As we reported earlier, people are mocking the AP's ridiculous headline announcing the death of O.J. Simpson:
Legendary athlete, actor and millionaire: O.J. Simpson's murder trial lost him the American dream https://t.co/YEdoWgWwzj
— The Associated Press (@AP) April 12, 2024
Nicole Brown Simpson nearly lost her head. Excuse us if we don't see Simpson as the victim here.
In a true "hold my beer" move, NBC News decided to come up with an even worse take.
O.J. Simpson’s rise on the field came as American culture was shifting, following the intense peak of the civil rights era.
— NBC News (@NBCNews) April 12, 2024
His downfall symbolized something deeper to many Black Americans. https://t.co/22WfYHWZty
Seriously? As we reported Marc Lamont Hill posted that O.J. Simpson was a monster and most definitely guilty of murder, but his acquittal was "the correct and necessary result of a racist criminal legal system." A lot of us don't see it that way. But NBC News, writing under its NBC BLK imprint, reminds of of how Simpson's downfall was a symbol of something deeper to many black Americans.
Michelle Garcia reports:
With the trial’s every detail broadcast in wall-to-wall coverage on cable news — a pure anomaly at the time — Simpson’s downfall symbolized something deeper to many Black people, particularly with the 1992 L.A. riots still fresh in their minds.
“The African American community has accepted him not as an athlete or a hero, but as someone in the criminal justice system who, like them, would have been railroaded, they would say, if he had not had a Johnnie Cochran there to rescue him,” said Charles Ogletree Jr., a Harvard Law School professor who told PBS’s “Frontline” in 2005 that as Simpson became more successful, he seemed to become increasingly disjointed from Blackness. (Cochran was a key member of Simpson’s legal defense team.)
“O.J. Simpson was raceless,” said Ogletree who founded Harvard’s Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice and died last year. “He was not a person who spent time in African American communities. He was not a person who was deeply committed to African American values.”
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Hill said something similar, saying that Simpson had abandoned his community long before the double murder. And yet, as Garcia reports, "'Everybody was running out of their house, screaming and happy,' recalled journalist and cultural critic Jasmyne Cannick, who was a teenager living near Compton when the verdict came down," adding, "'He symbolized the Black man and the criminal justice system at the time,' Cannick said. 'Him beating the case, at the time, was everybody beating the case. We finally won one.'"
Simspon got away with murder, literally, but at least "we finally won one."
You do not hate the media enough.
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) April 12, 2024
WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS?!
— Meara (@MillennialOther) April 12, 2024
Isn’t it illegal to fellate a dead man?
— 🫃🏼💉🇺🇦Hollaria Briden, Esq. (@HollyBriden) April 12, 2024
NBC: OJ almost cut his ex-wife's head completely off because she was wearing a tight dress. Black Americans can really relate to that.
— End the Simpsons (@EndTheSimpsons) April 12, 2024
This might be the worst take yet.
— The Legalsaur (@legalsaur) April 12, 2024
Maybe he shouldn't have murdered people?
— ArchLobster 🇪🇨 🇺🇸 (@ArchLobster) April 12, 2024
Are you guys insane?
— zihinselorgazm (@zihinselorgazm) April 12, 2024
I'm pretty sure American culture was opposed to people committing double murder before and after the ascent of O.J. Simpson.
— AdamInHTownTX (Not a Neurologist) (@AdamInHTownTX) April 13, 2024
It's a shame that O.J.'s promising career was derailed just because he brutally murdered two white people with a knife.
— Interesting Times (@FreeTheBee22) April 12, 2024
Sorry for your loss
— Mighty Quinn - AFC EAST CHAMPS (@Coffin_Corner8) April 13, 2024
After years of psychological and physical abuse OJ finally slaughtered the mother of his children, along with an innocent bystander, with a knife, nearly beheading her in the process. Then he was exonerated because, hey it was just a couple of crackers!
— Wynn Duffy 🇱🇹 🇮🇱 (@WynnDuffyOG) April 12, 2024
What did it symbolize to black Americans? That they can kill white people and get away with it?
— Expose Them (@ExposeDarkDeeds) April 12, 2024
Of course, this overlooks how incredibly popular Simpson was until then.
— Raising Civic Literacy From the Dead (@raisingcivlit) April 12, 2024
But that doesn't fit the narrative.
They aren't going to let this new narrative die. https://t.co/8ykr6xZN0t
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) April 12, 2024
Man I feel really bad for this OJ guy he sounds like a real hero.
— JC (@Quato2) April 12, 2024
The intense era of the civil rights movement was in the 1960s. What kind of take is this? Simpson wasn't considered black, but blacks celebrated when he got away with murder because he'd beaten the racist justice system. Is that what we're supposed to take from this?
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