Orenthal James Simpson died Wednesday at the age of 76 as a man who had never been found guilty of murder.
Civilly liable? Sure, although the families of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman say they have never collected much of that. Shunned by the friends, advertisers and TV networks who, at the time of the killings on June 12, 1994, couldn’t have been more pleased to tout their association with the NFL legend? Of course. But found guilty? No.
But we’re supposed to have the presumption of innocence in our society, right? Simpson was tried in front of a jury of his peers in 1995 and, after a laboriously drawn-out televised spectacle of a trial, was acquitted after a short period of deliberations. Surely that means we can all say he was never a convicted murderer, right?
Well, that’s how it’s supposed to work. CNN, bless their low-rated hearts, decided to say the quiet part out loud after Simpson’s death was announced Thursday morning.
On April 10th, our father, Orenthal James Simpson, succumbed to his battle with cancer.
He was surrounded by his children and grandchildren.
During this time of transition, his family asks that you please respect their wishes for privacy and grace.
-The Simpson Family
— O.J. Simpson (@TheRealOJ32) April 11, 2024
Most media, in the aftermath of the news, tried to tiptoe around what happened between June 12, 1994, when Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman were killed, and Oct. 3, 1995, when the jury announced he was not guilty on all charges.
It showed the schisms of race in America, commentators said. Whites overwhelmingly believed the forensic evidence as it was presented by prosecutors, while black Americans saw another man being railroaded by a system designed to railroad them.
Take this description of Simpson from Zain Asher, who was on the news desk at noon on Thursday, according to a CNN transcript: Simpson was “certainly one of the most complicated — very controversial figure in modern times. A beloved, at one point, sports legend who became a hated villain in America because many people, of course, thought and believed that he killed his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, along with her dear friend, Ron Goldman.”
Do you believe CNN is a horrible network?
CNN correspondent Stephanie Elam, meanwhile, had this to say about the racial issue, calling Simpson one of the “earliest race shifters,” bringing America into contact with the inequalities the Rodney King beating and the subsequent Los Angeles riots had only begun to do.
“This was this black man who became super popular, super famous because of his athletic prowess. And then, once this heinous murder, these murders happened, everything changed for him, and he was reminded of just how much of a black man in America he was,” she said.
“Now, when you look at how everything played out in the ’90s, and I realize there’s a lot of people who weren’t even around now who may be watching this, to remember exactly how everything changed on a dime here.”
You’d think the man was George Floyd, the way he was being talked about. However, Elam was on air for much of the afternoon, and eventually, her guard on the issue began to slip — particularly when it came to the reaction of black America to the verdict in the case.
Elam at roughly 4:06 p.m. Eastern Time, with Jake Tapper at the desk: “And it’s also just worth noting how much … was impacted by this trial, Jake, so many things happened,” she said.
“We saw policing changing here in the city, and it’s also worth noting because of that unrest — that racial unrest in the ’90s, that is why so many people who may not have been invested in O.J. Simpson were just happy to see that someone who is rich and famous and black could get away with, er, what other people did in the system as well, too.”
JUST IN—CNN’s Stephanie Elam reporting on OJ Simpson’s death accidentally said the quiet part out loud:
“So many people were just happy to see that someone who is rich and famous, and black, could get away with… er … what other people did in the system as well, too.” pic.twitter.com/7j4zPCUlo5
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) April 11, 2024
Well, that’s certainly saying the quiet part out loud, as Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk noted.
It’s also an interesting apologia for Simpson. Yes, you saw all those white, rich people literally getting away with murder all the time. Thousands of Claus von Bülows just walking the streets of the Hamptons, Beverly Hills and Gstaad, able to off their wife — or whoever, really — and get F. Lee Bailey, a man whose moral scruples as a lawyer made Jacques Vergès look like Marcus Tullius Cicero, to convince a jury that they were innocent.
Now, finally, a black man who had committed murder could hire Bailey — and Johnnie Cochran, Robert Shapiro, Alan Dershowitz and Robert Kardashian, for that matter — and he could get back to Brentwood for a celebration dinner by eveningtime. America’s great racial healing could finally begin. The men who had fought and died for civil rights — Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers, James Chaney — could finally rest in peace, knowing that rich black men were free at last, free at last, free at last to brutally murder two people and get away with it, despite overwhelming forensic and circumstantial evidence against them.
I mean, allegedly. I’m sure Elam meant to say “allegedly.” Because he was absolutely 100 percent not guilty, Your Honor, right?
We cannot pretend that anything can or will be solved by holding to account the race hustlers who used O.J. Simpson’s case as a hammer and chisel to strike deep fractures into an already fractured American culture. We can, however, call them what they are: race hustlers. They disposed of O.J. Simpson as soon as the trial was done, too — because they knew full well he was an unrepentant murderer, which is more or less the most heinous crime one can commit.
He was useful in the most nauseating of ways, but even the cultural commentators who acknowledged his usefulness and tried to hide their disgust while the events of 1994 and 1995 played out refused to overcome the nausea after Simpson was indeed found absolutely 100 percent not guilty — because they knew, in their hearts, that the evidence proved guilt overwhelmingly and the verdict was merely a result of further despoiling, not “race shifting,” our country’s culture.
He died isolated, a figure of shame and disgust. That’s because everyone knew he was absolutely 100 percent guilty. It’s just that, for a short period of time, he was an absolute 100 percent opportunity to send a dark, disgusting message.
Nothing has gotten better in the nearly 30 years since the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were committed. Trust has eroded on all sides. America is a balkanized society, with identity groups willing to go to bat for the worst of people so long as they’re Our People™.
That didn’t start with O.J. Simpson, mind you. However, few men who have never held elected office — and their actions — are as responsible for where we find ourselves as Mr. Simpson and his enablers.
He now faces the judgment of the empyrean. Now that his life is back in the spotlight, it’s time for the opportunists who nakedly used him to face earthly judgment, as well.
