Wow-worthy moments from Part 2 of ‘O.J.: Made in America’
ESPN’s five-part documentary, “O.J.: Made in America” continued with Part 2 on Tuesday night, and here are some highlights and wow moments from the second installment (our review of the full series is here):
Black community leaders felt O.J. Simpson was “a lost cause.” In our opinion, the issue of race is the most compelling part of this entire series: the history of race relations in Los Angeles, particularly with law enforcement; Simpson essentially shunning the African-American community at a time, during the height of the Civil Rights movement, when his voice could have made a huge impact; how blacks and whites viewed Simpson after the murder trial. As his star rose, Simpson made it clear he would not become involved, and even those in his inner circle wondered how and why he worked so hard to reject his heritage. We see clips of Simpson saying that he’s not black, he’s O.J. or that he doesn’t see race, but it is entirely possible that Simpson could have helped the black community while also having white friends and doing business with corporate America, which of course was basically all-white at the time.
Los Angeles activist Danny Bakewell says, “O.J. was one of those things you dismissed; the brother’s a lost cause.”
“I don’t know that he felt that he was sacrificing the way other people thought he was, but you’re sacrificing who you are. Who you were raised to be,” Simpson’s former agent Mike Gilbert said. “Did he see everything happening in South Central? Yeah. Did he want that to be who he was, who he identified with? No. He stayed in Brentwood.”
One of Simpson’s daughters drowned as a toddler, but he never discussed the tragedy. Simpson and his first wife, Marguerite, had three children: Arnelle, Jason, and Aaren. A few months after their divorce became final, and just before her second birthday, Aaren drowned in the pool at the family’s house in Brentwood. Childhood friend Joe Bell says Simpson blamed Marguerite for the accident, and another friend, Robin Greer, says, “he got rid of that memory when he got rid of that wife.” Simpson was already involved with Nicole Brown when Aaren died.
As good as he was at carrying a football, Simpson was that bad at swinging a golf club. Simpson was terrible at golf, and he cheated too. One day, his tee shot on the first hole goes into the trees, and his friend, Joe Kolkowitz, followed him to help him find his ball. Miraculously, Simpson “finds” his ball, sitting on top of a tee, and tries to play it off that the ball actually came to rest on the tee. Cheating has always been a no-no in golf, but his friends telling the story repeat a familiar refrain throughout these movies: because of Simpson’s charm, his friends let him get away with it.
Simpson’s sense of entitlement included women. “He was an incorrigible womanizer. He just never stopped,” friend Thomas McCollum III says. “I think O.J. felt entitled to whatever O.J. wanted,” friend Robin Greer says, after revealing that Simpson made multiple sexual advances toward her. Greer says most of Simpson and Nicole’s major fights were over his affairs with other women, and Simpson didn’t do much to hide them, if anything. According to Greer, Simpson blamed Nicole for his affair with video vixen Tawny Kitaen, because Nicole, according to O.J., got “fat” while she was pregnant. And as we know, that’s not even close to the worst thing Simpson did to his second wife.
Et tu, Roy Firestone? There are few individuals who didn’t make excuses for Simpson, and that apparently includes Emmy Award-winning sports commentator Firestone. On the old ESPN interview show, “Sports Look”, Firestone brought up the Dec. 31, 1988 incident in which Simpson beat Nicole so badly she needed hospital treatment; he also threatened to kill her (Nicole did call police, the ninth time she had done so). But Firestone presented it as though it was Simpson who was the victim, and Simpson gladly took the opportunity to go right along with him. “Not to dredge it up again, but more or less, talk about how things can get distorted to such a point that you are portrayed as a bad guy. New Year’s Eve, you had too much to drink…” Firestone said, with Simpson interrupting him to say, “it wasn’t that big of a fight”, playing along with the notion that he was just Poor O.J. stuck in a bad situation. And then Firestone ramped up the idolatry: “Here’s my point. The point I’m making, Juice…you were portrayed in the press for a while there like a wife beater!” Even Nicole made excuses for Simpson on occasion; when Hertz considered cutting ties with its star pitchman, former Hertz CEO Frank Olson says it was Nicole who called him to say things had been blown out of proportion. But if you’re familiar with the behavior of abusers and their victims, that’s not unheard of; as Greer says, Simpson was “obsessed with controlling” Nicole.
And at least one judge was no better. When Simpson finally did get in some trouble for abusing Nicole, his “punishment” was community service, which he performed at a golf course, organizing a celebrity golf tournament. Really taught Ol’ O.J. a lesson there.
Part 3 of “O.J.: Made in America” airs Wednesday night at 9 p.m. EST on ESPN.
