Hollywood Week: Disgraced Gridiron Great O.J. Simpson Dies
- Details
- Category: Entertainment News
- Published on Saturday, 13 April 2024 10:54
- Written by Janet Walker
Accused double murderer and disgraced grid iron great O.J. Simpson, who would never outrun the shadow of his domestic violence and spousal abuse, or regain his glory days as pitchman and movie star, died this week.
Disgraced Gridiron Great O.J. Simpson Dies
Disgraced grid iron great O.J. Simpson died this week, his family announced. The cause was cancer. He was 76.
Born in San Francisco in 1947, Orenthal James Simpson, from all accounts came from humble beginnings, many have said, he was born into a poor, black family, with little choices, either thug, military, or sports.
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Simpson ended up attending the University of Southern California on a football scholarship and as a senior won the coveted Heisman Trophy. This secured his professional football career. He also played for the San Francisco 49ers. Simpson, transitioned into the NFL effortlessly, continuing to gain sports fame, for the Buffalo Bills, where is played nine seasons.
His professional career was marked by record setting highs and awards. After he retired, he managed to seamlessly transition into sports commentary, endorsements, commercials, and eventually into films, cashing in on his looks, and ability to invoke those iconic sports moments, in a fast-paced world, he was a able to harness a natural comedic talent that played opposite the slap stick and dead pan sophomoric Leslie Nielsen "Naked Gun" comedy films.
As he aged a darker side of Simpson emerged. His wife, of seven years, Nicole Brown Simpson, and mother of their two young children, had many numerous domestic violence complaints to the Los Angeles Police Department, many of which were dismissed with an autograph. Celebrity has its perks.
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"What's remarkable, relistening to this call, is the resignation in Nicole's voice when she offers this piece of information. The sense that she already knows that providing her famous husband's name might change the treatment she receives, or doesn't; the privacy she receives, or doesn't; the credibility she is, or is not, believed to have," reported The Washington Post.
On the week leading up to her murder, Nicole made several calls to the police. They were dismissed. With abuser confidence O.J., continued to harass and terrorize his ex-wife. They were more of the same, harassment, terrorizing, and the 12 years age difference between them, had its effect on the aging "star" also.
On June 12, 1994, she along with an employee of the restaurant where she had eaten earlier that evening, Ron Goldman, would be viciously murder, stabbed repeated and Nicole would be nearly decapitated.
From the beginning it seemed clear that Simpson committed the crimes. What followed became the signature of Simpson's life, an incriminating slow moving Bronce chase through the highways and neighborhood of Los Angeles, a sort of swan song for a once great local hero, as Simpson was expected to kill himself, and the world was waiting in this new 24-hour news cycle to witness the Icarus downfall of the one-time gridiron great.
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This would become the age of crime television, and the introduction of the burgeoning science DNA, which during the summer of 1995, seemed stale and boring, and which would later become an unquenchable thirst for the world.
Amassing a "Dream Team" of attorney's, Los Angeles' most successful and celebrities themselves, in their professions, and the courtroom the stage. The trial became rating's gold and turning the traditional anonymous print journalist into well known and distinguished invitees to all the must be seen Hollywood dinner parties, where the conversation would, of course, be a recap of the week's proceedings, and the yawn, boring introduction of DNA.
"Bloodstains and other physical evidence linked him to the crime, but in 1995 a mostly Black jury accepted the defense team's claim that Mr. Simpson had been framed by racist Los Angeles police. Members of the jury took less than three hours to acquit him following a marathon eight-month trial that was nationally televised and pervaded by a circus atmosphere," reported The Washington Post.
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The nation sat glued to their television screens, and were set in two camps, divided along racial lines. He did it, it's obvious and he didn't do it or worse, he did, but we saw a tape of another African American, Rodney King, being viciously beaten by four white cops, and a white jury in Simi Valley acquitted them. So now this is our time.
Of course he was acquitted, and the most famous line from the entire trial, "If the gloves don't fit, the flashy Johnnie L. Cochren, said, to the world, the television audience, and the predominantly black jury, "You must acquit." And they did.
The payback was clear, at least to me, as I sat in the Journalism Department at New York University, watching the verdict. My belief in the innate ability of people to see beyond race died. I vowed never to speak about that verdict again. And I haven't until now.
Of course, O.J. didn't really get away with it. The verdict began the final downfall. There would be civil trials, in Brentwood, a predominately white neighborhood where he would be held accountable civilly for wrongful death in the murder of Ron Goldman, some justice but not really. He would later be arrested in Nevada, spend nine years in prison, for kidnapping and armed robbery, and the shadow of the murders would be the one tackle he couldn't break.
