The level of “disapproval” I’ve been witness to seems extraordinarily vehement; the amount of confidence some people have of the guilt of this man seems extraordinary strong; and the amount of passion that I’ve seen people express seems above and beyond that expressed in response to similar cases (e.g. Robert Blake). The sum total of these observations lead me to conclude that there was a good deal of race-based subjectivity going on, and it just wasn’t from black folks.
Um, you do know OJ’s first wife was a black woman, do you not? So now I’m interested in knowing why you find the idea that he would even consider marring a black woman so very preposterous. That’s a strong word to use about someone you obviously know very little about. But thanks for helping me make my point. You’ve just displayed the kind of extraordinary confidence I’m talking about.
And if you would have been just as upset if the victims had been black, well then good for you! I just find it difficult to believe that the rest of the country would have been as egalitarian as you.
Please explain why I’m a racist for suggesting that color was a factor in both blacks and whites perception of the trial. I hungrily await your response.
Wrong again. I just find it hard to believe that this whole thing was polarized just because black folks were thinking irrationally and over-subjectively. If that makes me racist, I honestly don’t care. God knows I’ve been called that enough on the SDMB that by now it doesn’t even bother me.
Okay.
Who are the “other guys”? (Again, thanks for helping me make my point!) And unless you can say with a straight face that the prosecution proved their case beyond a reasonable shadow of doubt, then you can’t say this trial was decided solely on race.
Sweetie, you make an assertion, you have to provide yours. Then it’s rebutted.
Another cite-worthy comment. There was a mountain of evidence that Simpson was guilty. Therefore, people who believed in his guilt were not acting irrationally. People who believed that he was innocent were not operating on logic.
No one’s said that black people were ‘mindless, irrational, blithering’ twits. That’s make-believe on your part. Instead, the charge has been that they decided that the facts didn’t matter so much as race. By responding to a straw man of your own creation, you deny logic. There was no other logical suspect than Simpson. He was not framed. He killed two people. Nevertheless, there was an enormous wave of gloating that swept certain segments of society upon his acquittal. He killed two people, but that didn’t matter to some people. He’d stalked and terrorized his wife for years, while the police department looked away. These aren’t theories; they’re facts, yet you proclaim that people who note them are somehow biased, while people who willfully ignore them are somehow superior.
I don’t believe the black people I know were cheering that a black man got away with killing a white woman. What they were cheering is that a rich black man could “buy” the same verdict as rich white man.
As far as black man/white woman, I recall a fair amount of people, both black and white, expressing an attitude of “Well, that’s what she [Nicole] gets, for crossing the color line.”
In fact, there was a fair amount of blaming Nicole in general. “Why didn’t she leave him earlier?” Because she hit her saturation point when she hit it, that’s all. “Why was she fooling around with a waiter?” She wasn’t fooling around with him at all! “Boy, she sure liked to party, didn’t she?” Yeah, and? OJ was/is no Baptist minister either, but he’s a man, so that’s okay, right?
And some jackass wrote to Newsweek, saying that Nicole “played a high-stakes game and had to pay the price”. IOW, accusing her of being a bimbo who landed a rich husband and then bailed when he turned out not to be Prince Charming. GMAFB. She was 19 when they met; a lot of people make decisions at that age that they later regret. And as we now know, OJ can present a very convincing facade. And anyway, even if I were inclined to agree with this person’s assessment, no one should have to pay with their life.
youwiththeface, mea culpa regarding Simpson’s first marriage. OK, so at one time he associated with blacks.
The outrage of the verdict really stems in my case over the jury ignoring mountains of evidence. The prosecution blew a lot of its case, but even if they blew half of it, the other half was still 10 times more than enough to convince anybody of his guilt. With the extraordinary coverage this case had, most everybody felt just as qualified as the jury to render a verdict. When the vast majority of the planet sure he was guilty, we struggle to find a reason for such an outrageous action. Unfortunately, a lot of us have a hard time thinking that anything but race was a factor. I would love to think it wasn’t, but really don’t see any evidence that rational thought went into it.
Hypothetically speaking, if the races were reversed and a white OJ killed a black Nicole, and a white jury found him not guilty, and whites took to the streets dancing in celebration, would not the black population be justifiably outraged?
Rilchiam I remembered that attitude myself, in reading an article in The Nation in wihch a high school teacher quizzed his mostly-black class and found they blamed Nicole, not OJ, for her fate.
you with the face This statement is being deliberately obtuse:
My point, wihch you appear determined to miss, is that the black community turns on black women who dare to turn in men of their community. Jones and Flowers weren’t subject to threats, ostracism, or the pressure that Hill and Washington experienced. Women who bring any kind of sexual assault forward often have to deal with something like that. In part, this is because the stakes weren’t so high. In cases like this, the aim appears to be to prove racism at work, wihch demands that the guy be innocent, and turns the woman into collateral damage. The concept of innocence turns the guy into a victim and turns his actual victim into either either a collaborator or somebody deluded. In both the Jones and the Flowers cases, the ‘white community’ was willing to concede that there was a possiblity that where there was smoke there was fire.
[quote]
4- I wouldn’t characterize you as cynical. You seem to find it hard to believe that white people are interested in justice, which is racist.
[quote]
You say this is wrong, but in fact you really do give the appearance that you believe that white people are incapable of justice because the victims were white.
And this exchange is extraordinary:
From BobLibDem
Uh, you do know that OJ hasn’t *dated * black women in twenty years, right? Doesn’t have black friends, doesn’t date black women, and had no pictures of black people in his house? That’s why it’s preposterous.
Wow. You are aware that Simpson divorced his first wife and now dates twentysomething blondes, right?
What point would that be? Boblibdem is displaying extraordinary confidence because he appears to be aware of more facts than you do. You, for example, don’t appear of aware of Simpson’s dating history at all, and yet you lecture someone else who has.
I watched the whole trial, including the part the jury didn’t see. I believe it was an accurate outcome. There was no real physical evidence against OJ offered. The rest was circumstantial.
The bloody gloves were obviously not his, he couldn’t even get his hand in them. State said they shrunk, they cost $75 and there were 26 affidavits from other owners saying they don’t shrink when wet.
The blood on the socks was totally out of place and seemed planted.
But, the main thing for me was the idea that he could have attacked two strong atheletic people with a knife, killed them, then walked across a pristine white carpet, indicating he got no blood on himself in the process. Pretty far fetched.
The main detective witnessing against him was shown to have a history of hating blacks and beating them up and planting evidence against them.
In my opinion, justice was done.
Oh, yes, I am white. I have noticed that generally speaking the whites think he’s guilty and the blacks don’t.
What’s wrong with circumstantial evidence? You do realize that a great many criminal trials depend on physical evidence left behind.
[qlove]The bloody gloves were obviously not his, he couldn’t even get his hand in them. State said they shrunk, they cost $75 and there were 26 affidavits from other owners saying they don’t shrink when wet.
[/quote]
Cite for the 26 affadavits? Because it’s a fact that leather shrinks when wet. It’s also a fact that putting latex gloves in leather makes it just about impossible to get one’s hand inside.
‘Seemed’ planted? In what way? How was the blood totally out of place?
Nicole Simpson was knocked unconscious while Simpson dealt with Ron Goodman, who had many defensiveness woudnds. Once he was dead, the killer pulled Nicole’s head back by the hair and slit her throat. The fact that Simpson didn’t get blood on his shoes alone only indicates that he didn’t get blood on his shoes. Walking carefully would have avoided blood puddles or whatever. Who knows what he put on his shoes?
The defendant had a history of beating his wife. Apply this style of reasoning to Simpson—as you’ve done to Fuhrman, and his past acts are enough to convict him.
Well, I’m curious as to how blood can ‘seem’ planted.
Hello? You’re the one postulating that there were more blacks celebrating than whites gnashing their teeth and beating their chests. How are you coming up with that claim? Unless you walk in my shoes and see the things I’ve seen, you can not rebut my personal observation, which was that whites were also letting subjectivity steer their reactions to the trial.
And please drop the “sweetie”. Patronizing language causes me to tune you out.
ywtf said:
margin said
You really need to lay off the “cite please” cliche. (FYI, not every statement you see in the GD is supposed to be backed by a cite. How can you cite something like this anyway? Put some thought into it.)
If you believe blacks were racially-biased, what makes you believe whites were completely immune from the same pitfall?
I’m not even talking about beliefs about the man’s guilt or innocence. I’m talking about how much people got personally invested in this trial, how melodramatic and emotional everyone became, how the media sucked everyone up into it and played us like so many violins, and how race played a role in how we (me, you, blacks, whites, etc.) interpreted the situation and everything leading up to the situation.
We were not in the courtroom. We did not see everything the jury saw. And yet we have so many armchair jurors talking about things as if they were there. It all strikes me as rather smug.
You’ve implied as much in your posts when you say:
This is what you believe. Bravo for you! Obviously, other people didn’t believe this “fact” was as obvious as you do, and some of these people acquited him. Acquitals are quite common, you know.
Because, perhaps, they didn’t think he did it? You seem to gloss over that possibility in favor of your own specious speculations.
You’re creating strawmen now. Please show where I said that those who believe in OJ’s guilt are biased.
You’ve implied as much in your posts when you say:
I’m sorry, did I miss something? We’re not talking a teensy bit of circumstantial evidence, we’re talking about a vast mountain of evidence. That’s not an opinion; it’s a fact. They had blood evidence, shoe prints, Simpson’s history, his lack of alibi, the cut on his hand, and more things that I can mention. The defense had…stories. They had 'If the glove doesn’t fit, you must acquit." Saying that people who didn’t accept physical evidence as proof acted irrationally is not saying that they’re ‘mindless, blithering idiots’----it’s saying that they did approach the case factually or logically. Logic sure as hell didn’t acquit the guy.
Opinions that are not based on facts are essentialy worthless. My neice thinks that Santa Claus is real----and that’s about as valid a belief as Simpson’s innocence. He’s just another Jeffrey MacDonald, except black. And there’s a perfect companion case for you, which I notice you haven’t referred to, though I’ve compared Simpson to him at least once. MacDonald was a nice white boy with what seemed an impeccable background who was eventually convicted of killing his wife and kids. There was a mountain of evidence against him but emotion spurred his defenders. Like Simpson’s defenders, they preferred to focus on theories of conspiracies and outside evil-doers, not the simple fact that it wasn’t ultimately necessary to know why the guy did it, but how. Llike Simspon’s defenders, they focused on minutiae rather than the total picture----the glove, so to speak, that supposedly did away with the pictures of Simpson wearing shoes he claimed he didn’t have, the blood evidence, the cut on his hand, his steadily-increasing rage against his ex, all the things that contributed to the whole picture of his guilt. More importantly, there was no positive evidence that knocked either Simpson or MacDonald out of the running. There was no one who had the motive to kill their wives/ex-wives. There was no proof that anyone else had even been on the site, even though both men claimed that someone else did it.
Sorry, but after a certain point, when you present enough evidence and people still insist that the world is flat, ‘irrational’ is all they can expect to be called.
quote:
There was no other logical suspect than Simpson. He was not framed. He killed two people.
Are you trying to tell me that sexism does not exist among whites? Are you trying to tell me that charges of sexual harrassment and battery are always treated seriously by white people, that they never turn a blind eye to what white men do as long as it stays behind close doors? That smells like some rather convenient bullshit to me. Especially in light of the fact that in another thread you spent a lot of time talking about your own experiences with not being taken seriously because of your gender.
Do you know this for a fact or are you speaking out of your…oh, I don’t know…you fill in the blank.
margin, if OJ doesn’t have any black friends, then what race is best friend Al Cowlings? You know, the guy that was driving the Bronco in the infamous slow-speed chase? All this time I was thinking Cowlings was a black man, but here I found out he can’t be black because OJ doesn’t have any black friends. Thanks for shaking that preposterous idea out of my head.
Can I ask how you know he doesn’t have any pictures of black people in his house? He had kids in his first marriage and I find it hard to believe he doesn’t have any pictures of them up. Since it’s obvious that you’ve been to his house, can you also tell me why it’s so inconceivable that he wouldn’t have pictures of his mom, siblings, or former teammates?
And I’m about to lecture you, old wise one. Stop speaking as if you are some kind of OJ expert when you are not. At least go peruse Google before you start spouting off things you know not of. At least BobLibDem was gracious enough to admit that he got his facts wrong. I’d appreciate if you could do the same and stop acting as if you’ve got some inside knowledge of a man who for all intents and purposes is a complete stranger to you.
Uh, ** you with the face** it’s been noted repeatedly that Johnny Cochran went through Simpson’s house before the jury saw it and removed all the photos of Simpson’s white girlfriends, white golfing buddies, and so on. He has one black friend? Two? Still doesn’t change the fact that Cochran did it, still doesn’t change the fact that Simpson has not dated a black woman in *years. *
Wow. You’re determined to jump to that conclusion aren’t you? I’d reccomend you read Strange Justice about the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill incident, and Anita Hill’s own book, which details some of what she went through. The prosecutor in the Tyson case detailed exactly what Desiree Washington went through from members of her own community during the trial in his book on the case. You or Pizzabrat brought the matter up for discussion by implying that white people wouldn’t care about Simpson if his victims had been black. At the very least, this implies that this would not be the viewpoint of black people. The experiences of Washington and Hill prove otherwise. The issue is not whether sexism exists in the white community, but whether, as has been implied here, whether it’s deployed only in a racist fashion. It would appear that this happens in both communities. The difference is, you’re not acknowledging it at all.
Lawrence Schilling and Jeffrey Toobin both pointed out the picture-removing incident in their books, and pointed out that pictures of Simpson’s white friends, girlfriends, and so on were replaced with some of Cochran’s own pictures. Simpson essentially lived in a white world. You’re just determined to avoid that, aren’t you? The guy had a mostly-white circle of friends, dated only white women, and you refuse to acknowledge that.
What puzzles a lot of people about the Simpson case is because it’s about this guy. I mean, we’re not talking about some guy who’s innocent, stuck on Death Row, and needs the attention and assistance. We’re talking about a wife-beater who finally killed the wife. And he got away with it. We got told by the newspapers and magazines that the black community acquitted him because they were tired of police abuses and so on, but why this scumbag? We were told that it wasabout race. Gender was completely ignored. Nicole Simpson was, if I remember correctly, one of seven battered women killed just on that day, and only because her ex was a semi-famous guy did she get any attention at all. It didn’t seem possible to talk about race and sex simaltaneously, and that doesn’t seem to have changed today much.
Is race the big issue of this case, or is gender? The defense made it about race, and gender just kind of got buried. But it was a real simple case down at the bottom: guy beats wife for years, she leaves him, and he killed her. I think if it had been dealt with from a perspective of a woman’s issue rather than a racial issue, it would have made too many people uncomfortable—I mean, here’s a guy who undoubtedly experienced racism in his life, turning around and dishing out sexism in its purest form to his wife. All different kinds of men are wife-beaters. That would have given a perspective that would have made everybody uncomfortable. I mean, you can’t really make a victim out of a guy who beats his wife. Therefore, he had to be framed by somebody and avoid all the unpleasant thoughts about wife-beating and so on.
Well, all of this stuff about Simpson’s circle of friends is immaterial to me. The only reason I even responded to you and BobLibDem comments about his dating history etc., is to show that you are making assertions that are not based on fact, but rather your own biased ideas about who the man is. They are conclusions that have been jumped to because that is what you feel and believe. Not because that is what you know. And so when I point out that OJ married a black woman and actually has at least one black friend, you try to backpedal and act as if all that is not important now.
Well, I agree; it’s not important. But it does show that you’re not operating from a “just the facts, maam” perspective like you insist that you are. The more you post, the more obvious that becomes to me.
What the *&^% do Anita And Desiree have to do with OJ? You haven’t explained why these women have any bearing on the OP.
No, it means that had Nicole and Ron been black, the OJ Simpson trial would not have become the media orgy that it turned out to be. I also believe white people wouldn’t have become as emotionally invested in the trial’s outcome as they ended up being. Black people, as well, would have probably not been so quick to defend OJ. There would have been less racial polarization, with more whites seeing OJ as innocent and more blacks seeing OJ as guilty. Why you think Anita Hill has anything to do with my opinion on this baffles me.
Perhaps because all of that is irrelevant to my argument.
Again, you are seeing things from a perspective that is not rooted in objectivity. So what if OJ had pictures of white girlfriends? Does that mean he had no pictures of black people? No it doesn’t, and believing so is to fall prey to fallacy. Since I’ve never seen his house or talked to anyone who has been in his house, I’m not in the position to say what kind of pictures OJ has on the walls. You, on the other hand, feel as if all you have to do is read a couple of blerbs to know that OJ has nothing but white folks on the walls. Sorry, but I can’t call that logical.
Maybe because I don’t care? OJ Simpson could be living in a Lilliputian world and it wouldn’t change the opinions I’ve expressed in this thread.
This was just one of those big overhyped events that stirred up all kinds of bad blood for a number of reasons. Lance Ito’s continuous grandstanding certainly didn’t help, and racial tensions came into play at nearly every turn (including a clearly racist Mark Furman).
An interesting counterpoint one of my college teachers pointed out (he’s also a lawyer, BTW) was that, despite an extensive search, nobody ever found the murder weapon or bloodstained clothes. How could Simpson have completely disposed of the knife and clothes and changed into a fresh set of clothes in between the time of the killings and the next time he was seen?
So while it’s possible, and in fact likely, that Simpson contracted someone to do the murders (Michael Moore makes this exact argument in Stupid White Men, strangely enough), there was never enough evidence to convict him of first degree murder.
In other words, OJ Simpson was charged with the wrong crime from the very beginning. Were the charge conspiracy to commit murder, it would have been a slam dunk, and Simpson would be faced with a lengthy prison sentence at minimum. But the prosecution got greedy…it’s the chair or nothing!..and when it became clear they couldn’t win clean, they cheated. Johnny Cochran called them on it, and the rest was just a formality.
I don’t give a damn about who he associates with or how many athletes in the past have gone bad or how many black suspects have been unfairly executed. He committed a crime, and because the prosecution got complacent and greedy, he got off scot free. There’s the travesty.
Didn’t Robert Shapiro want to do a plea bargain before the case was tried? I don’t have a cite handy, but I remember hearing that somewhere. Isn’t that another vote for guilty?
You people who think that the gloves didn’t fit because they
shrank
were going on over rubber gloves
didn’t fit
have not tried to dress a child who didn’t want to get dressed. If you watch how he scrunched up is hand into a near fist while he “tried” to put the glove on you would know that he was making sure it didn’t go on.
DKW: “…despite an extensive search, nobody ever found the murder weapon or bloodstained clothes. How could Simpson have completely disposed of the knife and clothes and changed into a fresh set of clothes in between the time of the killings and the next time he was seen?”
That’s why a lot of people would like to know about the black duffel bag he gave to Kardashian.
margin, my understanding FWIW of the main reason for the celebrations in the black community wasn’t really support for OJ the person, or a real belief in his innocence, but that a PD with a reputation for racism and abusiveness had been humbled and would have to be far more careful and respectful of them in the future. I think I can understand a judgment that that result was worth letting a murderer go free; after all, that happens fairly often anyway. There were even a number of stories later on about political correctness in the black community, in which it was understood that one should not express belief in his guilt lest this victory against police racism and abuse be somehow undermined.