kardashian–now posthumously famous only for being the dad of a porn star who has created a reality TV enterprise of nothingness–was also “representing” O.J., but hadn’t been a licensed attorney for some time and had to reactivate his law license, so that he could ostensibly “represent” Simpson. But, in fact, he knew a lot of stuff that implicated Simpson–and was believed to have helped Simpson dispose of evidence including Simpson’s clothes–and the law license thing was done so he would be covered by attorney-client privilege. Kardashian, by the way, read O.J.’s farewell note to the press, but the jury was never allowed to know about the letter.
And while Kardashian was on O.J.’s side (though he later expressed doubts and I believe he knew for sure O.J. did it), his ex-wife, Kris Jenner, mom/pimp of Kim Kardashian, was squarely against Simpson. She was a friend of ex-wife/victim Nicole and said the woman warned Jenner that O.J. was going to kill her. But Jenner learned something from this trial that would turn her and her kids into multi-millionaires: that interracial relationships were a big fascination with America. That Simpson was Black and his ex-wife White was the reason, ultimately, that everyone was interested in this trial. And, yes, his football fame was part of it, but the race thing was the bigger factor. At that time, interracial marriages and relationships weren’t as common, and people were curious.
I think Mrs. Jenner saw that interracial stuff got attention. TV attention. Eyeballs. Advertisers. Moolah. And 20 years later, she’s transformed the murder of her White friend by a Black ex-husband into a different spectacle: the White guilt-laden American public’s appreciation for all things interracial–Barack Obama, the porn movie Kim Kardashian shot with rapper Ray J and so on. And she found a way to make money off of it. Her daughter made the sex tape with Ray J in 2003, and it was “leaked” to the press in 2007. And the rest is pop culture faux-history.
Jenner turned the tape into millions for the whole family: reality TV shows, fake weddings, and so on. She saw that she could spin the interracial stuff into something of glamor, something that made her a high-tech, modern day Rumpelstiltskin (apologies to straw for the comparison with Kardashians). And so, today, we have America fascinated with Kim, Khloe, Kylie, Kendall, and their assorted relationships with Black men. Instead of murder, there are mergers. And branding. See, O.J. missed his calling.
And what of the participants in the O.J. trial circus?
* Johnnie Cochran–the Al Sharpton of trial lawyers–hung out with the worst Black racists and represented some of them. Though he is dead, he inspired a generation–actually a couple of generations–of demagogues-at-law working for Race, Baiting & Howe.
* Mark Fuhrman–because of controversy over tapes in which he used the N-word—asserted his Fifth Amendment rights at the trial and didn’t testify about any of the evidence he found, leaving the jury to believe he planted it (they said so on last night’s NBC special and Detective Lange lambasted Fuhrman for this absurd move). He was rewarded for this idiocy by FOX News which made him a paid contributor. And he had several book deals.
* Kato Kaelin, the Spicoli-esque pool boy, also didn’t help much and used his time on the stand to joke and audition for the cameras. It worked. He got multiple dopey reality TV show gigs and now has a clothing line. Who the hell would buy or wear that? But, then again, the Kardashians are a multi-million dollar brand.
* Denise Brown, Nicole Brown Simpson’s media whore sister, used her fame to make gazillions. She spoke out as an “expert” on battered women and, hilariously, appeared at the Muslim-dominated Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services (ACCESS) agency. Cha-ching. The agency is well-known for helping import illegal alien Muslim men into the U.S. while they beat their wives. Oh, and for supporting aid to Hezbollah and HAMAS–organizations that I’m sure don’t have any wife-beaters at all because, hey, they love and respect women.
I guarantee you that Brown loved the cameras a lot more than the memory of her dead sister. And I also guarantee that not a single man stopped battering a woman because Denise Brown made a paid speech. She was the #BringBackOurGirls hashtag of the 90s. Brown got mad that Kris Jenner horned in on her O.J. trial money stream by writing a book about it. The cat-fight wasn’t that entertaining, though.
* Greta Van Susteren, the pro-O.J. liberal criminal defense attorney and apologist, was awarded a CNN show and then one on FOX. To date, I can’t name a single insightful or informative thing this New Age yakker has ever said.
* Ditto for Star Jones, the calorically gifted former prosecutor, who was awarded and then dethroned from her perch at ABC yenta hag-fest, “The View.” And, before and after, took every opportunity to serve as apologist for other Black murderers of White people, like Lemrick Nelson, who murdered Yankel Rosenbaum, the Chassidic Jew whom he stabbed to death, upon Al Sharpton’s incitement.
And, of course, there are the others. O.J. Simpson got his, even if it was in a different criminal case. He’s grown old in prison, and if and when he gets out, the Goldmans will be there to collect on the civil judgment they got against him.
In the end, the biggest victims here were Ron Goldman and his surviving family members–most notably his dad, Fred Goldman, and sister, Kim Goldman. They didn’t ask to be entangled into O.J. Simpson’s tragic, deadly world. We don’t know what Ron Goldman’s actual connection with Nicole Brown Simpson was (just a nice waiter walking her home or a nice waiter who would soon make contact with the biological disease machine that was Nicole Brown Simpson’s nether regions). But he surely didn’t expect or deserve his fate.
I don’t really feel too sorry for Nicole Brown Simpson, the football slut who got around (and also was, um, “dating”–euphemism–Marcus Allen, another Heisman winner). True, she divorced O.J., but still maintained a sexual relationship with him. In the end, we choose who we choose, and she chose a batterer with whom she chose to stay and continue to hang out because she enjoyed the glamor and trappings of the good life, just as her friend Kris Jenner does now.
And so America’s first interracial reality show celebrates its 20th. But, as Barack Obama told us, we are now in the era of post-racialism, and so if he had a son who was a Heisman trophy winner and NBC Sports commentator . . . .
To me, the biggest legacy of the O.J. Simpson case is that, now, other grandstanders and frauds, like Sean Hannity and Mark Levin, have adopted O.J.’s slogan about “looking for the real killers” when talking about other blatant murderers who got away with it, and whom they defend.
In any event, Ron Goldman, Of Blessed Memory, may you have some peace.
And to the rest of you bloodsucker participants in the O.J. trial, who did nothing to help lock him up or heal America from the racist decision of the jury, twenty years of your pap, reality shows, empty FOX News yakking, and clothing lines is enough.
America can’t forget about you too soon.
It’s time for you to shut the bleep up now.
Marcia Clark attempted to convert the entire case to digital format via some [boring] binary code-like story and the jury was instantly bored senseless. The moment Simpson was acquitted, Chris Darden broke out in tears like a big pussy. Today he is a law professor. Leadership by example? Simpson did everything but shoot a music video of the murder. Even on the audio tape in Vegas he is heard negatively referring to the Goldman family by calling them “The Golddiggers”. The asshole makes $50,000 per month for life from his NFL pension. But he didn’t want his memorabilia auctioned publicly, because Fred Goldman would take a chunk of the proceeds by virtue of the civil trial. Simpson is a pig and he sits exactly where he belongs.
#1 VATO on June 12, 2014 at 6:18 pm