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Orenthal James Simpson never fulfilled his pledge to find the “real killers” and if he knew who they were, it was a secret he took to his grave.
“The Juice” passed away from cancer at 76 years old, leaving behind a “complex legacy” that began with his life as a superstar running back for the NFL’s Buffalo Bills and the first man to break the 2,000-yard rushing barrier – in only 14 games.
Simpson would also go on to become a prominent pitchman for products, including running through airports for Hertz, and would also star in movies and television, although he would later become infamous in the savage murder of his ex-wife and her young friend in 1994.
But what will be O.J.’s most enduring achievement is his contribution to the ongoing deterioration of race relations in America.
Simpson’s 1995 criminal trial for the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman would go a long way toward laying the groundwork for the narrative that the police are racists, one that has grown only more toxic and untrue over the years.
The ex-football star spared no expense on his defense in what was billed as the “trial of the century,” a media spectacle that would do much to influence modern-era tabloid journalism which was the bridge between an actual media and the festering corpse of the once-noble profession now on display in cable television newsrooms.
In opening his checkbook to assemble the legal “Dream Team” which included the legendary F. Lee Bailey and race hustler Johnnie Cochran, Simpson turned what should have been a sober legal proceeding for the merciless slaughter of two innocent people into a grotesque, racially-charged circus in which the n-word was casually tossed around. Especially to smear former Los Angeles Police Detective Mark Fuhrman who was portrayed as the racist cop out to take down the successful black celebrity, even if he had to allegedly plant evidence to do it.
Having whipped up racial resentment to divide the nation and to play on the emotions of the mostly black jury, Cochran earned every penny that Simpson shelled out with his climactic moment of having the defendant try on the now-shrunken glove found at the scene of the murders.
“If the glove don’t fit, you must acquit,” the high-priced attorney told the jury which, despite what many believed was overwhelming evidence of his guilt, let O.J. off the hook for the double murders.
On the day of Simpson’s death, a resurfaced clip of one of the jurors was posted to social media – which didn’t yet exist in the mid-nineties – suggesting that verdict was payback for the cops and that blacks on juries are obligated to stick it to whitey.
O.J. Simpson juror casually admitting that 90% of them knew he kiIIed Nicole and Ron, but let him off for revenge: pic.twitter.com/mySjMzWwQ5
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) April 11, 2024
In the juror’s case, it was revenge for Rodney King but it may as well be George Floyd three decades later.
Another resurfaced video showed the celebration from Oprah’s audience as “The Juice” was set loose by the tainted jury.
This was Oprah’s audience reacting to OJ Simpson’s verdict in real time (1995).
Polarization is not a new phenomenon. pic.twitter.com/CNZ7ce1c7X
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) April 11, 2024
“Not only did we play the race card, we dealt it from the bottom of the deck,” lamented another Simpson “Dream Team” member, attorney Robert Shapiro who later acknowledged that he found Cochran’s conduct to be beyond the pale.
In many ways, “If the glove don’t fit you must acquit” would later become “Hands up don’t shoot” and “I can’t breathe” in an America that, after the Simpson trial, would continue to fracture along racial lines with the ascendance of the smooth-talking, former community organizer Barack Obama, a man who couldn’t have unleashed more hate upon the nation if he were the devil himself.
Younger people won’t remember but the 1980s and early 1990s were a period when America came as close to racial parity and the virtual nonexistence of actual racism as ever in the nation’s history, coming very close to fulfilling Dr. King’s dream until the O.J. trial not only ripped off the bandage from the nearly healed wound, but allowed cynical operators to rub rock salt into it – one of them being Mr. Obama.
“The Juice” may have taken his hunt for the killers into the afterlife but his legacy will sadly live on for long after the dirt has been shoveled onto his coffin.
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Author: I.M. Slugga
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