It is truly horrifying that your children named a cat after Nicholas Sparks. A spider or a lizard, sure, but not a cat.
I'm fine with cats as Kato Kaelin, but the "of cats" bit throws me, implying as it does that the role of OJ is also played by other cats.
Cats are large, they contain multitudes.
My cats are more Refrigerator Perry than OJ Simpson.
I'm reliving my experience of not paying attention to the OJ trial by not paying attention to the tv show. But in the 90s I'd have had to say that to a small number of people in person instead of posting it in a comment in silence.
I don't even own an OJ Simpson trial!
I am going to do a Slate here, and take the conventional position while pretending that it is boldly counterintuitive: The OJ trial was a genuinely important event, and the reporting of that trial made us better-informed citizens.
I endorse 7.
I really don't recall much of anything about Marcia Clark and the trial. Like, I recall her name (and can picture her), and I guess I remember her getting blamed for OJ going free? But I was definitely barely engaged with TV in that era*.
*holy cow, I just realized that the summer of '94 was literally the last time I ever lived with cable.
I should say, I didn't watch any of the trial at the time, so I just read the article as media criticism rather than as a nostalgia piece. I don't know if that made it easier to find the article interesting.
The OJ trial did give us the Dancing Itos. So there's one thing to be grateful for.
it's difficult to overstate how frozen feminism felt during periods of the 1980s and 1990s.
I do think about this a lot, as I know I've brought up here probably an annoying number of times before, and so it's interesting to me to see people trying to look at this.
7 Likewise. And AIHMHB I left for Cairo (and eventually Morocco) on the Day of the White Bronco (shorter, me in JFK, "wtf is everyone staring at a fucking white Bronco going down a highway for?") and now am back in MENA so no need to relive things I fortunately missed the first time.
I do think about this a lot, as I know I've brought up here probably an annoying number of times before, and so it's interesting to me to see people trying to look at this.
I'd be happy to talk about it, though I don't know that I have that much to say. I feel embarrassed that I don't remember you bringing that up before.
Thinking about it, Backlash came out in ... [checks] ... 1991. I read it a couple years after that, and it made a significant impression on me -- not because of the backlash theory per se, I didn't have enough sense of history to be able to evaluate that -- but just as a description of the basic goals of feminism and the feeling that what seemed like modest, common-sense standards of equality were controversial.
. . . no need to relive things I fortunately missed the first time.
I don't think that's a fair description of the article. For example
Clark said she was made very aware of how her appearance affected her reception in the courtroom. A jury consultant had found that people were likely to find her "shrill" and to think she was "a bitch" and advised her, Clark said, to "talk softer, wear pastels." In the retelling, Clark offers a deadly smile. "Oh, okay, that'll wipe out 200 years of social injustice. Why didn't I think of that?" The attempts at softening, she said, were destined to backfire anyway. "That kind of shit is a lose-lose proposition," she said. "So I come in in a pinafore, and they say I'm a cream puff and I can't handle a murder case like this."
You can't tell me that you've never seen a situation in which professional women are caught in that bind. The point of the article, I think, is that with some distance from the trial itself it's easier to see the ways in which those dynamics were playing out because all of the craziness around the trial is less distracting.
it's difficult to overstate how frozen feminism felt during periods of the 1980s and 1990s.
Come now, the 90s were the public heyday of the Only Authentic Feminist Camille Paglia. Surely the most significant event in feminism since the Nineteenth Amendment.
16 eh? I wasn't commenting on the article. Didn't read the article. Not going to watch the show. I missed the entire trial and all the OJ craziness the first time around because I was living overseas and there was no internet like we have it today so it just doesn't have the same cultural resonance for me.
16 eh? I wasn't commenting on the article.
I know, I was just being cranky. Apologies.
I missed the entire trial and all the OJ craziness the first time around. . . so it just doesn't have the same cultural resonance for me.
I just wanted to emphasize, as I said in 10, that I missed the trial the first time around (and don't plan to watch the mini-series), but that didn't prevent the article from having resonance.
I vaguely remember seeing people call the 1992 election the "year of the woman" and then a few years later feeling like things had gone backwards.
19 Comity. I was probably being a bit more "I don't even own a TV" hipper than though than I should be. But that experience of missing out on a major US cultural and generational milestone has always struck me in a weird way. And for it to begin on the very day that it all started in such a surreal manner made it even weirder.
I remember Clark was criticized for having OJ try on the glove- you can give me a glove I wear every day and I can hold my hand in an odd position and make it appear to not fit.
The OJ trial was my first experience of not-even-owning-a-tv-dom, even though my parents did technically own several.
|| RT around? This should make him weep.
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I think my family was actively trying to take a low-interest stance, plus I was young enough to not really be able to focus on the issue, but in retrospect it illuminates the heavy popular focus that my Montessori elementary school wheeled from its hiding place the television - heavily downplayed, used only for the occasional documentary - to watch the verdict being given.
Core difference between late 80s-early 90s and late 90s here. The former was the heyday of girls in sweatpants, PC OG version, Anita Hill, expanding times for career women etc etc. For whatever reason the internet boom late 90s were a total nadir for feminism -- Limp Bizkit and Britney Spears in a bikini, dominance of ha-ha irony about earnest feminists, vague sense that the internet had solved everything so what are you talking about, pro porn everywhere, Lewinsky. Big change around 94-96.
Nobody worried about feminism and Martha Clark because no one believed that anyone involved in the OJ case was an actual human being as opposed to bloody tuna in the middle of a media/viewer feeding frenzy.
Man, I cannot remember OJ without thinking of Ice Cube: "fuck one love/ it's the bloody glove/ killing honky hoes/ leaving blood stains on Broncos." A simpler time, really.
I did my part for feminism recently by playing a video arcade game with my daughter where you shot and killed endangered African animals while bikini-clad blond girls cheered you on. The feminist part is that it was her idea, and we stood up to the patriarchy represented by her classmate's horrified Mom who unfortunately saw us.
We watched the verdict in my Algebra II class.
To my chagrin, I remember really hating Marcia Clark's perm, but I think that was partly because I was growing out my own perm. At the time, though, I idolized Hilary Clinton, and also wore the same headbands.
I didn't watch any of it either. I was in Chincoteague with a sick kiddo on the day of the Bronco thing, and could absolutely not have cared less.
I did like OJ's run through the airport Hertz commercial, and had watched at least 3 Bills games in the record breaking year. (I remember Cosell saying repeatedly that Jim Braxton, the fullback, had a propensity to fumble, and thinking he just liked saying "propensity." And now I see the man died of cancer at 37.)
His stats show 0 fumbles. Maybe propensity doesn't mean what Howard thought it meant.
Or were they just not tracking fumbles 40 years ago?
"Florida's got the oranges, but Buffalo's got the Juice" -- I remember liking that joke (?) as a kid.
When the verdict came out, I was doing volunteer work at the org for which BOGF worked, which was otherwise all- (or nearly so) black. I made an awkward, but at least not painfully so, comment to someone to the effect that I was surprised by the verdict. The specifics are lost to memory*, I just recall the dawning realization that the other party was coming off some rather different assumptions.
*the outline was something like: J.R.: "Wow, that was a surprising verdict." O.P.: "I know, isn't it great!?"
34
I was at work, and it was a cube farm, so everyone popped up to watch the verdict on one of the big (for the 90s) TVs. There was one black woman (an engineer) on our team, one of a small number of black people in the company (computers, 90s...). When the verdict was announced everyone but her was stunned. Her reaction was "Not surprised."
My memory is thinking he was guilty but the LAPD and the prosecution and Judge Clark and Judge Ito (right?) just utterly botched what should have been a slam-dunk case. People thought she was incompetent, but then they were all incompetent, right? In the "beyond a reasonable doubt" sense, it was probably the right verdict.
I was Judge Ito in my conversational spanish class, first semester of college, leading to my most embarrassing experience ever, which IASIHMHB.
For whatever reason the internet boom late 90s were a total nadir for feminism -- Limp Bizkit and Britney Spears in a bikini, dominance of ha-ha irony about earnest feminists, vague sense that the internet had solved everything so what are you talking about, pro porn everywhere, Lewinsky. Big change around 94-96.
I've often wondered why I failed so hard at coming to any feminist consciousness as a young adult. It hadn't occurred to me that the broader cultural backlash may have played a role. I was deeply convinced that there was no way to be an activist about anything without also being the butt of all jokes, which made it hard for me to do much.
In the "beyond a reasonable doubt" sense, it was probably the right verdict.
This is why juries are the fucking worst. Seriously, no.
I dunno, G. Did you see the part about the glove?
38 I don't understand how you can hold that opinion while also recognizing IIRC that Mark Fuhrman should have received a stiff prison sentence.
38: I thought we were all in agreement that cops are the worst.
39: Yes, it's right there in the Constitution. "if the glove does not fit, thee must acquit." The jury had no choice.
40: Fuhrman is an idiot but get a grip. LAPD and their crime lab people did not plant multiple scenes and a vehicle with blood, a shoeprint, etc.
O.J. was just about to track down the real killers, when they tricked him and got him thrown in jail.
I admit I know as little as possible about the OJ case. I still think the credibility of the state suffers a lot from the fact that Fuhrman was in charge. I think most jurors are going to have the sense that usually when the cops lie to get a conviction they get away with it.
What is the least one can know about the OJ case? Maybe if they were still talking about my cats?
Tragically I am an American who was an adult at the time. I wasn't able to avoid learning a lot about it.
46: I don't see how they could convict him of anything after that horrible video came out of the LAPD beating him.
Now that I think about it, I guess I did get some benefit from the OJ event. I had to give up watching the news on TV, and never really got back in the habit again.
46: I got my information about the OJ case through Jackie Chiles. I still don't have an opinion about Furman, but I know who he is.
50 Wait a second! I didn't get a cat named after me????????
Spank the monkey, don't beat Heebie's cat.
You can tell me anything you like about your cat. I promise not to complain.
And now I violated the sanctity and have to go to jail! I'll probably share a cell with OJ!
Well, he has multiple names. He is also named after you.
56: He doesn't respond to any of them, right?
Are you asking if he makes a peep?
I was back east visiting my parents when the trial was going on, and I remember my mom on the phone with one of her colleagues who was somehow involved—not the deputy coroner who did the autopsies, but maybe someone who was being considered as an expert witness. I asked her what he and she thought, and she said, of course he's guilty.
To prevent toxoplasmosis, pregnant women are advised to avoid cat peep.
58: Sorry, if I'm not amused. I'm trying to come to terms with the idea that there is a cat out there named after me and O.J. Simpson. My only consolation is that my mother will never have to know about this.
46: During jury selection, a friend's mom asked him "What do you think of the OJ case?" He replied "Who's OJ?" She told him, "They're going to put you on the jury."
62: Are you sure that wasn't her telling the knock-knock joke?
63 - ?? "knock knock" "who's there" "murdering my wife" "murdering my wife who?""murdering my wife and not going to prison"
We also watched the verdict in math class, because the math teacher fairly rightly assessed this was a "cultural moment" that needed to be experienced. I remember feeling torn between thinking he was guilty and thinking black men don't get fair trials in the US, especially for murdering white women.
I was a self-identified feminist since as long as I can remember, and I do remember getting flak from boys for that in the mid-late 90s. I chalked it up to middle and high school boys being immature dicks, but I suppose it could have been part of the larger cultural ethos. I grew up in a pretty unrepresentative place, so my instincts on "cultural ethos" are pretty off. (Like, turns out 60% of women aren't lesbians, and shaving one's armpits is actually pretty mainstream).
Knock, knock.
Who's there?
O.J.
O.J. who?
You're on the jury!
My POV at the time was that feminism was laughably irrelevant in the early '90s, but a lot of that was utopian thinking because my nuclear family was politically conservative while personally progressive. That is, it was obvious that only horribly retrograde people would ever be prejudiced against women (or racial minorities), so therefore there was no need for a movement or government intervention. It took awhile for me to realize how deeply detached from reality that was. But either way, the larger politics of the era didn't push back on that notion.
66: Now you know. It's the first knock-knock joke that's a true story.
67: The early Nineties was after all an era in which Objectivism and libertarianism were taken very, very seriously. 'Nuff said.
I remember leaving a morning class that day when someone asked me: "going to watch the verdict?" and I said "verdict?"
Turns out, I WAS ON THE JURY. And now you know the rest of the story.
71: And Harper Lee on the same day. Shitty.
My imagined three-way is so impoverished.
Mr. Robot and I have now watched the first three episodes of the show, and it's been good.
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Dani Cavallaro fascinates and excites me. Resident in France, not AFAIK associated with any institution, she puts out a book every 4-6 months, and the academic anime community hates her.
But she doesn't write for them. She writes for people who read (or want to read, have heard of) Propp and Vilem Flusser and have watched Darker than Black three times. That's me!
My anime community, arthouse niche anime community (remember most anime is family oriented commercial product) consists of young people (say 70% male, 30% female, in different sites) 15-25 in school or recently graduated, intellectual, transgressive, experimental.
My impression of the academic anime community is that...they really haven't watched much anime. Some Miyazaki, Oshii, a little Anno. The reddit rule for expertise is 200-300+ series, with rewatches, or around 10,000 hours of anime. Remember, most of the active people are college or grad students.
Cavallaro is suspected of just dropping names without doing the close critical reading. (Also near plagiarism and florid fannish writing). She uses blog posts as sources. But AFAIK she knows her shit, and has interesting things to say.
Cavallaro is kinda one of Hiroki Azuma's database otaku animals, grabbing from the social theory shelf and magical girl shelf and doing undiciplined mashups.
Tons of fun.
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...or around 10,000 hours of anime.
Gladwell otaku.