OJ 20 Years Later: Demonizing the Black Man
HE'S BACK! As I pointed out in my memoir, I first became aware of media bias during the interminable 1995 OJ trial. During that summer, I watched the trial live and then watched the media's summary and analysis of what happened that day. I was stunned by how biased their presentations were. The prosecutors' lawyering was called "strategies" while the defense's was called "tricks." The half hour news summaries would often present only information that made OJ look guilty, ignoring any exculpatory evidence. I suggested that some of the people who were so angered by the jury's perfectly reasonable verdict, given the number of questions the "dream team" of defense lawyers raised about the prosecutor's hill (hardly a mountain) of circumstantial evidence, were influenced by the biased media coverage. In fact, I suspect that some people who did not follow the trial as carefully as I did still believe that OJ had bloody clothes in his washer (he didn't), that there was a credible eye witness who saw him and his Bronco near the scene of the crime (that witness was a pathological liar), and that there were buckets of blood (instead of drops) found on OJ's property and in his car. I also suspect that some of the jurors were underwhelmed by the evidence the prosecutors presented because they had heard about the "mountain" of evidence before the trial began.
Although he's been in jail for years for having recovered or "stolen" his own memorabilia from a shady acquaintance, OJ is once again in the news. ABC and A&E are showing tapes from his 1997 civil trial deposition. Even before I learned that these supposedly exclusive, never-before-seen tapes had been shown on NBC in 1999, 2004, and 2014, I knew what these biased media folks were trying to do. They were offering a counter-narrative to the BlackLivesMatter narrative of unarmed black men (and boys) being killed by police. They were reminding us that twenty years ago on an early fall day in L.A., a black man who killed two beautiful young white people with a knife was set free by a cop-hating, mostly black jury. The "20-20" producers and correspondents didn't even try to hide their agenda. They made a direct connection between the jury who set OJ free and the blacks who are suspicious of cops today. They even showed a brief scene of people rioting, probably in Baltimore or Ferguson.
What they didn't show, as I pointed out in tweets to lawyer/correspondent Dan Abrams and "20-20" anchor Elizabeth Vargas (I finally figured out what to do with my previously useless Twitter account), is why the L.A., mostly black jurors might have been suspicious of cops and more willing to believe the dream team's arguments that evidence was mishandled and even planted. They didn't show the video of L.A. cops beating the crap out of Rodney King a few years before OJ took his Bronco ride. And they didn't discuss the L.A. police corruption scandal (the Rampart scandal) that broke a few years after OJ was set free. Maybe some of those black jurors had family members or friends who had been framed by corrupt L.A. cops.
Dan Abrams shamelessly repeated that mountain of evidence lie (although he didn't use that phrase) on "20-20" without giving credit to the dream team, especially MVP Barry Scheck, who now directs the Innocence Project, which has used DNA to free wrongly convicted people of all races. Mr. Scheck tore apart the prosecutors' blood evidence. He was brilliant and ruthless. In fact, other than Johnny Corcoran's closing rhyme, "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit," the most memorable line from the trial was Scheck's, "Where is it, Mr. Fung?" I felt sorry for the hapless Mr. Fung.
Worse than demonizing the OJ jury and failing to give his lawyers' credit, Vargas and Abrams failed to distinguish between OJ and the unarmed black men who have been killed by police. Even now when he is in jail, like so many other black men, and serving a lengthy sentence for a "crime" that would have led to (at most) a sentence of probation or community service for a white man, OJ is not like other black men. He still has more money and fame than they do. In fact, OJ has more in common with Italian, former child and television actor Robert Blake, another celebrity found not guilty of killing his wife, than with most black men. Can you imagine a middle-class black man being allowed to turn himself in when he was suspected of killing two white people with a knife? Can you imagine what would have happened to that black man if he had not turned himself in and was found driving the freeway in a white Bronco with his best friend at the wheel and a gun to his head? Would the police have slowly escorted that black man and his friend to his home, allowing him to use the bathroom and see his mama before politely taking him to jail? Of course not. Almost any other black man would have been lucky if the police only shot out the tires of that Bronco. More likely, he and his friend would have been on their way to a different home, their last resting place.
Here's my counter to ABC's counter-narrative. More black people have been falsely accused and wrongly imprisoned for killing or raping whites than have been set free when they were guilty. More guilty whites have been set free or not even tried for killing or raping blacks than vice versa. If a civilian of any race kills a cop and there are witnesses to that murder, the civilian will go to jail if he or she is not killed by other cops. Cops who kill unarmed civilians are often not even indicted. While some have been quick to blame those who protested police violence against unarmed civilians for the murders of three cops in two separate incidents, there seems to be no interest in connecting Donald Trump's comments about Mexican rapists or the portrayal of television's favorite father and doctor (Bill Cosby) as a rapist to the murder of nine black people in South Carolina by a white domestic terrorist who claimed that blacks raped their (whites) women. And I didn't hear anyone connecting the murder of three young Muslims by a white atheist in North Carolina to the angry outcry that accompanied Obama's rather mild statement that Christians had also behaved badly. Just before those three innocent Muslims were killed, even some so-called liberals were suggesting that Muslims were more savage (I guess they forgot about the KKK) than Christians.
Racism is America's original sin; the country began with slavery and the massacre of Native Americans. And the racism continues today with the unprecedented disrespect and hatred shown toward our half-black President and the ugly attacks on Mexican Americans and Muslims by some of the Republican candidates. Sometimes the media is helpful in pointing out the racism and demonizing the racists, but too often media outlets like ABC add to the racism.
The resurrection of OJ on "20-20" was a racist attack on blacks. And they should be demonized for engaging in such blatant racism.
Although he's been in jail for years for having recovered or "stolen" his own memorabilia from a shady acquaintance, OJ is once again in the news. ABC and A&E are showing tapes from his 1997 civil trial deposition. Even before I learned that these supposedly exclusive, never-before-seen tapes had been shown on NBC in 1999, 2004, and 2014, I knew what these biased media folks were trying to do. They were offering a counter-narrative to the BlackLivesMatter narrative of unarmed black men (and boys) being killed by police. They were reminding us that twenty years ago on an early fall day in L.A., a black man who killed two beautiful young white people with a knife was set free by a cop-hating, mostly black jury. The "20-20" producers and correspondents didn't even try to hide their agenda. They made a direct connection between the jury who set OJ free and the blacks who are suspicious of cops today. They even showed a brief scene of people rioting, probably in Baltimore or Ferguson.
What they didn't show, as I pointed out in tweets to lawyer/correspondent Dan Abrams and "20-20" anchor Elizabeth Vargas (I finally figured out what to do with my previously useless Twitter account), is why the L.A., mostly black jurors might have been suspicious of cops and more willing to believe the dream team's arguments that evidence was mishandled and even planted. They didn't show the video of L.A. cops beating the crap out of Rodney King a few years before OJ took his Bronco ride. And they didn't discuss the L.A. police corruption scandal (the Rampart scandal) that broke a few years after OJ was set free. Maybe some of those black jurors had family members or friends who had been framed by corrupt L.A. cops.
Dan Abrams shamelessly repeated that mountain of evidence lie (although he didn't use that phrase) on "20-20" without giving credit to the dream team, especially MVP Barry Scheck, who now directs the Innocence Project, which has used DNA to free wrongly convicted people of all races. Mr. Scheck tore apart the prosecutors' blood evidence. He was brilliant and ruthless. In fact, other than Johnny Corcoran's closing rhyme, "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit," the most memorable line from the trial was Scheck's, "Where is it, Mr. Fung?" I felt sorry for the hapless Mr. Fung.
Worse than demonizing the OJ jury and failing to give his lawyers' credit, Vargas and Abrams failed to distinguish between OJ and the unarmed black men who have been killed by police. Even now when he is in jail, like so many other black men, and serving a lengthy sentence for a "crime" that would have led to (at most) a sentence of probation or community service for a white man, OJ is not like other black men. He still has more money and fame than they do. In fact, OJ has more in common with Italian, former child and television actor Robert Blake, another celebrity found not guilty of killing his wife, than with most black men. Can you imagine a middle-class black man being allowed to turn himself in when he was suspected of killing two white people with a knife? Can you imagine what would have happened to that black man if he had not turned himself in and was found driving the freeway in a white Bronco with his best friend at the wheel and a gun to his head? Would the police have slowly escorted that black man and his friend to his home, allowing him to use the bathroom and see his mama before politely taking him to jail? Of course not. Almost any other black man would have been lucky if the police only shot out the tires of that Bronco. More likely, he and his friend would have been on their way to a different home, their last resting place.
Here's my counter to ABC's counter-narrative. More black people have been falsely accused and wrongly imprisoned for killing or raping whites than have been set free when they were guilty. More guilty whites have been set free or not even tried for killing or raping blacks than vice versa. If a civilian of any race kills a cop and there are witnesses to that murder, the civilian will go to jail if he or she is not killed by other cops. Cops who kill unarmed civilians are often not even indicted. While some have been quick to blame those who protested police violence against unarmed civilians for the murders of three cops in two separate incidents, there seems to be no interest in connecting Donald Trump's comments about Mexican rapists or the portrayal of television's favorite father and doctor (Bill Cosby) as a rapist to the murder of nine black people in South Carolina by a white domestic terrorist who claimed that blacks raped their (whites) women. And I didn't hear anyone connecting the murder of three young Muslims by a white atheist in North Carolina to the angry outcry that accompanied Obama's rather mild statement that Christians had also behaved badly. Just before those three innocent Muslims were killed, even some so-called liberals were suggesting that Muslims were more savage (I guess they forgot about the KKK) than Christians.
Racism is America's original sin; the country began with slavery and the massacre of Native Americans. And the racism continues today with the unprecedented disrespect and hatred shown toward our half-black President and the ugly attacks on Mexican Americans and Muslims by some of the Republican candidates. Sometimes the media is helpful in pointing out the racism and demonizing the racists, but too often media outlets like ABC add to the racism.
The resurrection of OJ on "20-20" was a racist attack on blacks. And they should be demonized for engaging in such blatant racism.
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