The Juice, No Longer Loose

O.J. Simpson died a couple of days ago. I did not wish him to rest in peace.

I was almost 23 in 1994 when it all began, culminating in that surreal car chase on the freeways of Los Angeles that millions saw on a Friday night in June.

CNN and Court TV covered the “trial of the century” the following year. Fox News and MSNBC were about a year away.

Once I wrapped my head around the events (which initially I had trouble with), I was convinced Simpson did indeed kill (and nearly decapitate) his wife.

O.J. had one unexpected benefactor: a stunningly incompetent prosecution totally mismatched by Simpson’s so-called Dream Team of defense lawyers. The flawed characters of the key police officers, such as Mark Fuhrman, didn’t help either.

The world seemed to stop that October day when Simpson was acquitted criminally. The civil trial that followed had a prosecution team that didn’t make the same mistakes – and O.J. eventually did prison time for an armed robbery in Las Vegas in 2007.

It’ll be interesting to see if Simpson had CTE from his football career, not that this excuses his criminal behavior.

But at long last, Simpson will meet his maker, and perhaps the retribution due to him.

Orenthal Rides Again

CNN covering the O.J. Simpson trial moments after he was found not guilty, October 3rd, 1995.  F. Lee Bailey, Robert Kardashian (Kim’s dad) are to O.J.’s left, Johnnie Cochran on the right.

We are a society still too fascinated with a former pro football player named O.J. Simpson. Myself included. Thus, it was no surprise to me that the news world stopped covering the besieged Trump presidency to cover the parole hearing that turned Simpson into a free man come October.

I’ve been of the opinion that Simpson did indeed murder his wife and Ron Goldman, once I got over the disbelief that such a thing could happen. But, we have trials in our country for some decent reasons, and Simpson was able to get off hiring the best defenders money could buy. He wasn’t as lucky in civil proceedings, and as we know, an armed robbery in Las Vegas costed him his freedom in 2008.

Hopefully, a 70 year old Simpson has smartened up and can live the rest of his days away from the tabloids. But being the narcissistic person he seems to be, I doubt it.

Aircheck: WIOD in Miami, 10/3/1995

With O.J. Simpson and the “Made In America” documentary part of the national argument once more, I thought I’d look back at one of the landmark moments of the saga.

It’s the day of the O.J. Simpson verdict, October 3, 1995. Neil Rogers, much like talk show hosts across the country this day, can’t stop talking about the verdict that airs in the last hour of the show.

Neil gets very creative with the computerized “drops” (short sound bites) that’s frequently a part of his shtick during the verdict, an acquittal for Simpson on all counts. Usually doing a light, comedic type of talk show which usually spouts that “topics are a bunch of crap,” Rogers shows that when he needs to change gears and get a bit serious, he’s not out of his element at all.

The OJ Verdict, 20 Years Later

I couldn’t get enough of the first O.J. Simpson trial.

In fact, I predicted about a month before the verdict on an overnight show called “Greg and Fran” on the Sun Radio Network that O.J. would be completely acquitted about a month before it happened, and I’ve never been to legal school. Too much reasonable doubt, I thought, had been placed in the jurors minds.

The date I came to that conclusion was my 24th birthday, September 6th, 1995. LA detective Mark Fuhrman had been recalled to the witness stand in the trial that day. Earlier in the trial, Simpson attorney F. Lee Bailey had asked Fuhrman if ever used racial slurs in his work, which Fuhrman denied, thus perjuring himself. When he was called back in September after tapes had surfaced that did indeed prove he used racial slurs, he pleaded the fifth. That is, he asserted his fifth amendment rights against self incrimination as offered to any citizen in the United States Constitution.

When that happened, I knew it was game, set, and match. It probably didn’t help either that D.A. Christopher Darden wanted Simpson to attempt to wear the black gloves found at the crime scene early in the trial, either.

I did think O.J. killed his wife and Ron Goldman, basically a man in the wrong place at the wrong time. When the verdict was announced, I did feel bad for Ron’s sister Kim and his father Fred, who had a look on their faces of complete disbelief. But they were done in by a bad cop who had a racist history, and that created the reasonable doubt in a community still reeling by the Rodney King verdicts a few years earlier.

History has proven O.J. to be who I thought he was. He hasn’t won a major court trial since, and currently sits in Lovelock, Nevada doing time for a robbery in Las Vegas back in 2007, two years away from a possible parole. If he gets out in 2017, he’ll be 70 years old.

And Baba Booey To You, Too!

The man they call Baba Booey on the Howard Stern show, Gary Dell’Abate.

So yesterday, I’m watching the final round of the PGA Championship on CBS in Rochester, New York. Jim Furyk fires off of tee shot at one of the holes, and one of the fans attending lets off a war cry. BABA BOOEY! HOWARD STERN!!

Baba Booey is a reference to Howard Stern’s producer, Gary Dell’Abate. One of his hobbies back around 1990 was buying animation cels used in cartoons. Hey, some people collect baseball cards, some collect cartoon cels, animation art. Whatever works for you, right? He had a cel from the Quick Draw McGraw, and misspoke about McGraw’s sidekick Baba Looey, calling the character Baba Booey. Thus, the legend was born.

If you have seen any of the coverage of a breaking news story on CNN, Fox News, or MSNBC the past couple of decades, you’ve also probably heard the name “Baba Booey” get on the air. The most famous prank was played on the late Peter Jennings during the coverage of the OJ Simpson chase back in June of 1994 that all of the networks covered with great interest. Ever since then, despite the seriousness of the situation, someone always seems to slip in a Howard Stern or Baba Booey reference.

It’s been around so long, it happened to ME once when I worked in radio. A caller seemed normal one day to me when I was behind the board at the Sun Radio Network in 1995, and all of a sudden, I hear a recording from the Howard Stern show.

Around that time, I remember my former colleague Stan Major had mentioned an idea on one of his overnight talk shows. If the network thinks a caller with information is about to prank them, why not just claim that they are “busy” coordinating calls to go on air and get THEIR number?  I’m sure someone has thought about that, but you never hear a network proudly claim they thwarted a “Baba Booey” call, do you? The whole thing kind of embarrasses them.

Orenthal’s Last Squeeze

Hopefully, this is the last we see of O.J. Simpson.

It was early one June week in 1994 when I first heard about O.J. Simpson’s wife being murdered out in Los Angeles, along with a friend of hers by the name of Ron Goldman.  Like many sports fans across the country, I really didn’t think the man we saw on TV during the football season was capable of such a heinous crime.  Then there was that Friday afternoon and evening of June 17th.  The White Ford Bronco going around the interstate highways of Los Angeles.  I wondered, as the whole country did that night, if Simpson’s life was going to conclude right then and there.

I watched that circus of a trial in 1995.  The Los Angeles prosecutors did a great job fouling that up, didn’t they?  Remember where you were when the verdict was read?  I do.  Acquitted in the criminal trial, but held liable in the civil trial, Simpson drifted back into his life, such as it was.

But O.J. couldn’t stay out of trouble, and, much like the villainous Wo Fat in the original Hawaii Five-O, you knew sooner or later he was going to get busted again and for good.  I wasn’t really shocked to see his arrest in Las Vegas in 2007 for armed robbery, nor his conviction of same a year later.

Now he says he didn’t get a fair chance to tell his side of the story in the 2008 trial, even though he could have easily done so then and there.  If the defendant in a criminal trial wishes to speak, he can do so, even if his attorneys say no. Ultimately, it is his choice.

So O.J. took the stand in a writ of habeus corpus hearing yesterday.  He went on and on about who he knew, pontificating and rambling.  The courtroom in Vegas turned into O.J.’s show.  The networks carried some of it, but I think they too were unimpressed by O.J.’s same old song and dance.

And Mr. Simpson, how’s that search going for Ron and Nicole’s real killers?  I bet that search is long over every time you look in the mirror.

State Of The Union 2013

It was 1997 all over again last night.  Sixteen years ago, President Clinton gave his annual State Of The Union address, the first of his second and final term as president.  But on the night, the verdict of the O.J. Simpson civil trial was announced, so part of the country watched the President, another part awaited the verdict.

Last night, the news stations were beaming footage from the area around Big Bear, California, where suspect Christopher Dorner was allegedly holed up in a cabin.  The cabin in question was burnt down by order of the local police (captured live by a viewer of one of the LA stations, KCAL) with Dorner allegedly inside.  Everyone is under the assumption that Dorner was killed as some point yesterday, but as of the time of this blog entry, that has yet to be confirmed.

Anyway, for those of you who missed the President’s speech, I thought I’d post it and let you watch it for yourselves.

Bobby C. And Gun Control

Back in March of 1986 I saw Bob Costas in person at Al Lang Stadium in St. Petersburg for the opening day of spring training that season.  The NBC broadcaster was sitting in the press box, wasn’t working for the Cardinals doing the game or anything like that.  I kept looking at the booth and kept thinking, this guy is going to be the next big thing in sports broadcasting.

Costas no doubt wondered, who is that fat young punk who keeps looking up here?

In the wake of the Javon Belcher murder suicide, a name I am trying hard not to commit to memory, Bob Costas did a commentary during the halftime of the Eagles-Cowboys Sunday night game on NBC.  Costas used the commentary to go on a bit of an anti-gun tirade.  Now, I’m neither conservative or liberal, and “Bobby C.” and his commentaries that are spot on far outnumber those that are out in left field.

But you would think a one-time colleague of O.J. Simpson at NBC wouldn’t make such a far out statement.  As many of you know, O.J. didn’t need a knife if he did indeed kill his wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman in 1994.  A criminal court of law found him innocent, a civil court did otherwise.  If people want to kill, people will find ways to kill if guns are not available.  That’s the flaw with the gun control argument.  Taking away arms from people only creates other avenues to kill.

To me, it is not a conservative or liberal argument.  It is pure logic.

Get Off It!

You could see the head slump.  You could see the body fall.  But you could see little else, thankfully.  Mercifully.

Fox News Channel aired a car chase in Arizona this past Friday.  A carjacker then got out of his car, ran a few yards, took out a gun, and extinguished himself by firing it at his temple.  The video wound up airing seconds before the audio of anchor Shepard Smith described it, so instead of the audio airing live and the video aired on delay, the reverse happened.  And it wasn’t the first time it had happened that way.

I don’t know why they air car chases on TV in the afternoon nationwide on HLN or Fox News.  I guess it fills up air time, I guess maybe it’s even for the mayhem that played out on Friday. But I hope we don’t see any more incidents like this.  Unless it’s a celebrity in a car like O.J. Simpson in 1994, it’s just not worth it to show these events in real time, if anyone asked me.

Universally Disliked

In this day and age, it is a very rare thing to get everybody to hate you.  Jerry Sandusky is one of those people.  The only other person I can equate Sandusky to in recent years would be Casey Anthony.  Maybe Susan Smith and Jeffrey Dahmer of a generation ago.

(I do not include alleged assassins and murderers in this list like say Timothy McVeigh, Lee Harvey Oswald, O.J. Simpson and the like.  There are a lot of people, take Simpson’s case for instance, that believe to this day that O.J. did not kill his wife and Ron Goldman, and Simpson’s 1995 criminal trial does back up that fact.)

I have no doubt Jerry Sandusky is a very sick man.  But he can no longer harm his community.  He has been found guilty for his crimes by a jury of his peers, and the sentence of 442 years makes it an absolute fact he will not be a free man for the rest of his life.  And needless to say, the jury got it right.  Very much so.

It is my sincerest of hopes that we do NOT lose sight of the fact that there were people at Penn State who knew about this and let this continue to happen.  And THEY need to be punished too as individuals, as does the university itself.  The school will no doubt have to pay its own restitution.  Maybe the sports programs the school has become so well known for will fail to survive.  It’s possible.  Can’t have misdeeds without consequences.

May God bless the victims of Jerry Sandusky and the unintended victims of what he has done.

Radio Free Agency: Sun Radio Network (Again), 1993/94

My reasons for leaving WBDN were academic, really.  It was only a matter of time before the Brandon station was sold and their talk radio experiment of non-Sun Radio Network nor non-Independent Broadcasters Network programming would be deemed a flop by the power of the purses of the new owners.  Christmas of 1993 was calling.  Would I wind up employed over the holidays, or not?

Right after resigning from WBDN, I get a call from my former boss, Stan Anderson, over at Sun.  Miracle of miracles, they were re-hiring again, and asked if I was interested in rejoining them.  I had to think about it for a moment, a very fleeting moment.  Some might view going back to SRN as a regression in character, but the overriding concern was not being unemployed over the holidays, so I jumped at the chance to go back to my old friends there.

America: Mutliple Personality Disorder

Trayvon Martin, 1995-2012.

I have never been totally convinced that I live in a singular America.  And I don’t necessarily believe it’s a bad thing.  It is what you make of it, and it is what it is.

When the world stopped on that Tuesday afternoon in October 1995 to hear the O.J. Simpson verdict, I first noticed it.  The reaction to the not guilty verdict was mainly among lines of race.  The Caucasians were in disbelief (although I wasn’t, I thought Mark Fuhrman’s testimony sank the case, because it raised the possibility, even slightly, that the Los Angeles cops were corrupt.)  The other races were a bit more jubilant that the Juice was loose once more.