OJ Simpson
The Juice is Loose!
There’s been a lot of talk in the news lately about OJ Simpson. It seems OJ has signed a book deal to talk about the murder of his ex-wife, Nicole and Hollywood D-lister/partyboy/waiter Ron Goldman, and how he did it. Assuming he did. Which he claims he didn’t.
I’m on record as saying that I’m not entirely convinced that OJ did it. Honestly, I can’t say that I know one way or the other. I wasn’t there. But having been acquitted on all charges, I’m pretty much willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. There’s actually a lot of evidence that could be used to point to OJ being innocent. There’s a lot of evidence saying he did it too. But at the end of the day, not a single ounce of that matters, as he was found innocent in a court of law. End of story. No double jeopardy. Lets move on.
But I didn’t really want to debate whether he did it or not. Despite his legal innocence, the rest of the world pretty much has decided that he is. What’s on the table now is should he or should he not be releasing this book and should he or should he not be given interview time on Fox in two weeks. People are urging the boycott of the interview and book.
That might very well be the stupidest shit I’ve ever heard in my life. Why the fuck would anyone not want to hear what OJ has to say? I for one can’t wait to hear what OJ has to say!
The thing is, on June 11, 1994, nobody gave a damn about Orenthal James Simpson. The man was one of the greatest running backs of all time, the first man to ever rush for 2000 yards in a single NFL season, he was a first round draft pick, heismann winner and a six time pro-bowler, and for all that, no one paid the slightest iota of attention to him other than maybe a few hardcore Leslie Nielsen fans. Then his wife is murdered and he’s arrested for it, and the trial happens and suddenly he’s the most famous man on the planet.
At the end of the day, one of two things is true. Either the Juice killed Nicole and Ron or he didn’t. Either he is a cold blooded murderer who skated on the biggest murder rap in history or he’s an innocent man who’s life was railroaded by an imperfect system that found him innocent and still sentenced him to a life of ridicule and mistrust. Either way, lets just face it, the man has a fucking story to tell, and that’s one story I want to hear.
Barbara Walters went on record the other day saying she was offered the OJ interview and passed on it. WHAT IN THE BLOODY BLUE THE FUCK?!?! The woman interviewed Castro for HOVA’s sake.
People keep saying stuff like “but what about the families?” As though this somehow hurts them more. Well, excuse me, but tough shit. You know who gives awesome interviews? Charles Manson! The guy is about as evil as they come, but when he feels like speaking up, its the kind of thing that you want to pay attention to and see what’s going on in that whacked out skull of his. If Hitler were alive today, I’d sure as hell want to hear what was going on in his mind. I can’t fucking wait to see the day that Larry King books Osama Bin Laden.
Is this callous of me? Or is it just good sense? As inconsequential as Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldmen were in the grand scheme of things while they were alive, they are now forever cemented into the pop history of 20th century. Neither of them can talk about it now, but OJ can. And whatever he knows or doesn’t know about the event has got to make for great television. Hell, I can’t even peel myself away from Dateline NBC’s To Catch a Predator.
Wow… wouldn’t it be fucking awesome if Penny Loafer Jones got a sit down interview with Roman Polanski?
Thank goodness for LJ keeping me up to date on US news! I thought the issue was (and for me still is) who the hell writes a book about “how I would have killed the two people I say I didn’t kill, if I had.”
It sounds like flaunting double jeopardy laws to me, and pretty stupid if you really are hoping that SOMEDAY you can walk into a diner without people associating you with murder.
well, you can look at it one of two ways.
either he killed them and got away with it, in which case he is protected from double jeopardy and yeah, why not just confess and brag about it.
or he didn’t kill them but his life has been ruined for the past 12 years and why not just give the people what they want and if you’re lucky enough to sort out the whole civil suit mess (which I was against from the start on like a million different levels, which I cou but decided not to cloud the issue in the rant), maybe make a buck for your troubles.
Whether he did it or not, I think OJ, certifiably insane though he may be, realized over a decade ago that life as he knew it was no more. The day is simply never going to come when he can walk into a diner and not have people point and stare. That part of his life is over. The rules are different for him than they are for you and me, and I believe that he is playing by those rules. People keep saying “how could he do this thing?” I’m thinking “how could he not?”
The day is simply never going to come when he can walk into a diner and not have people point and stare.
I don’t actually buy that, because even if he can’t walk into his neighborhood restaurant without people pointing and staring, he could easily walk into my neighborhood restaurant and I wouldn’t have recognized him at all… until his picture was on the internet news I read yesterday. But assuming that your assumtion is true, then we have those two options you mentioned.
If he killed them, got away with it, and is now bragging about it, that is scary and means he’s a psychopath and, as I said, scary. I can’t just say “yeah, why not.”
If he didn’t kill them but his life has been ruined for the past 12 years then why the hell would he put his name anywhere near “murder” again? Why not write “how the public judicial system screwed me over?” or “what my life would have been like without all this, and how I’ve made it through in spite of being the defendent in highly publicized trial.”
not recognizing him – you’re an anomaly. You don’t watch TV and you don’t recognize a lot of people. And you were pretty young when it happened. The vast majority of Americans would recognize him and would point and stare. I in no way believe that is ever going to go away. If it was, the 12 years later, you’d think that this wouldn’t be as a huge a deal. If anything, he’s more notorious now. That’s simply not going to go away in his lifetime. If we were talking Phil Spector or Bobby Blake, maybe you have a point. For OJ, not so much.
if he did it – Yes, he would be a scary psychopath. That makes him interesting. I’m not saying to forgive that. I’m saying that if such people exist in the world, don’t you want to know about them, rather than sweeping them under the rug and pretending they aren’t there? If you had the opportunity to see Hitler or Bin Laden or Hussein or Walt Disney, say in their own words why and how they did what they did, wouldn’t you want to take it? And no matter what, I don’t think anyone things OJ is in that league of evil.
If he didn’t do it – He tried that. It didn’t really go over. No one believes him, nor will they ever believe him. At the end of the day whether he did it or not, for the rest of his life he is going to be viewed as “OJ Simpson: Murderer who Walked.” No want wants to hear the murderer who walked proclaim their innocence. People have out and out told him he’s full of shit for years. However, despite their protestations. People do want to hear him confess. It does them no good, mind you. But they want to hear it. By giving the people what they want to hear, he is playing into them, and might make something of his life, or at least some money (assuming he gets to keep it, which he should be able to, but may not because of the ridiculous civil suit). At the very least, people who already hate him are going to listen to him as opposed to just disimissing him out of sorts.
If I Did It, Here’s How It Happened
The book had a working title of “O.J. Simpson: If I Did It, Here’s How It Happened.”
I agree that a man should have the right to tell his side of the story. But either he’s innocent, in which case this isn’t his story, it’s just a bizarre and tasteless fantasy, or he did it, in which case it’s a murderer basically taunting the world for money. Either way, he comes off as an asshole. If you want to give him some of your hard-earned cash, don’t let me stop you, but I’ll keep my money, thanks.
Re: If I Did It, Here’s How It Happened
I meant to mention the title. Sorry.
oh… I certainly grant that he’s an asshole. But that’s no crime. Many assholes have interesting stories.
But at the end of the day, not a single ounce of that matters, as he was found innocent in a court of law. End of story. No double jeopardy. Lets move on.
He did lose a wrongful death suit to the families, however.
technically, he lost a wrongful death civil suit which I am against for about a million different reasons (I’ll go into them if people care, but they’re tangential to this particular issue). And the suit only alleged the wrongful death of Goldman, not Brown. The sole plantiff in the case was Fred Goldman, so the Brown family didn’t stand to make a dime. In any case, even assuming I didn’t have a problem with that case, the ramifications of it are that he owes Fred Goldman $33.5million dollars. Which he wasn’t worth. The idea behind it isn’t to sentence him to a life of poverty, it was to award Fred Goldman compensatory damages. Damages which OJ has never had the money to pay. Thus, by law, Goldman should actually be supporting OJ making money so that OJ can pay his debt, not trying to block it so that he is forever indebted to him. At the end of the day, Fred Goldman is just as big an asshole as OJ is.
At the end of the day, Fred Goldman is just as big an asshole as OJ is.
Well, I hope this “asshole” gets every fucking cent OJ makes from this book. And he flaunts it in OJ’s face.
so you approve of all but disowning your son in life, then upon the death of the son and his girlfriend, turning it into a media event designed to make you money at his expense and not sharing it with her family?
I’m not saying he is perfect. Nobody is. But comparing him to a killer is, IMHO, wrong. There’s just no comparison between the amount of hurt and pain OJ caused and what FG did.
I feel very bad for FG. That he had “all but disowned” his son before he was murdered would make it even more difficult to deal with his death. Now he must live with that guilt for the rest of his life as well. And I don’t see money as his motive for suing OJ as you do; I think he wanted SOME form of justice.
But that’s just the thing.
There’s no “proof” that OJ is a murderer. There is proof that Fred Goldman is an ass. Granted there’s proof that OJ is an ass too. But OJ didn’t sue anyone.
Let assume for a moment that OJ is innocent. In fact lets assume that he’s not even OJ. He’s just some poor guy who’s ex-wife got killed. And Fred Goldman isn’t some rich bastard. He’s just some average joe who was the father of the ex-wife’s new boyfriend, who was also killed. The cops arrest the poor guy. He stands trial. He wins. He goes free. Do we allow the father to keep bringing the poor guy up before trial until he wins? Cuz that’s what happened here. Now lets add to that. The father eventually wins and the court awards him 10 times what the poor guy has ever been worth, but the father doesn’t share a penny of that money with the ex-wife’s family. The ex-wife’s family can’t even sue the poor guy because he has nothing left and anything he should make in the rest of his life has to go to the father first. Furthermore, any time the poor guy tries to get a job to pay off that debt, the father interferes so that he can’t, thus rendering the guy destitute for the rest of his life.
The only reason OJ isn’t living on the streets somewhere is that he’s OJ Simpson and the law says you can’t sue someone out of their pension. If OJ were a construction worker, he’d be homeless and probably have become an even bigger criminal since he’d have no legal options for making a living for himself or his kids.
The ability to sue for wrongful death isn’t supposed to be used how it was. Federal law specifically prohibits anyone from trying to overcome common law with criminal law or vice versa (see Ammendment VII). The point of the wrongful death laws is supposed to be so that a family can sue someone who accidentally but non ciminally kills someone. Say if you’re supposed to be the guy who makes sure that construction safety harnesses safe, and it breaks down and kills one of the workers. His family gets to sue you. If you intentionally sabotage some guy’s harness and he falls to his death, that’s not wrongful death, you don’t get sued. You stand criminal trial and go to jail if oyu lose. It only worked at all because Goldman is rich and was able to buy his way into making the law work the way he wanted it to. Whether OJ is a killer or not, it is not Goldman’s job or right to dispence his own justice. Essentially what he did was see that the guy he THINKS killed his son was found innocent, so he went out and dispensed vigilante justice on his own. The only reason he did it in a court room with a lawyer instead of on the street with a handgun is because he’s a greedy bastard and rich enough that he could afford to do so.
If OJ murdered too people he is a criminal and should have gone to jail. The fact that he didn’t go to jail, one way or the other should have been the end of the story. But wrongful death suits aren’t about justice. They are about compensatory damages. A lot of people, yourself included, like to point at the civil case and say “look, they proved OJ killed someone.” But that’s never happened. In fact, it specifically didn’t hadn’t. That’s part of how FG got away with it. If he had some how proven that OJ murdered them, then double jeopardy would have applied and OJ would have gone free. In a civil case the court simply has to decide what’s more likely that he was responsible or not. They found that it was likely that he killed Goldman (again, not Nicole, thought they did find that it was likely that he attacked her) so they awarded the case to FG. They ordered $33.5million to be paid out by OJ to FG and OJ’s kids (who were not actually suing him). It should be noted that after the civil case, the Brown family did sue OJ as well, for custody of the kids, but that court found that OJ was not a danger to the kids as he was not a murderer and had never done anything wrong, and that’s why he still has the kids today. That’s my base problem here. The case has been essentailly been tried three times. He won two and lost one. That simply doesn’t make any sense and is unfair.
(to be continued…)
In any case, OJ didn’t have 33 million. In fact, at the time he was in debt. He was worth about $800K, but he owed the IRS $650K in taxes and he owed legal fees. So he couldn’t pay anything. Typically the compensatory award is supposed to be based on what the victim is missing out on. Ron Goldman certainly wasn’t worth $33million, but the logic of the court was that the affection and moral support that he provided for his family was worth that much. Remember, he hadn’t actually talked to his parents in a couple of years. But somehow he was providing them with several million dollars worth of love. As such the court found that OJ owed more than everything he had. Under California law, OJ was required to pay RG before he could keep a penny for himself. As he was suddenly persona non grata in Hollywood and the NFL, his career was effectively over. So his only real recourse would have been to get a regular person job and work out the rest of his life and never see a penny since it would have taken his entire life to make up the $33.5million. This would have effectively made him a slave. Which is also constitutionally prohibited (twice, actually… there can be so slaves and you can’t sue someone into servitude for you, a common practice in the old days). Since OJ was lucky enough to have a $20,000 a month pension that FG can’t leagally touch, he basically decided to live and raise his kids on that. There’s no reason to do anything else. He also moved to Florida, because the law there doesn’t require him to send anything that he should happen to make to FG.
Oh, yeah, the order from the case is so structured that OJ owes the FG and his exwife $9M first. And then once he pays off that, the remaining $24M is to be split between RG(not the exwife) and OJ and Nicole’s kids. That’s how much he wanted justice.
If OJ were just some poor shlub, he would have been found guilty. So none of the rest is relevant.
It probably is a type of double jeopardy what actually happened, but I can’t feel outraged, or even slightly annoyed about that, given the outrage that was OJ’s criminal trial. It’s like when a referee makes a bad call, and the only justice is another bad call in the reverse direction. It’s not the optimal situation, but it’s the best given what already happened.
Sure there’s proof. The fact that a jury of idiots didn’t buy it doesn’t make a load of physical evidence any more compelling.
The fact that he’s not legally guilty of murder doesn’t have any effect whatsoever on the fact that he stabbed two people to death. I’m not legally guilty of getting out of bed this morning, but it’s a fact that I did so.
Forget OJ. Have you heard the new Jay-Z CD? it leaked…
oooh…. no I haven’t… hook me up, yo.
i got it off of demonid
id burn you a copy but im leaving for Florida in the morning so I wont be seeing you.
Annnnnd it gets pulled:
http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/TV/11/20/oj.cancel.ap/index.html
oh that sucks… killer or no, that’s just lame…