O.J. back in primetime. Fox screenshot
The recent Fox News airing, of a 2006 interview, has some White Americans again railing against the one man who they believe clearly got away with murder—unlike, in their twisted reasoning, any other murder suspect in contemporary American history.
No, that man is not George Zimmerman; who murdered Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida, on February 26, 2012. Nor is it Officer Howie Lake or Blane Salamoni; both of whom murdered Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on July 5, 2016. In fact, the man is one many White Americans once “loved”—primarily, because of his status as a token Uncle Tom: Orenthal James Simpson.
Why did Fox News decide to air this old video and fan the flames of reactionary racism? Do flies gather around excreta?
Anything to divert attention from the problems faced by Fox News’ man in the Oval office.
There are currently many pressing neglected stories media should be addressing like the FBI’s reports regarding the infiltration of White supremacists into police departments. In October 2006, an FBI report—updated in 2015—warned of White supremacists “infiltrating law enforcement communities or recruiting law enforcement personnel.” The FBI labeled these individuals “Ghost Skins.”
Where are the news stories exposing this? Fox News’ bigwigs don’t lose sleep over a report like this.
Instead of focusing on this now irrelevant interview, why isn’t media digging into this “Ghost Skins” issue—especially, given the widespread nature of racist policing, which leaves so many dead Black bodies behind?
Hatred of O.J. has once again been become news through the recent emergence of the “If I Did It,” interview which recently played on Fox News, under the title “O.J. Simpson: The Lost Confession?”
TMZ also ran stories about White women who have been seen recently snuggling with O.J. for pictures. It’s hard not to notice that a certain amount of racist sexual jealousy has always permeated the hatred for O.J. He reminds many of boxing legend Jack Johnson who was also notorious for dating White women; while destroying men in the boxing ring.
This Fox interview, was originally slated for airing to coincide with a book, that has since been renamed: “If I Did It: Confessions of The Killer.” The change was made by the family of Ron Goldman, who along with Simpson’s ex-wife Nicole Brown, were killed on June 12, 1994. A judicial ruling gave possession of the book to the Goldman family to partially satisfy the findings from the civil trial against O.J.
The anger raised by the airing of this interview illustrates the hypocrisy of many who have concluded O.J.’s acquittal in the murder trial was the greatest miscarriage of justice ever in American jurisprudence. Somehow, the long list of Whites, who after having murdered African-Americans, then walked away scot-free after bogus trials, and all-White juries—from before Emmet Till’s murder trial to after Trayvon Martin’s murder trial—is never mentioned.
Truly two universes exist in these United States.
This duplicity is not helped when analysts—who engage in legal hair-splitting when we have hard video evidence of police killing Black people—decide to speak with absolute certainty when it comes to O.J. Simpson’s guilt.
For example, CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin wrote in a recent article that “O.J. killed his ex-wife [Nicole Brown] and her friend [Ron Goldman] by himself.” What evidence does Toobin provide to justify such a specific statement?
According to Toobin, “the murders were rather straightforward in terms of evidence. The two victims were knifed to death in a small space in front of Nicole’s townhouse… All of the evidence pointed to O.J. Simpson — alone — as the killer. A single set of bloody footprints were left at the scene. Simpson was photographed wearing a pair of the same kind of Bruno Magli shoes that left the prints. Drops of blood were found to the left of the footprints. DNA tests revealed that was Simpson’s blood.”
Toobin also talked about other blood evidence, including the bloody gloves and socks, that were allegedly “found,” at the murder scene, in O.J.’s house, and in his Ford Bronco. He also talked about a bandage on O.J.’s “left hand.”
But there is one glaring omission from Toobin’s article, that tumbles his whole argument: the involvement of disgraced racist former L.A.P.D. Detective Mark Fuhrman—who found all the incriminating evidence that those like Toobin base their certainty of O.J.’s guilt on.
Nowhere in his column does Toobin mention Detective Fuhrman’s compromised role. In fact, Toobin only superficially alludes to Fuhrman in his piece when he says “Of course, during the criminal trial, Simpson’s lawyer claimed that that evidence, including blood, was planted at the crime scenes by racist police officers to frame Simpson. To me, at least, this theory was never believable.”
He is banking on the knowledge that many who agree with him have already forgotten about Fuhrman; or was this racist n-word spewing cops role edited out of the Toobin piece?
Why isn’t it believable given Furhman’s decision to invoke his Fifth Amendment—on advice of his lawyer—when asked whether he had planted evidence in the case? Shouldn’t Detective Furhman’s answer have been an unequivocal no? Why isn’t this odd to “experts”, like Toobin—especially since Furhman, when he wasn’t under oath, claimed he didn’t plant evidence?
Multiple witnesses verified Detective Furhman as being a rancid racist who was proud of beating up “niggers,” during his time as a police officer. When the recorded tapes of one witness, writer Laura McKinney, who interviewed Furhman while working on a screenplay about female cops, was analyzed Furhman was counted as using the word nigger 41 times.
Another witness, Kathleen Bell, said Furhman expressed his hatred for interracial couples by saying, “If I had my way, all the niggers would be gathered together and burned.” Yet another witness, Natalie Singer, stated Furhman once told her “The only good nigger is a dead nigger,” and talked about how police officers, like him, would “take one of these niggers, drag ’em into the alley and beat the shit out of them.”
Much of this evidence was suppressed from the jurors. However, during the trial, one racist excerpt jurors heard was Furhman saying “We have no niggers where I grew up.”
Furhman was later given a job on Fox News as a forensic crime scene “expert.”
Why didn’t the esteemed CNN analyst Toobin mention any of this anywhere in his article? By dismissively ignoring racist police like Furhman a fundamental question gets overlooked: how many other Mark Furhmans are there presently working in police departments?
In New York, former NYPD Detective Louis Scarcella railroaded multiple Black men into prison. Some have since had their convictions overturned. Retired NYPD Sergeant Michael Race engaged in similar wrongful convictions of Black men. How many cops are out patrolling like these?
Instead of talking about O.J., why aren’t these pundits talking about the fact that Louisiana cops, Officer Howie Lake and Blane Salamoni are still walking free, in Baton Rouge—even though they are clearly seen murdering Alton Sterling, on video? These murderers discarded their body-cams, before killing Sterling, but, were recorded by civilian videos.
Where’s the outrage against these killer-cops?
In Chicago, Officer Jason Van Dyke is still roaming the streets as well—although, he was videotaped killing Laquan McDonald. Apparently, these killings don’t bother those who hate O.J.
Last year, in a rare instance of partial justice, Officer Michael Slager was given 20 years for murdering Walter Scott. But we should remember this: Slager was not convicted, but plead guilty, fearing the outcome of another trial. Given the fact he was acquitted, in the first trial, can we say with any degree of certainty he would’ve been convicted in a second trial?
Not surprisingly, media pundits are hardly ever honest in any conversation regarding race, including discussions about entrenched institutional racism in policing.
This year marked the 50 anniversary of the 1967 Kerner Commission Report, which in examining the reasons for the widespread race riots of that year, singled out, among other societal factors—like racist policing—America’s mainstream media, saying “The press has too long basked in a White world looking out of it, if at all, with White men’s eyes and White perspective.”
Yes, America’s White media is still “shockingly backward” as the Kerner report concluded 50 years ago.
