This Piece About OJ is Awful

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If you read David’s story yesterday about some of the more extreme reactions to OJ Simpson’s death, then you’re already familiar with this trend. There is a certain kind of commentator who can’t resist the urge to paint OJ’s life story not just as a human tragedy about a man who murdered the mother of his own children in a fit of jealous rage, but as a symbolic story about the plight of being black in America.

The hook for this kind of analysis is that, for years before his downfall, OJ saw himself as having transcended blackness. Here’s the opening of the AP story about his death:

For a long time, O.J. Simpson was the man who had it all.

He lived the American dream as a sports legend, movie actor, commercial pitchman and millionaire. With his wildly successful career, startling good looks and a gorgeous wife, he became an image of success for Black Americans and was embraced by people of all races. It was safe for everyone to love Simpson, who inhabited a world of glamour and privilege available to few.

“I’m not Black, I’m O.J.,” he liked to tell friends.

It all came crashing down in the summer of 1994, when Simpson’s ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, was found dead outside her condominium in Los Angeles.

There’s a disjuncture in those few paragraphs, though the AP is being somewhat sly about it. It’s true that OJ’s world came crashing down in 1994 but not because he was black or even because he dared to believe it didn’t matter to most people that he was black. HIs world came crashing down because he murdered two people.

Now consider an opinion piece published by the NY Times today. Author Wesley Morris is trying to make the same leap that OJs feelings about race were central to his story.

In some other realm, the football career and its showbiz afterlife, pitching rental cars and enlivening spoofery, would have warranted the plain-old Great American treatment. Let’s even include his distaste for race. That just complicates the greatness. But look at what became of that distaste: the gash. There was something hopeful about the iconoclast in O.J., for he dared to defy the limits placed on his Black self. Many Great Americans sought to shed the supposed stigma of their Blackness. They marched, they protested, they organized, they led. O.J. did as O.J. was famous for doing, and juked. He shed the Blackness itself, disowned it. His race was incompatible with his American dreams, with his O.J.-ness. Why couldn’t he have what white people had? Why couldn’t he live as they did? Indeed. Why couldn’t he?

The man was not an intellectual — not in any conventional sense. He did exist as an idea, though, as a curious, compelling, perhaps glorious “what if?” What if a Black man were free to live as himself and never face a consequence for merely being? What if white people truly just saw him as he wished they would — as O.J.? He appeared to be living just that dream. In a place some call “La La Land,” no less. But it was more like a program the La Las once produced: “Fantasy Island.”

He found himself the nexus of a murder case in 1994, accused of stabbing to death his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman, beckoning the Richter scale. He was the defendant. Yet almost immediately it was evident that American history was on trial.

Why couldn’t OJ live his life as something more than just a black man? The answer is he clearly could and did. He was rich and lived in Brentwood. He was famous and beloved by people of all races for his sense of humor. He was for Hertz rental cars what Flo has become for Progressive insurance a kind of constant presence in living rooms. He had a decent career in TV and movies. In fact, he was up for the lead role in a new action TV series called Frogmen, intended to be a kind of fresher version of the A-Team which had been a hit in the 1980s.

But notice how Morris frames the murder case in the passive voice. ” He found himself the nexus of a murder case in 1994…” he writes, as if this was some kind of American myth about a black Icarus who flew too close to the sun and then fell to earth under the weight of American history. In fact, he uses that exact metaphor in his closing paragraph.

One man did this. One man believed he could transcend the tale of this place. That he could reject what a life here has tended to entail if you’re Black. One man scrambled our common sense, seduced our better natures and rational selves. One man confirmed anew that a Black Icarus stands a reasonable chance of winding up Bigger Thomas.

What complete nonsense.

OJ didn’t find himself in the center of a murder case. OJ had seen Nicole that night at a dance recital for their daughter. He complained to Kato Kaelin that Nicole was keeping him from seeing his daughter and said he thought Nicole’s dress was too tight. So sometime later that night he drove over to her house and knocked on the door. He probably planned to shout at her about custody or maybe about her tight dress and something set him off. He wound up nearly decapitating her with a knife. Ron Goldman was there to return Nicole’s glasses and maybe it was just a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. OJ murdered him too, got back in his car, drove home, changed his clothes and left for the airport.

OJ wound up in the nexus of a murder case because he murdered two people! Had he not murdered two people he would not have “found himself” there. 

It’s worth adding that distaste for double-murderers in not a thing that white Americans only feel when the murderers are black. To return to my earlier comparison, if we all learn tomorrow that Flo from Progressive went out last weekend and shot two people in a fit of rage, I can assure you her ability to live out her American dreams will also come to a swift end. And, like OJ, she will wind up in the “nexus” of a murder trial if she left a trail of blood leading back to her house.

Remember Jared Fogle from the Subway commercials? How is his career going? In case you missed it, he pleaded guilty to child pornography and another charge back in 2015 and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. His soonest release date is March 24, 2029. But how could this have happened when Jared Fogle is white? 

Oh, right, because he was guilty. He committed horrible crimes and he lost everything. It had nothing to do with race or his feelings about race.

In an alternate universe, OJ could have lived out his life as a well-loved and respected actor and former sports hero. He could have died an old man in his house in Brentwood and been mourned by people of all races as a beloved figure. In that alternate universe, his property would be awash in mourners and flowers this week. All he had to do to live out that future was not be a murderer and a wife beater. That’s not a high bar set to punish successful black people, it’s a low bar set to punish violent creeps. OJ was a violent creep. That’s 100% of the reason why American turned its back on him.

Just one comment this time:

This piece goes to great rhetorical pains to obscure two pretty straightforward facts: first, that Simpson abused Nicole Brown when they were married and second, that when she escaped his abuse, he stalked and harassed her, and ultimately murdered both her and Ron Goldman. 

We can put all kinds of crimes into broader contexts, but I have no patience for those who try to explain away domestic violence and femicide.