rip oj simpson

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

Thornburgh? The former attorney general?

Michael Jordan killed someone?

We have an ex-President and current nominee going on trial in multiple venues and it creates about a hundredth of the public interest that the Simpson trial did.

we're all so much in our own media silos now.. there's a certain percentage of the population that are like 'Look at Hunter Biden! He's obviously guilty!' and the rest of us are like 'Who? Wut?' That wasn't so much the case in 1995, though Fox was starting their campaign

I remember for the civil trial in 1996, E! Entertainment Television would air a nightly 30min reenactment of the days courtroom highlights based on trial transcripts with actors playing all the different parts, like a soap opera happening in real time. It was utterly bizarre.

Would like to see a where-are-they-now? update in one place on the 1,001 peripheral characters, those involved in the case and those on TV. I know what happened to Jeffrey Toobin...what about Paula Barbieri?

I think the civil trial caused a lot of confusion overseas, about the U.S. system: 'so he's not guilty of the murders, but he is responsible for their deaths and has to pay up?' It is a weird system, tbf

I wonder if the people celebrating the verdict actually believed he was innocent or were just thrilled to see one of their own beat the system for once.

This was very my CB the case among the people I knew; there hadn’t been a high-profile case like this in our lives that we could remember or anything we could readily point towards in history that showed the rigged system that buoyed rich and famous white people would do the same for rich and famous Black people, so while this verdict was not just it was by the rules of the system fair (the rich person used his wealth and fame to get away with some egregious shit).

OJ’s subsequent behavior made everyone pretty happy about everything that happened to him after the trial.

it feels a lot like what you're seeing with Trump right now.

Typed and deleted a few responses to this and I think it’s better for me if I pretend it was never written

I do wonder how many of those involved with the defense actually believed he was innocent. clearly Kardashian didn't.

surprised he didn't go back to the well in his Vegas trial and say he blacked out that one time and woke up surrounded by sports memorabilia

The keto diet still makes me think of kato kaelin … the guy i was dating at the time was totally fascinated by kato kaelin’s existence moreso than anything else about the saga. Honestly that’s the only thing I remember… I missed all of it somehow

LA Times with quite the typo in its obituary for OJ Simpson pic.twitter.com/s4RXDN4znF

— Dan Berger (@dnbrgr) April 11, 2024

Typed and deleted a few responses to this and I think it’s better for me if I pretend it was never written

― Cemetry Gaetz (DJP), Thursday, April 11, 2024 3:21 PM (sixteen seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

look I realize it's a tortured analogy but these people have it pounded into their heads 24/7 that every Democrat is a criminal and the system is stacked against conservatives, whenever I actually engage any of them on Trump's criminality it's pretty clear they dont really care if he committed crimes or not

I do wonder how many of those involved with the defense actually believed he was innocent

I think F. Lee Bailey was the one guy who was adamant till the day he died. He was either too heavily invested to recant, or he really did believe this.

O.J. Simpson Allowed To Remain Living After Coffin Doesn’t Fit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlvuLF6UlMQ

At least twice on Larry Sanders: The great season-opener where everyone's sitting in Larry's office, silently watching the trial (before it became a joke--couldn't get a clip), and this, the episode where Phil's exasperated by Hank's failure to see O.J.'s guilt.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8iwqR1Niiw

Also remember another Seinfeld episode, the one where Kramer had to talk down his friend fleeing from the golf course in a Bronco after some misdeed or another.

over 30 minutes of Norm OJ jokes in here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SSVIg4Noqc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCSCJtuyfUY

xp Someone stole Jerry's Saab and Kramer chased it in a mail truck.

I don't know if that was an O.J. reference, though--this is the episode I meant.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIsG_TEFqE8

Unfortunately not on YouTube: the cold open from the first SNL after the verdict

https://i0.wp.com/onesnladay.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/10-7-1995_0.03.47.00.jpg?quality=89&ssl=1

xp Ah yeah got mixed up... the car thief episode involved golf also.

slow clap of a headline https://jalopnik.com/ford-bronco-sport-oj-simpson-recalled-on-same-day-1851403905

pretty good

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.

just a simple doctor here, the CTE thing is certainly relevant, but there’s no way to definitively determine culpability vis a vis the murders, which he obviously perpetrated, considering the event was 30 years ago. that said I don’t think it’s a huge stretch or anything to say he clearly is, and was, a sociopath, and whether that’s a mitigating factor is a question for others

Wasn’t he also a cocaine user? That would complicate any attempt to blame CTE too.

I guess they can crack open his skull now and take a look