By Debbie Schlussel

**** SCROLL DOWN FOR UPDATE ****

“The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story,” which debuts on FX tonight, is a non-stop 2×4 over your head for the Black Lives Matter movement. On top of that, it’s a ridiculous, cartoonish soap opera with mixed acting. Oh, and the writers seem to think it’s still up in the air whether or not O.J. did it. Spoiler Alert: he did. O.J. Simpson murdered Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, something this series seems to question.

Like other pop culture critics, I was given the first six episodes of the 10 episode series, “People v. O.J.,” to review, and I watched with alarm. The series is getting a lot of hype, and, sadly, like a lot of movies and other TV series “based on real life,” a lot of mushy morons will come away from this thinking it’s the real thing. Here’s a tip: it ain’t.

Sure, there are a lot of spot on portrayals. Sarah Paulson does a pretty good job as prosecutor Marcia Clark. Actor Sterling K. Brown looks and sounds exactly like prosecutor Christopher Darden. Joseph Siravo looks exactly like Fred Goldman, but overdoes it in insensitively mocking the grieving and anger of the father of the victim who seemed almost forgotten in the excessive coverage of O.J.’s dead ex-wife. Billy Magnussen does a better Kato Kaelin than the real thing, and I laughed out loud each of the few, brief times he appears onscreen. And that’s part of the problem with this show. There are so many characters associated with the real “Trial of the Century,” that most of them only have brief, fleeting appearances.

Others play too large of a role. John Travolta, who produced the series, is comical as Robert Shapiro, mostly because he doesn’t look anything like him, except for the fake, stark eyebrows. But he’s one of the main focuses of the episodes I watched. Again, he produced this, so he calls the shots. But, in real life, Shapiro quickly faded to the sidelines, since he was known only as an attorney who quickly cuts a plea deal and never goes to trial. (Full disclosure: I once met and had lunch with the real Shapiro, and he’s an incredibly loathsome guy, who is a self-hating Jew. More on that later.)

Cuba Gooding, Jr. isn’t believable at all as O.J. Simpson. The casting of what should have been the most important role in the series is crappy. Gooding looks nothing like O.J. He’s lighter-skinned, smaller, and shorter, and he has a much higher-pitched, softer voice. Gooding comes off as a weak, whiny, little bitch, who is constantly moaning and fake crying (he would make a great Barack Obama). His acting is awful, and it’s hard to believe this guy won an Academy Award. Saying “Show me the money!” is one thing, but playing O.J. Simpson is entirely another. The real O.J. has a much deeper, creepier voice, and he’s much scarier. I believe this casting choice was done on purpose to cast doubt on whether such an effeminate, wimpy crybaby could have overpowered and murdered two people. But the real O.J. is no such thing. He’s a guy you definitely believe–and know–murdered those two innocent victims.

And, then, there are the Kardashians. Two years ago on this site, on the 20th anniversary of the events in question, I wrote that the O.J. trial was the original Kardashian reality show–that the Kardashians learned O.J. Trial Branding. I noted that Kris Jenner saw America’s fascination with the interracial relationship of O.J. Simpson and Nicole Brown, and she saw that it drew the cameras and made all of the participants famous. Flash forward a couple of decades and Ms. Jenner taught most of her daughters to have relationships with Black men and use them to become famous. Remember, their fame all springboarded from a sex tape Kim Kardashian made with rapper Ray J, which was “accidentally” released to the public and which made Kim and her mom zillions of dollars and got them a reality show. It all took off from there.

Enter Robert Kardashian, who got it all started, via his pandering relationship with O.J. If what’s in the series is to be believed, Kardashian is a jock-sniffer extraordinaire, constantly kissing O.J.’s butt. He only calls O.J., “Juice” or “The Juice,” and refers to him as “Uncle Juice” to the Kardashian children. We’re told that O.J. is Kim’s godfather. David Schwimmer (“Friends”) doesn’t look like the real Robert Kardashian. His one facial expression throughout the show–shocked, frantic, and worried, with his eyes bulging–is laughable. And, in every way possible, the show milks the fact that he’s the sperm donor to a now-famous reality star empire, even though the Kardashian kids were very young and had nothing to do with the case. Yet, they made at least four (maybe five) appearances in the six episodes I watched. Even Kim Kardashian’s bedroom has a starring role, as O.J. sleeps in that room and then tries to commit suicide there. (Kardashian begs him not to do it in “Kimmie’s bedroom.”)

The Kardashian kids are shown seeing their father on TV and shouting, “Oh my G-d, it’s Daddy!” and noting that he’s now famous. In another scene, Kardashian takes his kids to a fancy restaurant, and there is a long line to get in. But the hostess recognizes him from the media coverage–“Hey, you’re Richard Kordovan!”–and the Kardashians are seated right away. No long lines for them. They’re celebs now! This first taste of fame excites the Kardashian kids, but their father lectures them that they should shun fame.

We are Kardashians. And in this family, being a good person and a loyal friend is more important than being famous. Fame is hollow, it’s fleeting. It means nothing at all without a good heart.

And as we all know, the Kardashian kids really took this advice to heart and rejected fame forever.

The series begins with scenes of the Rodney King beating, the acquittal of the police officers involved, and the L.A. riots. We know that it was against the backdrop of those events that the nearly all-Black jury acquitted O.J. in revenge, despite overwhelming evidence that he perpetrated two murders. But it seems that in every episode of this series, there is some scene of or reference to White police officers abusing pure, innocent Blacks. There is also an extensive flashback scene in which then-Assistant District Attorney Johnnie Cochran (Courtney B. Vance) is stopped and handcuffed by police for driving a Mercedes in a fancy, White neighborhood. (How does an assistant district attorney afford a fancy Mercedes? They don’t answer that.) Everything in this show is painted on the backdrop of White police abuse of innocent Blacks.

The show portrays Christopher Darden as a token Black prosecutor and sheep dog who doesn’t speak up for Black people and is used as a pawn by White people. I’m sure he would take exception to how he’s portrayed. And everyone on the prosecution team is portrayed as cocky and too self-assured, to the point that they don’t know what hit them when they are constantly on the defense from accusations of racism. That’s one thing I think the show captures well: how Robert Shapiro, Johnnie Cochran, Alan Dershowitz and, to some extent, F. Lee Bailey, manufactured this phony racism theme and line of defense and how the prosecution screwed up in holding the trial and picking a jury from a venue–mostly Black areas of Los Angeles–that would be receptive to it. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson have nothing on the Simpson defense team when it comes to race merchantry.

There’s a lot missing from this series. It’s being hyped and promoted as showing things that you didn’t see at the trial, evidence you didn’t hear. But there’s actually almost none of that, other than showing that O.J. Simpson scored a definitively failing 25 on a lie detector test (“the worst you can do,” his lawyers tell him). There are no references to well-known stories about Robert Kardashian and O.J. Pal, Al “A.C.” Cowlings” hiding, discarding, and otherwise destroying evidence for O.J., such as bloody clothes and the knife. The story, not shown here, goes that the reason Robert Kardashian restored his law license–which wasn’t valid at the time–is so he wouldn’t have to answer questions or testify against O.J. about this and could claim attorney-client privilege. Not only isn’t that mentioned in the show, but it’s covered up. Instead, the show portrays Robert Shapiro suggesting to Kardashian that he restore his law license so he could further help (and pander to) his friend, O.J.

Cowlings, by the way, is played by former Cosby kid Malcolm-Jamal Warner who looks nothing like the real Cowlings. In the show, Cowlings is depicted as another fawning O.J.-worshipper a la Bob Kardashian. He even has the same White Ford Bronco as O.J. because he wants to be just like him. And, yes, the White Ford Bronco chase is shown, for nearly an entire episode. What’s disturbing–and, sadly, accurate–is how all of the gawkers on the highway are O.J. fans, fascinated with his fame and not at all concerned with the fact that he’s a murderer who has the blood of two victims on his hands and is fleeing police.

You’d have to be a moron to believe that O.J. didn’t do it. But, sadly, there are a lot of people–the Millennials–who are too young to remember what actually happened, and they will get their “news” and “facts” from this lying bubblegum pop cartoon version of what really happened. The other day, I was getting my hair done, and discussing the show with my stylist. Her assistant, age 22, didn’t know what we were talking about and asked us, “Who is O.J.? Who is Kato Kaelin?” When we tried to explain it to her and how it mesmerized America at the time, she immediately got on her phone, googled, and, sadly, used the unreliable, fraudulent Wikipedia to read up on it. Then, she looked up Kato Kaelin’s pics and remarked, “Eeeuw, he’s ugly!” and said she would watch the show. Yup, that about sums up her generation.

There were a few–a very few–things I didn’t know and got from this show (assuming they are true, and we can’t assume anything here):

* That O.J. brought his lawyers to Nicole Brown Simpson’s funeral. “Who the hell brings their lawyer to a funeral?” asks one paparazzi member;

* That O.J. put a smiley face at the end of his suicide note (which he wrote in Kim Kardashian’s bedroom–there’s that Kardashian kids reference again!–before the White Ford Bronco chase on the freeway);

* That television coverage of Arnold Palmer’s last U.S. Open and an NBA game was pre-empted for live coverage of the White Ford Bronco freeway chase;

* That Alan Dershowitz was only hired by the O.J. legal team to shut him up and keep him from commenting about the case on TV;

* That Johnnie Cochran repeatedly muttered offensive things to Christopher Darden–including “N—er Please!” in court to try to intimidate him;

* That there were claims that detective Mark Fuhrman collected Nazi Memorabilia, rumors bandied about in the press; and

* That Cochran warns Darden, “Whatever happens, don’t do [cross-examine in court] Fuhrman. Let the White people do it.”

The show also focuses on things I already knew or learned from documentary news coverage:

* That Marcia Clark was constantly under attack for her looks, including her clothes and hairstyle and that she let it get to her and got a new haircut (which looked just as bad or worse);

* That Clark was constantly under attack from both of her ex-husbands, one of whom released nude photos of her and the other of whom said he had to care for her kids (a scene shows her saying she cannot stay late in court because she must be home to take care of her kids, and she is attacked in court for that and nearly in tears);

* That Clark, who was a private person, didn’t like all of the fame and attention (a scene shows her purchasing tampons at a drugstore, with the male clerk holding them up and saying, “Uh-oh, I guess the defense is in for a hell of a week, huh?”–did that really happen?);

* That Cochran staged O.J.’s house for the mostly Black jurors–removing all of his photos with White people and bimbos and replacing them with photos of O.J.’s mother and a Norman Rockwell painting of Ruby Bridges, the first Black girl to attend a White public school (with armed guards accompanying her) in Louisiana in an attempt to end segregation;

* That Cochran himself had a past history of domestic abuse (one scene shows him phoning his ex-wife and bribing her to keep her from talking about it to the press);

* That Nicole Brown Simpson friend Faye Resnick (who, FYI, is not Jewish and was once married to a Muslim)–now a reality show star sometimes seen on “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills”–sold out her friend with a salacious tell-all book filled with accusations of wild sex and cocaine use by Brown Simpson (actress Connie Britton looks nothing like Resnick, and there is an appearance by former “Little House on the Prairie” star Patrick Labyorteaux as National Enquirer reporter Mike Walker); and

* That Judge Lance Ito was a star-f–er who was obsessed with fame (in one scene he shows journalist Dominick Dunne–played by actor Robert Morse, who looks just like Dunne–a signed photo Arsenio Hall sent the judge).

I didn’t know that Ito’s wife was a police officer who lied about knowing detectives and others on the case, which would have barred Ito from hearing the case. The show doesn’t show how Ito had no control of his courtroom, but it does show him bragging to his wife that he was picked to hear the case because of “my strong backbone.” That’s funny because Ito didn’t have any backbone to speak of, including on the decision to allow cameras in the courtroom. That changed the dynamic of the entire trial, and he allowed it to become a circus–also not depicted here, at least in the episodes I saw. (Ito, who is of Japanese descent, is played by Kenneth Choi, who is of Korean descent. That’s a pet peeve of mine because they’re always lecturing us that we get different Asian groups mixed up, and yet, they have no prob playing each other in TV and the movies. They can’t say, “we don’t all look alike,” and then say, “we all look alike,” for acting roles.)

This series is supposed to be based on CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin’s book, The Run of His Life: The People v. O. J. Simpson. But Toobin asserts that O.J. did it, and his book does have a lot of evidence that you didn’t hear about. This series doesn’t. (It should be noted that Toobin was an assistant counsel to the Special Prosecutor in the Iran-Contra hearings and a big liberal who absconded with a ton of classified documents, according to investigative journalist Michael Isikoff.)

If you really want to see the inside scoop on the O.J. trial and see all of the very damning evidence that was kept out of the trial through legal technicalities, I recommend you watch the far superior NBC News Dateline special, “The People v. O.J. Simpson: What the Jury Never Heard,” the trailer and FULL VIDEO of which are posted below (great Cliff’s Notes clips from the special are here). It’s excellent.

THE PEOPLE vs. OJ SIMPSON: What the Jury Never Heard from Paul Venus on Vimeo.

“The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story” is great for race-baiting obsessives, clueless morons, and soap opera and reality show addicts. For anyone with a brain, you’re best advised to skip it.

We know O.J. did it. And now he’s stuck in prison “looking for the real killers.”

***

About my meeting with Robert Shapiro: in the late ’90s, I was on the Mancow morning radio show every morning giving about 15 minutes of political commentary. Sometimes I would go to Chicago to visit friends and would do the show in person. On one of those occasions, Robert Shapiro was there pimping some book he wrote or something. Eric “Mancow” Muller took us all out to lunch. We went to Benihana, which is not kosher, so I could not eat anything there. Instead, I drank Coke and had a plain vegetable salad. Shapiro, who is a JINO (Jew In Name Only), was excessively bothered by my food choices, which were, frankly, none of his business. So, because of this, he repeatedly mocked and attacked me and that I was only eating a salad, the entire time, even though he knew it was for Jewish religious reasons. He kept saying, “Well, I’m Jewish, and I’m eating meat here,” as if he’s my rabbi or something. He was incredibly obnoxious and rude.

But it got worse. Shapiro represented Michael Jackson in one of his earlier child molestation cases. And, instead of refraining from discussing it and asserting the attorney-client privilege, he violated Jackson’s confidences (Jackson was alive at this time), repeatedly blathering on and on and on about how Michael Jackson is a child molester and a dangerous guy who needs help, etc. So, if you hire Shapiro (who’s now making zillions form Legalzoom), you can rest assured that he will blab about you.

Since I only got to review six episodes of “The People v. O.J.,” my curiosity is whetted by the IMDB listings of two cast members as “Jewish Temple Attendee.” There are no scenes of a Jewish temple or synagogue in the episodes I saw, but we know that Shapiro was shunned by congregants at a Reform temple he attended during the Jewish high holiday services. But, today, I’ll bet Reform temple attendees would give him a hero’s welcome. Heck, most of those people voted for Barack Obama.

Not that Barack Obama murdered two people in cold blood. Oh, wait, remember Benghazi?

*** UPDATE: One other thing I forgot to mention: actress Selma Blair plays Kris Jenner, Bob Kardashian’s ex-wife and Kardashian momager, and she looks a lot like her. I went to Hillel Day School of Metropolitan Detroit with Blair, whose real name is Selma Beitner (her middle name is Blair). She has forsworn being Jewish when asked about it by interviewers and isn’t really Jewish (her mother, Molly Cook, never legitimately converted to Judaism). Hillel is part of the Conservative movement of Judaism, of which I’ve never been a part and which is very liberal. I went to the school for only two years when my teachers at the Orthodox day school to which I went, went on strike, were fired, and were replaced by incompetents. So my parents sent me to Hillel, which I hated. The teachers and education at the time were great. But my classmates were mostly pieces of crap who are JINOs (Jews In Name Only), if they are legitimately Jewish at all, and they almost all bullied me and treated me horribly. Selma Blair’s sister, Katie Beitner, was part of that bullying, snobbish crowd.