Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 11:36:02 -0500 (EST)
From: louisgodena-AT-ids.net (Louis R Godena)
Subject: M-I: OJ Triumphant



There is, I notice,  a hollow,  tentative ring to the general chorus of
caucasian celebrants this morning following the OJ "verdict" (the second
one,  that is; the one that,  as it turns out, will probably Not Count).
All of the Murdoch papers in New England had a starkly triumphalist JUSTICE!
(always ominous if you're poor,  working class or black) plastered across
their front pages.    As celebrations go,  the shelf life of this one will
almost certainly,  mercifully,  be brief.

Already,  there are grumblings;  OJ's money,   it seems,   is,  as they say
in the movies,  "all tied up";  in pension plans,  in 401Ks,  in his
infamous property in the Bahamas.    Even Brentwood is off the table.
There is talk of his mother's condo in Redondo Beach.    But, then,  as we
are reminded again and again,  "it is not about the money", right?    Of
course it is.    This is America.     Geraldo, crestfallen,  must have
mirrored the thoughts of millions when he invited us to  "just think of all
that money going to waste."    Over at the White House, though, there was
much rejoicing.    I recall that Jack and Bobby Kennedy used to spend hours
in the Oval Office arguing over who it was that first thought of calling
James Baldwin "Martin Luther Queen".

Last night,  at United Box,  the mood is subdued.    Many of the workers are
African-American,  from Cape Verde, mostly.   A few make a point of telling
me that OJ was prosecuted a second time for a) beating a murder rap in Los 
Angeles (as Langston Hughes put it,  the "most amicably racist city on God's
green earth) b) having a penchant for white women,  and c) slaying a Jew.
I am intrigued.   Los Angeles,  especially,  is one of those cities where
Jews have made a place for themselves among the *neuveaux riches*,  along
with the Italians,  "assimilated" Japanese,  and the like.   They have in
many ways become part of that same predictable reactionary ruling clique
that holds its own court in every city on every day in the land.   

Alan Dershowitz noted that when he went to synagogue on Yom Kippur (the day
after the *first* OJ verdict),  many backs were turned toward him;  who, he
was asked a dozen times,   would atone for the slaying of Ron Goldman? Last
night, one could hear the opposite echoes; OJ was brought down by the Jews--
Jew money,  Jew lawyers, Jew justice.    It is,  I thought, pointless to
remind them of the efforts of Scheck,  Dershowitz, Shapiro, and others --
Jews and non-Jews alike -- which gave OJ Simpson his freedom on October 3,
1995.   It is an ugly mood.    I am tired.   Worried about other things.
And pissed off.    I keep quiet.     My own sin,  added like a drop in the
bucket to the many hundreds of others that go unreported and unremarked.
Who will atone for us?

So,  in Freedom's Land and Bravery's Home,  OJ Simpson -- finally -- is
guilty.    Does he know or care that his many detractors -- from the LAPD to
Chris Darden to Marsha Clark to Gil Garcetti,  all the way up to Bill
Clinton himself -- have themselves been put on trial?    Everyone knows,
regardless of their version of events on June 12, 1994,  that the system
doesn't give a shit about "justice",  doesn't give a shit about them,  their
families,  their loved ones.    It is, they sense,  about power.    About
what people in power do to those without it.     OJ became,  very quickly
and to the horror of those whose business it is to choreograph the bread and
circuses that have become our national life,  mere entertainment -- a
poisonous,  debilitating,  defeating charade.   Enjoyed by those who have --
finally -- come to hate and fear the system almost as much as the system
hates and fears them.

What happens next?

Louis Godena  



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