Posted on 11/21/2006 9:29:15 PM PST by RWR8189
Rupert Murdoch has just canceled the O.J. Simpson book and TV special in which Simpson (presumably) describes how he would have half-decapitated Nicole Simpson and stabbed Ron Goldman had "the real killers" not done it first. The cancellation is certainly justified on grounds of decency, sensitivity and, given the universal public revulsion, commercial good sense. But I would have done differently. I would have let O.J. speak.
I thought the outrage was misdirected and misplaced. The attention and money Simpson (and Fox) would have garnered from the deal are not half as outrageous as the fact that every day he walks free. The real outrage is the trial that declared him not guilty: the judge, a fool and incompetent whose love of publicity turned the trial into a circus; the defense lawyers, not one of whom could have doubted the man's guilt yet who cynically played on the jury's ignorance and latent racism to win a disgraceful verdict; the prosecutors, total incompetents who bungled a gimmie, then shamelessly cashed in afterwards; the media that turned the brutal deaths of two innocents into TV's first reality-show soap opera.
Worst of all was the jury, whose perverse verdict was the most brazen and lawless act of nullification since the heyday of Strom Thurmond. Sworn to uphold law, they decided instead to hold a private referendum on racism in the L.A. Police Department.
The result was a grotesque miscarriage of justice. And there it rested, frozen and irreversible. I wanted to hear O.J. speak because that was the one way to, in effect, reopen the case, unfreeze the travesty and get us some way back to justice. Not tangible throw-the-thug-in-jail justice. But the psychological justice of establishing Simpson's guilt with perfect finality.
This is especially important because so many people believed — or perhaps more accurately, made themselves believe — in O.J.'s innocence. Everyone remembers gathering around the television at work to watch the verdict, and then the endless national self-searching over the shocking climax: not the verdict, but the visceral response to the verdict — the white employees gasping while the black employees burst into spontaneous applause.
Pollsters found that nearly 90% of African-Americans agreed with the verdict. Almost a third of whites did too. What better way to eliminate this lingering and widespread doubt about Simpson's guilt than to have the man himself admit it. But for that you need his confession. The fact that he prefaced his "I did it" with the word "if" is irrelevant. Simpson will always avoid unqualified admission if only to avoid further legal jeopardy for, say, perjury.
But has there ever been someone who responds to the murder of an ex-wife — a death he publicly mourned and pretended to be so aggrieved by that he would spend the rest of his days looking for "the real killers" — to engage in the exercise of telling how he would have cut her throat?
No survivor of a murdered spouse who is innocent could do anything so grotesque. Can you imagine Daniel Pearl's widow writing a book about how she would have conducted the beheading of her husband? Or Jehan Sadat going on television to describe how she would have engineered her husband's assassination? Such things are impossible. The mere act of engaging in so unimaginably repulsive an exercise is the ultimate proof of Simpson's guilt.
Who cares if O.J. profits financially? There is nothing in that injustice — and a further injustice it undeniably is — that compares to the supreme injustice of the verdict. And exposing the verdict's falsity — from the killer's mouth no less — is worth whatever price we as a society would have paid in the sordidness of the TV spectacle and the book.
After such an event, anyone persisting in maintaining Simpson's innocence would have been exposed as a fool or a knave. The interview and book would have been valuable public assets to rub in the face of those who carried out the original travesty — Simpson's lawyers, his defenders and, above all, the jury — and those who continue to believe it.
Here's the television I really will miss now: the cameras taken into the homes of every one of those twelve willful jurists who sprung O.J. free 12 years ago and made a mockery of the law by trying to turn a brutal murderer of two into a racial victim/hero. I wanted to see their faces as the man they declared innocent described to the world how he would have taken—nonsense: how he did take—the knife to Nicole's throat.
Full disclosure: Charles Krauthammer is a Fox News contributor, among other affiliations.
Remember, he still has kids and he wouldn't have admitted a thing!
I cannot bear to see O.J's face for more than a few seconds. I could not watch it. But Krauthammer once again brings a unique perspective to current events.
I think you are exactly right.
I was thinking the same thing myself.
He will be a pariah until he dies, and that is at least some punishment.
I don't want to hear any more from him or about him.
More disturbing still is the number of people who simply think it should be legal to kill white people.
There is never any shortage of morons whose understanding of "reasonable doubt" is based on watching too many television shows. There was not reasonable doubt, and the jurors did not reach the correct verdict. O.J.'s guilt was proven beyond dispute, but the brazenly racist jury let their hatred of white folks carry the day.
Great post. That has got to be the feeling of lots of blacks but what immedidately strikes me is I never read it in the MSM - only here.
I wanted to see their faces as the man they declared innocent described to the world how he would have taken—nonsense: how he did take—the knife to Nicole's throat.
I believe that a number of those jurors would maintain that their verdict was right even if OJ is truly the murderer because, well, it works out to white people have more money than black people.
He doesn't get 3.5 mil for YouTube
Nobody actually believes he is innocent. Some are just glad he escaped justice.
Yep. You're right about that, Tex. Not many here will agree though.
One small quibble I might agree with is that it does not appear that the jury did their jobs correctly. Some have said, somewhat convincingly, that at least a few of the jurors just voted not guilty for reasons that had nothing to do with the evidence. They came to the right conclusion, however.
1. The black/white divide was revealed in all its ugliness when those cheers went up for the not guilty verdict.
2. The morbid fascination of the public for the trial resulted in the rise of Court TV and various "true crime" shows like Greta's on Fox, which has lowered the standard for news channels, turning them into nothing but gossip mongers and purveyors of prurient interest stories.
3. The trial was a showcase for the banal and narcicisstic culture of a large section of Los Angeles area wealthy residents, whose testimony as OJ's neighbors and Nicole's friends revealed a mindless self-absorption in material possessions and celebrity.
4. The American obsession with television stardom gave us prosecutors, defense lawyers, judges, jurors and witnesses who were more interested in getting time on TV talk shows than in actually fulfilling their civic responsibilities.
5. The system of jury trial has been perhaps severely damaged, in that we saw with O'J's acquittal and later Robert Blake's and of course, Michael Jackson's, that wealthy celebrities will not be convicted of anything. Who you are and how much money you have does, indeed, make a difference. So much for the lofty idea of blind Justice.
6. Finally, the unwholesome worship of televsion and movie stars hit us smack in the face. For some reason, movie celebrity confers some sort of sanctity on otherwise pedestrian people, and the public simply refuses to believe that they could do anything wrong.
All in all, I believe historically this trial will be studied by sociologists and historians for years to come. It has to be one of the most depressing episodes I ever witnessed in my life.
Krauthammer forgot one other reason to air the O.J. 'Confession.' Money for the Goldman family.
O.J. will forever live in his private hell, but never enough can be done for the rights of victims.
They can't touch his NFL pension, but this kind of blatant commercial pandering is ripe for the taking.
That's a slightly different case. My take on that is that Vince Foster killed himself in the White House, and the Clinton aides (mostly young, very inexperienced -- I met and talked with a few on other matters) panicked. They grabbed Foster's body and drove across the river to Fort Marcy (easy to do at the early hours), planted the body, and left.
If that ever happens, I'm absolutely certain that the killer will get a speedy trial and promptly be thrown in jail.
...you make your points well, but I think you're missing the larger picture, Krauthammer's main point...the jury did not need the evidence to be tainted to reach their verdict...had the blood not been botched, the conclusion would have been the same...and for the same reasons, that OJ was a victim of police malfeasance...
I believe they are in the same group w/ those who believe that 9/11 was a government conspircy.
You make some good points, but I disagree about the interest in true crime stories and trials. These are about the only occasions left when people are able to make judgments and discuss issues of morality.
No argument that the Natalee Holloway story was overdone, for example. but the case hit home because a lot of parents realized that they would have let their daughters go on this trip.
As for O.J., the judge and the prosecutors allowed the proceedings to become the trial of Mark Fuhrman and the LAPD. The jury was subjected to personally intrusive grillings before they were impaneled and then sequestered for an unconscionably long time. When you do this to people, I'm sure they begin to identify with the defendant and resent the legal system.
Letting hime speak and paying him to speak are two entirely different things.
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