I don’t remember exactly where I was on June 12, 1994, when Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman were brutally murdered. Based on the timeline, I’m sure I was in Selleck Hall on UNL campus, attending summer classes. I was probably hanging out in my room watching Star Trek: The Next Generation when the news broke like distant thunder in a dark sky. I don’t remember where I was during the tense Ford Bronco chase either. I was probably taking a nap.
I do remember exactly where I was and what I was doing on October 2, 1995, when the verdict in the trial of the century was read. Like most of America, including children in classrooms across the country, I was tuned in and watching. I was in my room on the second floor of Selleck Hall’s main building, located right next to the elevator and directly above the famous dining hall. I was lying on my bed in front of my small TV with my room door open, as many guys on the floor did during the day hours. I watched in horror as the court clerk read the verdict, finding O.J. Simpson not guilty of murder. I remember hearing crying from the courtroom, as well as someone screaming, “No!”
What happened next is seared into my memory. A guy named Kenji, an African-American student who lived across the hall from me, began screaming and shouting. They weren’t screams of anger, outrage or fear. They were celebratory in nature, as if his football team just won the Super Bowl. I lay on my bed and choked down my anger as several other voices on the floor also joined in the cheers and whooping.
That moment was when I really got it for the first time. I saw the great racial divide that exists in America. Sure, I’d watched the Rodney King drama unfold three years earlier, but the names and voices from L.A. were just concepts coming to me out of the air. And sure, I’d been lectured at by sanctimonious professors in classrooms about racism and such. The Simpson verdict was when I really got the point.
In that moment as I listened to Kenji rejoicing over the liberation of a guy who butchered the mother of his kids, I hated the fucker. I didn’t hate him because he was black. Kenji and I served together in Selleck government and I always liked the guy. But now, I hated him for cheering on a rich asshole who literally got away with murder.
Nine years later, I was attending an NFBNewsline seminar in Baltimore. I was in a room known as the Quadrangle, a large space that held four beds. I had three roommates. Two of them were black. Somehow, the subject of O.J. Simpson came up. I remember feeling outnumbered and attacked as I stated that I was dead certain that O.J. had gotten away with murder. The two of them laughed at me. I remember the laughter to this day. It was scornful, mocking and derisive. They were confident in their assurance that O.J. had been framed for murder. Based on the way Nicole and Ron’s throats had been cut, it had obviously been done by gangsters to whom O.J. owed gambling debts. The murders were a warning to O.J. to either pay up or die. That’s why he ran. He feared for his life.
These two guys are suckers, I thought. They actually think that O.J. was innocent. They are buying into a conspiracy theory that has no basis in fact.
Now, after the death of O.J. Simpson four days ago from cancer at age 76, I have come to doubt my initial impulse. It was born of reflexive vexation for being mocked as if I were a loveable but simple child. Looking back on it, I firmly believe that both men knew full well that O.J. was guilty. They knew the truth for what it was, but they chose to advance a certain narrative in solidarity with their community. In other words, they were gaslighting me. They were gaslighting a dumb hick from Nebraska who didn’t know what it was like to grow up black in Atlanta. They were contemptuous of a white boy who just didn’t get black anger in America. They were chiding a clueless idiot who didn’t understand the healthy, well-earned suspicion that many black people harbored toward the police. That Ryan O. was a nice enough guy, but he was naïve at best, ignorant at worst. Yes, they had very good reasons to lie to me, but they were lying none the less.
How do I know they were gaslighting me? Because, I’ve experienced it time after time after time over the past 10 years. It’s been done again and again for the same reasons. The pattern is sickeningly familiar. The reasons are varied, from supporting a certain political candidate to protecting society from an invisible disease to condemning a foreign country for defending itself. But the motives, benevolent at the beginning and sinister as they mushroom, are always the same. If the stakes are high enough, the lie is a noble one. It has to be told to serve a greater good. If you choose not to believe this lie and engage in a full-throated support of it, you are the problem. You are racist. You are sexist. You are Islamophobic, or transphobic, or whatever the cause du jour might entail. You are bigoted and close-minded. You’re a dupe for the invisible puppet masters pulling the strings. You are the true enemy and you deserve to be canceled, shunned, ridiculed and maybe even to have righteous violence visited upon you.
How ironic that the reasons for those noble lies often come back to the doorsteps of those who are rich, powerful and influential in society. Maybe they are politically influential. Maybe they are culturally influential. But, at the end of the day, they have money and success, so morality must take a hit in the name of service to a certain community.
I’m not writing this to relitigate the O.J. trial. If anyone is interested, there are hours and hours of retrospective analysis and raw historical footage that you can view from any lens if you wish to understand what it was like to live through that time. I’ve already said that I believe he was guilty and that he got away with murder. Unless the real killers should magically turn up with smoking gun evidence, my view on this will never change.
My reasons for writing about this now are merely to take note of the fact that our modern age of mass gaslighting didn’t start when Donald Trump first ran for president in 2016. It didn’t start when he won that election. It didn’t start when COVID-19 broke free into the world. It didn’t start when George Floyd was murdered. It didn’t start when a violent mob assaulted the U.S. Capital on January 6, 2021. It didn’t start when Russia invaded Ukraine, or Hamas raped and massacred thousands of Israeli citizens on October 7, 2023.
It didn’t even really start when certain voices began to excuse 9/11, or when Bill Clinton avoided paying a political price for the Monica Lewinsky affair. To my mind, our modern age of mass gaslighting started on October 2, 1995, when an entire segment of the country knew that a rich and powerful man murdered his wife and an inconvenient bystander and got away with it because he had the means to hire the best lawyers that money could buy, and they carried his water anyway, knowing damn well that the story wasn’t true. The modern gaslighting age started when the internet was only in its infancy, cellular phones were a rare luxury and you actually had to go to the library to do research. DNA was a semi-magical concept shrouded in the respectability of science, but still elusive to the masses.
How the acquittal of O.J. Simpson on double murder charges has served the larger interests of the African-American community is beyond me. I certainly know how it served the activist class, including certain journalists, pundits and academics who have a vested interest in the racial grievance game. But how it served the interests of the average, decent mom and pap folks who just want to make it through life with their fair share of dignity, respect and opportunity that goes beyond their skin color…I have no idea.
Supposedly, video has surfaced of one of the jurors from the O.J. murder trial admitting that everyone on the jury knew that he was guilty, but they wanted revenge for the Rodney King beating in 1992. I appreciate the candor. I’d rather hear unpleasant truths than be lied to for the advancement of some self-serving fiction. On the other side of it, the implicit understanding is that O.J.’s subsequent conviction for robbery in 2007 at the hands of an all-white jury was payback in kind for his skating on the murder charges in 1994. He served 10 years in prison, which was merely a fraction of what he actually deserved, but at least it was something. In the meantime, it looks as if O.J. was able to get away with not paying the bulk of the hefty judgement against him leveled by the Goldman family in the wrongful death civil suit.
And so, round and round we go, tit-for-tat. Each side in the grievance game can hold up their chosen avatar when the argument comes. The white folks have O.J. Simpson, who should’ve died of cancer while serving a life sentence in prison. The left has Mark ‘scumbag’ Fuhrman, who still enjoys being a celebrity contributor on Fox News. It appears that this is how we will be playing the grievance game for the next while. There does not appear to be an off-ramp on this doom carousel. Only God will decide when he’s ready to turn off the music.
I have no idea what became of Kenji. We were never close. I do hope he’s well. I do know that one of the two gentlemen I argued with in the Quadrangle became very prominent in NFB leadership. I heard from reliable sources that he ran cover for Fred Schroeder long before the sexual scandal broke in 2020. How appropriate that he had a chance to sharpen his gaslighting skills and that he could be useful to the so-called, “greater good.”
Incidentally, I do recommend the limited series, American Crime Story: The People vs. O.J. Simpson, aired eight years ago on F-X. There are some unfortunate casting choices to be sure. Cuba Gooding Jr. was a terrible choice to play O.J., and John Travolta was cartoonish as Robert Shapiro. But the story is saved by excellent performances by Sarah Paulson as Marcia Clark, Courtney B. Vance as Johnny Cochran, David Schwimmer as Robert Kardashian (Kim’s dad) and especially by Sterling K. Brown as Chris Darden. The writing is thoughtful and deliberate, taking no definite positions about guilt or innocence amidst the growing circus of the trial. If you can find it, it’s well worth your time, unlike the successive ACS series concerning the Bill Clinton impeachment saga. I have not yet watched the five-part documentary, O.J. Simpson: Made in America.
God bless the Brown and Goldman families. God bless O.J.’s kids. They didn’t ask for this. And God help America. You can turn off the music any time now, Big Daddy.
