Tired of hearing about O.J

 I am tired of hearing about O. J.  It has been many years, yet the names Mark Furman, Judge Ito, Johnny Cochran, and Orenthal James Simpson still raise an eyebrow. Was this because they were involved with something so bizarre and out of the ordinary that the public cannot forget it? Were they a part of something so big that it should be in the next edition of your child’s history textbook? No. They just happened to be the characters in a story with which the media was obsessed. The media could not let go of this addiction; it was the crack cocaine of broadcasting. The media contaminated the airways with “O.J. mania”. All they did was talk about O.J. all day every day. Isn’t that an obsession when the same item needs to reviewed again and again? The media would have tantrums if its O.J. fix was interrupted. Heaven forbid there be some real news! It would be like smashing a crackhead’s bong. The media would have anxiety attacks when he wasn’t able to talk about O.J. But with every memo from the courthouse or even notes written on lunchroom napkins of clerks and paralegals, it was enough to calm his nerves and let him continue his ritual of talking about O.J. 

Compulsions are defined as repetitive, purposeful, and intentional behaviors that are performed in response to an obsession, or according to certain rules, or in a stereotypical fashion. Most studies concluded that patients possess lower than average intelligence. The average sufferer of this disease has many types of compulsive behavior. The anxiety of the sufferer is caused through its persistence. Maybe this is why talking about O.J. all day was the media’s only ritual during his murder trial. These sufferers carried out activities such as talking to O.J.’s third grade teacher, interviewing people who lived next door to him from when he was in kindergarten, following his family around, interviewing his ex-wife, talking to every maid that ever worked for him, making his house guest famous for no reason, and hiding in bushes just to get pictures of anybody who ever had a conversation with O.J.. The excessive coverage hit an all-time high when his murder trial began, pre-exempting all daytime programming to present this event. Taking pictures of him playing golf, having the cameras follow him around while he was riding in a golf cart–what purpose did this serve?

But isn’t all of this regular paparazzi stuff? Isn’t it what celebrities complain about–not having any privacy and having people jump out to take their picture? The media’s actions show that it was much more than this. When it appeared they had said all that they could say, they found a need to tell us the ethnic background of the jury. Never before was the racial makeup of a jury an issue. They celebrate the fiasco by having reunion documentaries every year on the dates of when the murders happened. The public gets to hear about every time O.J. gets a parking ticket, or when his kids do something.  The media has an obsession to tell us every detail. They constantly talked to the families of the murder victims, they presented polls of how people felt about the case, and changed photographs to make O.J. look darker and more sinister. It has been almost fifteen years and yet even today, the media still wants to tell us when O.J. is taking a dump. If the media is not cured we may hear little stories about O.J. the rest of our lives. Think about the money O.J.’s trial generated. People who worked for the county signed book deals and never had to work again. O.J. single-handedly created twenty-four-hour news channels.

Yes, he was on trial for killing his ex-wife and her friend. Both of the victims were white. I believe that is the only reason media news had this obsession. If the victims would have been black, there would not have been extensive coverage. But let’s be realistic. A white Bronco went down the freeway in what looked like a police escort on a Sunday afternoon drive. In Los Angeles wanted felons always take to the freeway and risk many lives doing so. But for O.J., they pre-empted NBA finals to show me his Bronco driving down the damn freeway. Hello! This could have waited for the evening news. Chuck Stuart killed his pregnant wife, Carol, and said he had been robbed and shot by a black gunman, but later his brother confessed to helping him hide the gun used in the killing. The media told us about it but there was no obsession. Susan Wright stabbed her husband 193 times because she said he abused her. It might have started out as self-defense, but don’t you think after about the tenth stab it was no longer self-defense? However, the news wasn’t obsessed with this story. What about Sen Sienberg in Arizona who killed his wife by stabbing her 26 times? He first said two dark, bushy haired men did it. Then when he realized the evidence pointed at him, he decided to come forward and confess. The reason he said he killed his wife was because he got tired of her nagging him. To me this should have been the story of the century–a man killing his wife because he was tired of her nagging. I don’t care if the guy is famous or not, that is a big story. And he was acquitted with the nagging story defense. But the media wasn’t obsessed with this. How do we know it wasn’t obsessed? Because eight out of ten people who just read those examples are now searching Google for those names. It is not indelibly stamped on one’s conscience like O.J. was. Ok, granted these people were not famous before the murders, but Robert Blake was. With O.J., the media took it upon itself to tell everybody he use to beat his ex-wife and how great Nicole was. But when reporting on Blake’s wife, they tried to create sympathy for Blake by telling us all the negative things about his murdered wife. Finally, years later after people complained, the media became obsessed with the Scott Peterson case, but here is the key. You can bet the newscasters on the news channel will be white men discussing the case, so there is an automatic balance. During the O.J. case how many other women were killed by their husbands or boyfriends? But the media focused all this attention on one case. 

Do I think O.J. did the killings? Let me say this, and this will be the last thing I say about O.J. I thought he did it, and many black people thought he did it. What I didn’t like is how the media tried to make it look like all my brothers and sisters thought he was innocent. The media went to the black people who thought O.J. was innocent or didn’t care either way; they were just happy to see a black man set free. The media kept presenting the public with its twisted polls, making it look like all my brothers and sisters thought he was innocent. This also played in the aforementioned fact that they put so much emphasis on the racial composition of the jury. Blacks thought he was innocent because he was black, and, since there were blacks on the jury, they couldn’t be impartial. They sent out the message that the justice system failed because blacks were involved, not because a racist falsified evidence to frame a man. Guilty or not, real polls taken before and after the verdict showed about 68% of the black people thought O.J. was guilty. After the verdict, the media was in all the black barbershops and beauty salons showing people jumping up and down while they clapped and cheered like the won the lottery. That is the subtle subconscious visual cues YAAAMS has always tried to point out. Many of them were probably jumping not because they thought he was innocent but because they knew they had been through hell all of their lives and finally a brother got off like the rich white man had been doing for years. 

Mark Furman, the detective who found the key piece of evidence around the back of the house (yes, the murder suspect left one glove in the back of his house) got caught lying on the stand. Now he is an expert commentary for one of the news’ twenty-four-hour channels. This man perjured himself in front of everybody. Didn’t the media say this is why President Clinton should be impeached? The rule of law is important. What a way to send a message. A cop gets caught lying on the stand, but now makes money on news shows because of his lie. What a great example of our justice system. To tell you the truth, most black people I know didn’t even care about the case. They were too busy going to work trying to make some money to put food on the table and toilet paper in the bathroom. But the media never presented that kind of black person.

The O.J. compulsive disease didn’t affect just the airwaves and the subconscious of the weak-minded. It had a very real effect on me. At the time of the case, I was the only black person at this business and worked as a clerk. Before the verdict, all my co-workers were nice and courteous to the token brother (me). After that things changed. Some didn’t want to talk to me. I wanted to yell at the top of my voice: “I am NOT ORENTHAL JAMES SIMPSON! WE DO NOT SHARE DNA. WE ARE both black, NOT COUSINS.” But, I digress. I got a hold of myself because I was drawing a paycheck, and I don’t have to talk to someone to do my job. What a concept. It was very interesting how in the O.J. case none of these ditto heads even knew any of the victims, but a black man can do something many miles away from me, a man I’ve never met, but yet it makes some ditto heads think of me differently the very next day. In the case of my job, two weeks later, after the effects of the verdict wore off at my job, the ditto heads wanted to start talking to me again. I was like that is OK, but I don’t want to talk to you. Then the same ditto heads who treated me differently after the verdict had the nerve to ask what was wrong with me, and why was I so quiet. Why did I have an attitude? The nerve of some people! Then one night I was watching the news and this former prosecutor was on. It was Vincent Bugliosi, the one who prosecuted Charles Manson, and he talked about how the O.J. verdict made some white people prejudice against blacks. Then years later I was watching the Dennis Miller show and he said something similar. I wanted to yell out and say that was one black man, and the verdict didn’t come out until 1995. What were all the other excuses for prejudice before the verdict? But it made me realize that the media knows how to portray a story to make you feel anger towards someone or sympathy. Trial of the century? That is straight up bull shit. At the same time the media was nursing its obsession with O.J., almost one million black people were being slaughtered in Rwanda. I mean the news spent all that energy covering two dead white people, and nothing on almost one million dead black people. He also had the nerve to spend some energy talking about one million black men marching in Washington, while nearly one million black people were dead in the streets of Rwanda.

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