Bronco or Game 5 — which do you remember? Simpson's chase still overshadows Rockets' '94 Finals
There are many other things I could think of in terms of 10-year anniversaries. The New York Rangers won the Stanley Cup. Locals (my darling wife and her sons among them) will fondly recall the Houston Rockets defeating the New York Knicks for the NBA title. I returned from Kosovo. Instead, we're wasting column inches on recent DUMB@SS AWARD wiener OJ f*****g Simpson. Why, because we're a national that just LOVES anniversaries, especially grisly, gruesome ones involving celebrities.
hings That Make Me Feel Old, Chapter 253: There's an entire generation that doesn't remember the O.J. Trial.
Some of you remember bits and pieces. Like the surreal Bronco Chase. Marcia Clark breaking out her Mokeski perm. Chris Darden's disastrous idea to have O.J. slip on the murder gloves. Johnnie Cochran wearing so many crazy suits, one reporter purchased a book of 64 crayons so he could accurately describe the colors. The crazed look on O.J.'s face when the verdict was announced, like even he couldn't believe he was going free.
Bits and pieces. If you're 21 or younger.
And if you're older than that, you remember everything that happened 10 years ago, starting with the double murders on June 12, 1994.
We always hear phrases like "Fight of the Century" and "Trial of the Century" ... well, this really was the Trial of the Century. A Pro Football Hall of Fame running back might or might not have killed his wife and one of her male friends. All evidence pointed to him. No other suspects. No alibi. A disturbing history of domestic abuse. A motive. Blood splattered everywhere, including back at the suspect's house....
O.J. turned out to be a string of dichotomies -- a black ex-football player who hung out with white businessmen; a philandering husband and wife-beater who claimed that he loved his wife "too much;" an articulate college graduate who could barely write a sentence. He wasn't living the life of a football legend; he was eating meals at McDonald's with Kato, filming cheesy infomercials, throwing tantrums because his wife didn't save him a seat at their daughter's dance recital. His whole life was a lie.
Still, he walked.
The thing I remember most is that my flight from Frankfurt arrived in Portland, OR, on the morning of the Great White Bronco Chase. I'd spent the past few months in Croatia and Kosovo, living in a police state. I'd grown accustomed to being under the constant watchful gaze of the Serbian (not so) Secret Police- one of whom lived across the street from me. He'd told me that if war broke out, he would happily kill me and the Albanian family that I was staying with. (And you think you have problems with YOUR neighbors?)
So, there I was, still rather disoriented at being in a free country after months of hoping that I wouldn't become another victim of Serb police brutality. I figured, what better way to relax than to way the NBA finals? After all, basketball is a global game, and a couple of weeks earlier I had watched the Yugoslav league championship game between Partizan Belgarde and Red Star. (If you think the NBA Finals are rowdy, just wait until you see the aftermath of a team winning the Yugoslav championship. It's not bad enough that everyone in the arena is smoking vile Eastern European cigarettes. The fans of the winning teams sets off flares and fire crackers in the stands. Cowabunga, dudes!)
That weekend I was visiting friends in Connecticut, prepared for a raging night on the town: Pitchers of beer, some shuffleboard, maybe even a late-night stop for chili-and-cheese fries. Once the white Bronco materialized on the 405, we never left the house. Poor NBC was stuck with Game 5 of the NBA Finals between the Rockets and Knicks, bouncing between O.J. & A.C. and Ewing & Olajuwon. Finally they settled on a ludicrous split-screen, which seemed to satisfy everyone -- those who cared about the game, and those who were waiting to see if O.J. would blow his brains out on national TV.
Imagine my surprise when I saw the Great White Bronce Chase on an LA freeway, while the NBA game was minimized in a corner of my television screen. WTF???
...Ventura Higway, in the sunshine....
Of course, not everyone was as disoriented as I....
One of my buddies was getting anxious, ready for some sort of resolution.
"Hurry up, O.J.!" he said. "Do something! We're running out of beer."
The saddest thing is that two peoplein the primes of their lives are dead, and the person responsible for their death is still walking the earth as a free man. Ten years ago yesterday, Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson were brutally murdered. Their killer was found not guilty because he had the resources to hire the best legal talent imaginable. Would the rest of us have had the opportunity or the wherewithal to do the same thing? Hell, no; and we'd (deservedly) be behind bars or on Death Row. OJ Simpson gets to hang around golf courses in Miami, which is apparently how he is conducting his promised search for the killers.
Justice may be blind, but she's got expensive tastes.
