Watching the third part of The People Vs. O.J. Simpson, I got to wondering: Are there people watching this who think Simpson wasn't the murderer of those two people? And if so, do these folks think that the case as presented in the mini-series is accurate or flawed?
Back when the case was current, I found myself debating Simpson's guilt at a few parties. In some cases, it was with one of those people — you know the kind — who always believes the opposite of what "most people" believe. It makes them feel smarter or superior, I guess. I met an awful lot of them back when I was a lot more interested in the Kennedy Assassination than I should have been.
These folks never seemed to have any real facts or logic. Usually, it was a matter of connections. They always knew people who could give them the real story, as opposed to the pablum fed to the masses. One told me that Simpson's Dream Team was sitting on incontrovertible proof as to who the "real killers" were. (It's always a grand conspiracy with these folks — one that involves hundreds if not thousands of conspirators, many of them very well-known, and it always ties into larger, seeming-unrelated matters. The revelations would "blow the roof off" matters of international intrigue.)
Anyway, despite his assurances, the incontrovertible proof of a world-wide conspiracy never emerged. You'd kinda think it would if there was such proof, wouldn't you?
Then there were the "O.J. is innocent" people who were operating from the premise that the L.A.P.D. was corrupt and you couldn't believe anything it said, especially when there was the chance to frame a black guy. I never bought the concept that Simpson was innocent but framed…or even, as many opined, that he was guilty but framed.
I thought some of the anomalies in the case were simply poor or inefficient police work, not treachery. For what it's worth, every contact I've ever had with the L.A.P.D. has left me with the sense that they're mostly honest and dedicated but horrendously understaffed and underfunded. (They still haven't done anything about those two separate caregivers who robbed my mother back in 2012. Our "open and shut case" is still, as far as I know, sitting in a very large pile in a detective's office at the West L.A. Division.)
And of course, there were those who thought O.J. didn't do it because they thought it was about time a black guy — which is kind of what O.J. was, in a way — beat the rap the way white guys so often do. This new mini-series started with the Rodney King Riots because in a way, the story of Simpson's trial did, too.
I did encounter a few folks who felt, as per a logical and factual argument, that Simpson was not guilty or maybe that there was a big part of the story missing — like Simpson's son had done the killings and O.J. was taking the rap for him. To think any of that though, you had to write off an awful lot of the evidence as bogus, contaminated, not to be trusted, etc., and then fill in with speculation. A lot of people clearly didn't want it to be true.
Articles about the mini-series said that its writers and producers chose to not take a position on whether O.J. dunnit but clearly so far, they think he did. The third part has his lawyers deciding to play the proverbial race card, not because they think it's valid but because it's all they've got…and boy, are those lawyers sleazy. I couldn't help but feel that this was the story of a man who viciously hacked two human beings to death with a knife — and he was not the worst human being in this drama.
I still don't buy Cuba Gooding as the Juice. I still think Nathan Lane is too nice a person to play F. Lee Bailey. I still don't know what the hell is up with John Travolta's performance or his makeup. I still like everybody and everything else. And I still may stop watching as we get deeper into the gross miscarriages of justice and the success of some really sinister, immoral lawyering. Hey, maybe this will do so well that they'll make a sequel about the civil trial. That would all add up to way too much O.J. Simpson but at least the second one has a happy ending.