rip oj simpson

I was in my high school cafeteria when the verdict was announced, and the one thing I remember is that a group of African American kids loudly cheered, while the rest of us sat there awkwardly.

I was in my dorm room. I had decided not to watch the verdict mostly because I had a huge test but also because I'd grown tired of the whole media circus around it. In the room on one side of me a group of suburban white kids were watching it, on the other side a group of Black kids. The difference in very loud reactions between the two rooms was very striking and I still think about it quite often.

my wife kinda speaks of the same thing as Mr Shasta, she lived at UCLA for the oddest three year period in the history of the city, 1992-1994, she was there for the riots, the quake, the pursuit, the violence in L.A. at the time was absolutely mind-boggling (there was one year where L.A. county averaged half a dozen murders per day iirc.)

i remember watching the pursuit during a party at a ranch back in rural IL.

We watched it in math class and one kid basically started saying all white people should riot afterwards. This was a school full of homophobic, racist prep kids so no shock there. the teacher said nothing.

Did not take long for racist concern trolling from the same people who victim blame women regularly. Obviously there were many valid reasons to be upset at the verdict but "an affront to white people" was a true Galaxy brain take

I used to write for a Miami Dolphins blog and I left because of the shitty right wing politics of the staff, one of who continued to claim for years that OJ was let off because he was Black (wealth had nothing to do with it, according to him), as if he'd missed the entire two hundred years of history.

I was curious enough google Fred Goldman today: "The only thing I have to say is that today is just a further reminder of how long we have missed my son, how long he’s been gone, and the only thing that is important today are the victims," Goldman tells Rolling Stone. "That’s it. I have nothing else to say."

I was on a supply-teaching job in the library of a school where I'd soon start teaching full time for the next 20 years when the verdict was read; I think about 10 teachers were gathered around a TV.

I must have been in school or class or my dorm when the verdict was read. Can't recall. But I do recall going to see "Speed" with friends in the middle of the car chase.

i would be interested to know if CTE contributed to the crime.

It was weird that you had to be up on all these esoteric trial elements if you wanted to have a conversation with someone back then.

Ha, the Friday night when Speed opened was the same afternoon as the car chase iirc. The friend I saw the movie with was talking to me about it that night (he had cable, I didn't).

it was smart but also fucked up for his defense team to frame the trial as a referendum on the racism of the lapd. if they hadn't done that, i don't think he would have gotten off. but it definitely didn't help the cause of holding police accountable.

that was one of the last great public spectacles before the mass adoption of the internet... everybody was still getting all their news from cable TV and talk radio

Besides Fuhrman, the other guy who most did in the prosecution was Dennis Fung.

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-01-16-me-20335-story.html

i would be interested to know if CTE contributed to the crime.

https://www.cbsnews.com/detroit/news/ford-recalls-nearly-43000-bronco-sport-escape-suvs-due-to-gas-leaks-that-can-cause-fires/

lol, Ford isn't the only one recalling Broncos and Escapes today ...

I think it has to be a factor - we know now that people suffering from CTE are prone to fits of blackout rage and an inability to control their emotions. it puts a lot of OJ's weird behavior at the time in a different context - one kinda eerie thing about watching footage of him while the trial is going on is that he never really seems quite sure what's going on. I actually believe him when he says he doesn't remember exactly what happened that day. I mean, to leave so much evidence....

and the helmets they used in his heyday were thin shells compared to what they use today

xp does it make you stalk people as well?

At the exact moment the verdict was read out, hundreds of Minneapolis cops were driving in a motorcade behind the hearse carrying the coffin of my uncle the vice detective to Lakewood Cemetery for his funeral. Probably would’ve been a good day for a heist in the Twin Cities.

CTE could have played a part but his behavior wasn't atypical for abusers, OJ's abuse was pretty textbook, right down to rewriting the narrative in police interviews,blaming Nicole by saying she had a bad temper, and telling Nicole that her very protective sister was jealous and delusional or whatever he said. Classic gaslight tactics really. He was charming and manipulative. I don't know that I really buy the out of control blackout rage stuff, as much as I buy the idea that he was abusive, calculating in his control, and then tipped over into murder. I mean he was clearly following her, which is a bit more measured and requires a bit of forethought. I don't know what his public behavior was like leading up to the murder, but I was never into the impression that he was publicly losing his mind or anything.

frogbs, I gotta disagree with your assessment of OJ during the trial. My recollection was that he was fully engaged with the defense including whispering in the ear of defense counsel when a witness said something he thought wasn't right.

Yeah I have to say I don’t give a single fuck about whether his behaviour was caused by CTE or not and I doubt Nicole cared if the reason he beat, raped and stalked her was due to his brain being mush or just being a piece of shit. Hope he dies in agony.

mean he was clearly following her, which is a bit more measured and requires a bit of forethought. I don't know what his public behavior was like leading up to the murder, but I was never into the impression that he was publicly losing his mind or anything.

he was tweeting shit like a week or two ago... he certainly wasn't holed up in some long-term care facility

well I don't think CTE is what made him abusive or a stalker but I do think it factored into his decision to commit an impromptu double murder out in the open and leave behind a trail of evidence

He had the police called on him multiple times and got away with it. His neighbours told the police they saw Nicole walking around with black eyes often. He did, in fact, get acquitted. That’s not CTE, that’s fame and wealth.

He also carried around a knife and gloves in case he got an impromptu urge to kill some people

From the charm and the manipulativeness to the ease with which he indulged in violence this sewage was a classic sociopath.

I mean I think all those things are contributing factors, just saying if this happened today it might come off in a different light. tbh I'm still not sure how the NFL survived the Aaron Hernandez thing with its reputation intact.

for people older than me, how widespread was the knowledge of his abuse before the murder

not widespread, from my recollection. that's not the sort of thing that got widely reported in those days.

there was no TMZ

can only imagine how this whole thing would've played out in the era of Twitter

I was 9 when this all happened so I don't remember much, but I do remember the split screen where they aired an NBA Finals game and the Bronco chase at the same time. gotta be the strangest moment in the history of live television. what else, outside of 9/11, would've gotten that kind of treatment?

I need to tell the kids how watching that car chase and then the Bronco sitting in the driveway was like the 90s version of the moon landing.

During the coverage, when our phone would ring, my roommate would pick it up and loudly go, "WE KNOW!" into it and hang up.

Yeah I don't think anyone knew about the abuse beforehand.

Got to tell my friend at work about how I remember watching the Bronco chase on the TV in the bar at my parents restaurant. She asked when it happened and when I told her and she said, "No wonder I don't remember it. I was two!" :|

not widespread, from my recollection. that's not the sort of thing that got widely reported in those days.

― I? not I! He! He! HIM! (akm), Thursday, April 11, 2024 2:27 PM (eleven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I didn't know about it until the documentary

If you are above a certain age you already had an image of O.J. before the murders--from football, commercials, movies--so it was kind of a shock when it came out that he was a suspect. I suppose younger people just know of him as a famous murderer.

a study a few years back showed that CTE was found in about 92% of ex-players. him having CTE wouldn't be a shock.

it's impossible to determine whether it made him more prone to violence, or played a factor in that act in that you can only prove correlation but not causality. or to what degree. OJ also got ejected from games for throwing punches in his playing days, so it isn't exactly as if he didn't act aggressively pre-any CTE.

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. especially because in the case of many people, that's actually their motivation.

so I'll leave things at this - those people who want to know about the CTE, I don't doubt you'll find your answer eventually, but maybe now isn't a great time to be talking about it.

https://i.imgur.com/G11xuRA.jpg

Before the Bronco chase I think everyone just thought he was a nice normal dude. It was definitely shocking!

The domestic abuse was publicized in the weeks after the murders. I remember there was quite a chasm between the fawning way the responding cops treated him and the supposed police conspiracy to pin the murders on him.

Yes - I remember it coming out after but I don't remember hearing or seeing anything about it beforehand.

I do remember being stunned when I heard that 911 call audio as a kid (the one where the dispatcher asks who's attacking her and she says "He's OJ Simpson"). that was pretty much the point I thought - well...even IF he didn't kill his wife, he's still a humongous piece of shit.

I suppose younger people just know of him as a famous murderer.

― President Keyes, Thursday, April 11, 2024 2:43 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah it was pretty wild growing up in the 90s knowing both OJ Simpson and Michael Jackson primarily through their high-profile criminal trials. I knew he was a football player but didn't know he was like, a superstar

Yeah before the murders OJ was arguably the ultimate personification of a successful post playing career athlete, the guy had a clean image and everyone liked him. Everyone who didn't know what he was capable of that is.

OJ was maybe the biggest NFL star of all time at that point, the competition being Joe Montana or Walter Payton, maybe?

if the glove doesn't fit, you must acquit

if the grave doesn't fit, then I must spit

I was in middle school, I remember watching the Bronco chase on TV with my parents, until at one point at it seemed to be drawing to a close my mom suddenly was like "ok thats enough, go to bed right now" and turned off the TV. I was indignant - we had been watching so long and I wanted to see what happened, parents are so unfair! Watching the ESPN doc decades later, I flashed on that moment and realized that it must have suddenly struck my mom that as the event went on, it started looking more & more like there was a pretty good chance that they were gonna show this beloved celebrity blowing his brains out on live TV.

Reliving that whole era by watching to long ESPN doc was a very intense experience. For people who were too young to experience it, its so difficult to convey what a huge space that trial occupied in everyones consciousness for such a long time.

yeah, trying to think of a modern equivalent, like the Baldwin 'Rust' shooting or something, and there's just nothing that transfixes the entire nation anymore... a lot of 'things you don't care about' instead

Four names you probably won't remember unless you obsessively followed CNN's three-hours-a-night coverage of the trial (guilty): Jack Tenner, Milton Grimes, Dick Thornburgh, Gerry Spence.

thats how I felt watching the Michael Jordan doc they did too, it's just a level of fame you can't get to anymore