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More on the OJ Documentary

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I wasn’t here when it happened, so the OJ documentary I’m watching is eye-opening. It becomes clear just how beaten down and disaffected people must be to imagine the freedom to slaughter human beings of a disgusting, rich creep who wouldn’t be caught dead in their company as a sort of a personal vindication. My heart breaks for those poor, poor people cheering in the streets for a filthy rich killer.

It’s also shocking how cold and cynical the two female jurors featured in the documentary are. It is even more shocking how rabidly they hate women or men they see as feminized (“weak.”) 

Whenever two poor folks are at each other’s throats, there is always some wealthy grifter laughing all the way to the bank on their backs.

23 responses to “More on the OJ Documentary”

  1. AcademicLurker Avatar
    AcademicLurker

    On the other hand, the OJ trial did give us the Dancing Itos.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      I haven’t gotten to that part yet.

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  2. el Avatar
    el

    A nut of fun: still have no idea who this OJ is, as most people outside of USA, but based on your posts am not missing much. 🙂

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      No, it’s a most fascinating thing. He was a millionaire athlete and TV star who cut his ex-wife and her male friend into pieces with a knife but was acquitted in spite of a mountain of evidence.

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  3. cliff arroyo Avatar
    cliff arroyo

    I remember missing the first media explosion but then becoming addicted to the trial.

    I was visting the US over the summer of 95 and the friend I was staying with and I would watch all we could during the day and then talk show after talk show analysing what had happened that day in the trial (there were three or four different daily shows offering half-hour summaries of the day’s events).

    When it was finally over (I was back in Poland and following it on SkyTV) I felt a tremendous sense of…. loss or absence or something. I was wandering around for a couple of weeks just …. disoriented and wanting to talk about what was going on but it was over…. terrible.

    Not too too long after that I decided to check out this internet thing that I had heard about back in the states. It turned out that where I worked there was a single computer hooked up via phone modem (in a colleague’s office) and that was that.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      My memory of the trial is also connected to computing. I remember watching a live TV show where the host wanted to show the audience this new Internet thing he’d become aware of. So he tried connecting to his friend in the US through their regular chat room but the firend told him he couldn’t talk because the entire country was witing for a verdict in the OJ Simpson trial. The American tried to explain why it was important but the Russian-speaking audience couldn’t follow. But that’s how I first heard about it.

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  4. cliff arroyo Avatar
    cliff arroyo

    Back after the verdict I read an interesting thing (paper, would have no idea how to find it).

    A well-educated young black woman who had avoided the trial, assumed he was guilty and wasn’t happy with black “solidarity” with OJ unexpectedly found herself crying with joy when he was found ‘not guilty’.

    After the fact, it seemed to her that it signalled some kind of progress for African Americans. The US justice system is structured so that if you are extremely wealthy you can throw a bunch of money at the system and it will jam up and you can wriggle out. Except that had only worked for white people previously. In a very weird way, a black celebrity getting away with a horrible crime by using lots of money to clog up the system was a kind of… signal of greater equality. I found myself mostly agreeing with that analysis – and then the dud of a civil trial went and ruined it.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      There are few categories of people I hate more than rich brats and wife-beaters. But the joy of the people in the streets who went crazy at the thought of the not-guilty verdict was truly infectious, you are right.

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      1. Stringer Bell Avatar
        Stringer Bell

        “But the joy of the people in the streets who went crazy at the thought of the not-guilty verdict was truly infectious, you are right.”

        Yeah. Ideally, the venue of a trial should never be the site for redressing societal injustices, but somehow it ends up like that (see the fervent demands for putting Michael Brown’s killer in jail, even before any evidence came out, and even when evidence indicated that there was a tussle, that he didn’t have his hands up, and was not kneeling when he was shot) . The only time we have these ‘national conversations about race’ — which means different things to different people and makes no sense — is when some bad shit like this happens.

        It is entirely possible that people thought OJ was guilty and still cheered after he was acquitted. It seemed like such a good opportunity to say fuck you to the (white) justice system.

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        1. el Avatar
          el

          \ It is entirely possible that people thought OJ was guilty and still cheered after he was acquitted.

          Seems like it from the comments here.

          \It seemed like such a good opportunity to say fuck you to the (white) justice system.

          I suppose had OJ killed a child as well, they wouldn’t cheer? Interesting where the limit passes for most of the cheering ones.

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  5. el Avatar
    el

    Were the murdered people white?

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      Yes.

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  6. el Avatar
    el

    This last bit of news is so interesting, I post it here so people will notice. Do you remember Germans and Europeans in general talking about refugees being doctors and teachers?

    Turkey ‘denying educated Syrians’ travel to Germany
    …
    Syrian refugees in Turkey who have already received visas for Germany and even booked their flights to leave are being denied exit permits by Turkish authorities – the last step of the process to leave the country.
    …
    Der Spiegel previously reported that Turkey has been telling its immigration authorities not to allow highly-educated Syrians to leave. And the UN Refugee Agency has warned Turkey not to refuse the travel of educated Syrian engineers and doctors.

    According to Spiegel, Turkey has instead been sending refugees to Europe who have serious medical conditions or little education.
    http://www.thelocal.de/20160621/turkey-wont-let-syrians-travel-even-with-german-visas

    And, of course, I have also seen today’s news about “Jewish man beaten in Berlin for wearing kippah … According to the 21-year-old victim, three men of Arabic appearance reacted to his kippah.” Women may be raped, but Jews of all genders may be knifed, you know.
    http://www.thelocal.de/20160622/jewish-man-beaten-in-berlin-for-wearing-kippah

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      “Women may be raped, but Jews of all genders may be knifed, you know.”

      • Of course, no woman in the history of humanity has ever been assaulted with a knife.

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  7. Stringer Bell Avatar
    Stringer Bell

    “I suppose had OJ killed a child as well, they wouldn’t cheer? ”

    Maybe. Maybe not. This is a twitter message from a SJW (and I use the term in the pejorative sense for the first time) after she learned about the death of a 2 year old by an alligator attack at disney world a few days ago. Poor child was swallowed whole. This person is a outspoken clinton supporter, intersectionality is her middle name, and she’s so wrapped in identity politics she’s lost all of her humanity. Also a reminder of how futile the current iteration of liberalism is in dealing with greater societal problems. No wonder young people are flocking to the left.

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    1. Stringer Bell Avatar
      Stringer Bell

      Oh, and in case it wasn’t obvious, she’s white.

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    2. el Avatar
      el

      \ No wonder young people are flocking to the left.

      Have you meant “flocking to the right”?

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      1. Stringer Bell Avatar
        Stringer Bell

        No, left. Younger people in the US run overwhelmingly left. They’re not even afraid of the dreaded S word!

        As Adolph Reed wrote, liberals in the US would be absolutely fine in a system where the top 1% still had all the money, but that 1% was composed of census-appropriate proportional groups, so 50% white, 12% black, 18% Latinos, …0.01% transgenders.

        Looks like the the younger generation is saying fuck you to that idea. Still, a long way to go, but the signs are promising!

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        1. Stringer Bell Avatar
          Stringer Bell

          ..fine with a system..”

          And by liberals I mean the current iteration of the Democratic party and all that it stands for.

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        2. el Avatar
          el

          \ No, left. Younger people in the US run overwhelmingly left. They’re not even afraid of the dreaded S word!

          OK, but they will still vote for Clinton, right? Not decide “I am not playing” on the election day?

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          1. Stringer Bell Avatar
            Stringer Bell

            I have no doubt they will.

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        3. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          “Younger people in the US run overwhelmingly left.”

          • I haven’t met a student who’s to the left of Ted Cruz in such a long time that I’m losing faith in this idea.

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  8. Sternococktail Avatar
    Sternococktail

    What I remember from the OJ trial, following it in the media here in Sweden (note not Switzerland or Swaziland) was, the defense lawyers convinced the jury that one of the policemen at the crime scene was a rasist, and that he had planted evidence to frame the black guy.

    Then I thought it very far fetched, but after the hailstorm of conspiracy theories the last decade, I am not surprised. All the airlines in the world, including North Korea, are in a conspiracy to poison Earth by “chemtrails”. Also all the air forces on Earth, including the Royal Air Force and die Luftwaffe of the 1940’s in the WW2.

    Hundreds of thousands of people are working on destroying the Earth – and nobody rats or “spill the beans”. My favoritte is the assassination of Ike Eisenhower by Big Pharma. The man died of a heart attack on the golf course in 1969, and if a healthy man in the flower of his youth dies suddenly – it must be foul play. After all, he was only 79 years old.

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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