MAUREEN CALLAHAN: OJ Simpson beat Nicole for years... then slit her throat so ... trends now
If there's one thing you'd think Americans could agree upon 30 years later, it's that OJ Simpson was a wife-beating double-murderer who got away with it.
But the usual mainstream media outlets — the New York Times, NBC, ABC, the L.A. Times, New York magazine and NPR, just to name a few — are eulogizing him as a football legend who suffered greatly in a racist America that nonetheless made him rich, famous, and handed him a not guilty verdict despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Here was the New York Times, in a subhead that ran moments after his death on Thursday:
'He ran to football fame… But his world was ruined after he was charged with killing his former wife and her friend'.
His world was ruined.
The Times did not even name his 'former wife' and 'her friend'.
The usual mainstream media outlets are eulogizing him as a football legend who suffered greatly in a racist America that nonetheless made him rich, famous, and handed him a not guilty verdict despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Such callousness and cowardice extends to the White House. President Biden's press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, an utter mediocrity verging on camp, offered sympathies… to OJ's surviving relatives. How morbid and tone-deaf can she be?
'Our thoughts are with his family and loved ones,' Jean-Pierre said before making a hasty exit.
NBC New York, in their coverage Thursday night, called Simpson a 'complicated' person whose passing left many Americans 'conflicted'. Has it, really?
NPR, aggressively ignorant: 'What legacy does he leave behind?'
CNN contributor Ashley Allison, who has worked for Obama and Biden, on that network: 'He represented something for the black community in that moment, in that trial, particularly because there were two white people who had been killed. And the history around how black people have been persecuted during slavery.'
Yes, Allison was apparently linking the violent murder of two innocents — one a young mother who happened to be white — to slavery, with not a single challenge from her on-air interlocutors.
What serious person, let alone national news chiefs, can countenance such grossly distorted reframing?
For those who don't recall or weren't alive: The crime scene photos remain online.
Nicole Brown Simpson, his 35-year-old ex-wife, was slaughtered so violently that she was nearly decapitated. You can see her larynx through the blood pooling in her neck.
Nicole and OJ's two children were asleep upstairs during the blitz attack on their mother. Their daughter Sydney was eight years old. Their son Justin was five.
If not for a neighbor who went outside and found Nicole's dog wandering with a bloody paw, Sydney and Justin most likely would have discovered this gore, their mother crumpled in the fetal position and slathered in blood.
Nicole's friend Ron Goldman, there that night by chance, was similarly severed at the neck. He was only 25 years old.
But so much of the media still won't honestly cover OJ Simpson.
For those who don't recall or weren't alive: The crime scene photos remain online. Nicole Brown Simpson, his 35-year-old ex-wife, was slaughtered so violently that she was nearly decapitated. You can see her larynx through the blood pooling in her neck. (Pictured: Nicole and OJ with their children).
How fitting, this week, to see a longtime NPR editor writing for The Free Press about liberal newsroom orthodoxy choking objective coverage. The Wall Street Journal has a similar piece about The New York Times.
To read and listen to those outlets is to believe that OJ was just a complex guy who faced many challenges, none of his doing.
'A handsome warrior with the gentle eyes and soft voice of a nice guy,' the New York Times purrs in its obituary. 'And he played golf'.
Well, then!
The Times, in its front-page story and internal two-page spread, didn't even run a photo of Ron Goldman. Nor did they run a single image of a bruised and battered Nicole, or a crime scene photo.
Columnist Maureen Dowd compared Simpson to Othello, called his case 'a great American tragedy', and refrained from calling him a killer.
What a disgrace. What an affront to women and victims of domestic violence.
The crime scene was among the most gruesome the LAPD had ever seen. Nicole was a battered wife who had called the cops for years, begging them to arrest OJ after the latest beating he inflicted, but
