Random thoughts are sometimes memories triggered by events. The passing of O. J. Simpson on April 10, 2024, brought such memories. O. J.’s fame and subsequent fall warrant reflection.
Way back in 1974, my best friend and I were watching the star-studded movie The Towering Inferno in a movie theater in San Francisco. When O. J. Simpson showed up on the screen – playing security officer Harry Jernigan – there was cheering and applause from the audience. My friend, a season-ticket-carrying football fan was ecstatic. “That’s O. J. Simpson!” she said to me, knowing I would not know why everyone was cheering.
That event felt like an example of down-right reverence. It felt like folks were saying, “Wow, I wish I could be as talented, dedicated to a craft, and as handsome as he is!”
Today, April 11, 2024, the instructor in a class I was attending announced to the class that O. J. Simpson had died. Interestingly, there was an instant of silence and reflection. Then, there were comments, mostly echoing Fred Goldman’s reaction, “No great loss.” The class rightly empathized with the horrific pain felt by all those close to the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman.
O. J. Simpson’s fall from grace did not stop after he was controversially acquitted in the murders of Nicole and Ron. Other arrests followed, as well as time spent in prison.
In William Shakespeare’s play Julius Cesar, Mark Antony say,
“The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones.”
Indeed. Evil is incredibly powerful. It obliterates our natural desire for peace. It demolishes our will power. It erases any good we have done or wish to do.
Someone once said, “You can’t fix evil.” Perhaps so. However, you can try to help prevent evil.
We will never know if kind intervention from family and friends would have mitigated O. J.’s pattern of physical abuse towards Nicole. Nobody seems to have tried.
And evil does not limit itself to the individual level. It takes hold of populations, bringing misery like Joseph Stalin’s “liquidation of the kulaks as a class” in 1929, the “Final Solution” in 1941, and the “economic necessity” of slavery in the U.S. starting in 1619.
The remedy for population evil is the same as that of individual evil: Try to stop it before it grows.
Marcy Berry
Picture: O. J. Simpson in his role as security officer Harry Jernigan in the 1974 film The Towering Inferno.
Just Vote No 