A crowd of pedestrians in Times Square react as they watch the news that O.J. Simpson was found not guilty of killing Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.
Rosario Esposito/AP
The reverberation still felt. Of what he did. To them. To us.
So how do we mourn a murderer. Excuse me, accused murderer.
There’s forever been this thinly veiled yet never disappearing line between murder and the fascination with those who commit murder. Charles Manson. Jefferey Dahmer. John Wayne Gacy. Lee Harvey Oswald. James Earl Ray. Ted Bundy. Sirhan Sirhan. Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. Al Capone. Drew Peterson. O.J. Simpson.
The true legacy Orenthal James Simpson leaves behind is painful. It’s an exemplification on what is the true meaning of fair. Of fairness. Of accusation. Of innocence. Of race. Of class. Of credibility. Of policing. Of trust. Of mistrust. Of celebrity. Of domestic violence. Of media. Of crime. Of verdicts. Of fame. Of racism. Of society. Of the justice system. Of justice. Of injustice.
Of course.
The fact that he, a Black man who was accused of killing two white people, one who happened to be his ex-wife, who he in the past physically and verbally harassed and abused, was never criminally found guilty of those murders remains the bane in the lives of millions. To a smaller number of millions, the fact that the word “accused” can still be legally attached to his name even in his death remains the bigger story’s moral. It’s confusing. It’s divisive. It’s sad.
It’s become the modern day biography of America.
O.J. remains, even in death, the isolated cultural study of American history to which no other individual can compare. He is and will always be a part of American history, in a way, that holds true the worst of what this country is about. He was the fault line of divisiveness way before the the second term of Obama’s presidency and Trump’s presidency.
To many, his death didn’t come soon enough. While there are many who die too soon, his came far too late.
A sellout. A chameleon. A sociopath. A symbol. He walked around with the presumption of innocence like he was simply above it all, the unbothered mind of an innocent man. A constant and ever-present reminder of the still unclosed and unhealed wounds he opened up in 1994-95 with his role in the murders, the trial that followed and the results and fallout of the trial that will never not be central in this country’s narrative. He was the main character in the 16 months that changed everything.
But O.J. didn’t change America, he simply reflected it. Became its black mirror forcing the country to look first deep and then totally within itself to find what our version of humanity looked like. And that’s always been the hardest pill for white America to swallow. One they never will. How he was not found criminally guilty for the murders. How he was able to walk around and be celebrated, even after he went to jail for a different crime. How his name can even be in the same paragraph with a list of convicted murderers whom this country is fascinated with but he’s the one who didn’t die in jail or in a hail of bullets or the one who’s not white.
He left behind a complete diary of America itself. The come-from-nothing backstory. His mastery of the sport he played that became his entry into being seen, respected and famous. His forced disconnect from his own people and culture. The code switch. The American acceptance. Hertz commercials. “The Naked Gun.” Hosting SNL. The stereotypical upgrade from Black wife to white. The fall from grace. The white Bronco chase. The trial of the century. The doctored Time magazine cover. A Black man who wasn’t accepted by the Black community, but he represented it once he went from suspect to the suspect. The adjacent fame that came to almost everyone connected to the court case. “The Run of His Life: The People Vs. O.J. Simpson” by Jeff Toobin. FX’s “The People vs. O.J. Simpson.” ESPN’s “O.J.: Made In America.” The Ross Becker Interview. The Secret O.J. Tapes by Norman Pardo. His “Hey, Twitter-world, it’s me, yours truly” posts. The “Uncle James” character on episode three of “The Vince Staples Show.” “If I Did it.”
The greatest American mystery. Gone. Still unsolved. The fractured trauma of our differences it left behind for us as a country to deal with. The quintessence of how complicated simply being American can be.
The lesson: How do we grow through what we go through? O.J.’s always been the answer. We can’t.