Wednesday, June 23, 2004
Snitch: Why chase after an autograph from a hand that spilled blood?
I don’t get it. Somebody needs to explain to me why so many people seem to worship celebrities, even if they’re the worst dregs of our society.
Take O.J. Simpson. Please. This killer (convicted of wrongful death by a civil jury) shows up at the Kentucky Derby and people actually ask for his autograph and treat him as if he’s a hero.
Did it even cross their minds that the very hand that was signing those autographs is probably the same one that brutally and fatally slashed his ex-wife, Nicole, and her friend, Ron Goldman?
Why would anybody with any sense of decency want anything from O.J. Simpson? He deserves to be shunned anytime he shows his face in public. At least (chuckle, chuckle) until he succeeds in his relentless quest to find “the real killer.”
And did you get his latest attempt at humor? He asks, “Who’s the only Jewish man to have a Heisman Trophy?” The answer: “Fred Goldman (the victim’s father), because he’s got mine.”
How disgusting. How tasteless. How O.J. The man has no redeeming social value. Instead of rushing to get his autograph, people should recoil in horror and disgust when they’re in his presence. Instead, he’s a magnet for the rubes who somehow seem to think that television has the power to wash him clean of his his sins.
The same goes for Mike Tyson, the convicted rapist, well-known cannibal and washed-up boxer. Yet apparently he will fight soon in Louisville, which “beat out” St. Louis and another Midwest city for the right to host this non-event.
No self-respecting city or state would want Tyson anywhere near it.
He’s a thug, a lowlife, a Neanderthal. His presence in Louisville is an insult to a hometown boxing champion by the name of Muhammad Ali.
Yet because Tyson is a “celebrity” who’s instantly recognizable anywhere on the planet, there are dimwits who think that a city that plays host to one of his fights has achieved some kind of civic and public-relations “coup.”
Instead, it’s just another example of small-minded, small-town thinking. Only in the boondocks, where the thirst for “celebrities” is as pathetic as it is pathological, is a social misfit like Tyson welcome. Even Las Vegas, hardly an arbiter of taste, doesn’t want him.
There’s something terribly screwed up here. Largely because of television, the line between heroes and villains, once as stark as a prison wall, has been blurred to the point where it’s almost unrecognizable, practically non-existent.
Instead of good guys or bad guys, there’s now a special category for celebrities that somehow transcends both. No matter what they’ve done, celebrities get to play by a different set of rules than the rest of us.
They get the benefit of the doubt in almost direct proportion to how big a star they are and how much TV time they’ve logged.
Celebritism, to coin a term, skews the judicial process. How can it be that O.J. walks and Martha Stewart has to do some time? Did former NBA star Jayson Williams, like Simpson, get away with murder? At the end of his trial for inadvertently shooting a man to death during a party at his home, the jury found Williams guilty, sort of, but didn’t penalize him as harshly as it could have.
Kobe Bryant’s trial will be next. Is it possible to find a jury that will judge the case strictly on its merits and not be influenced by Bryant’s status as a Los Angeles Lakers’ star and as a black man in what’s essentially a lily-white state?
Already the jock-sniffers in the sports media have tacitly sympathized with Bryant, mewling about how Bryant has dealt with his “adversity” or been distracted by his “legal problems.” Whatever Bryant deserves, it’s not sympathy even before the facts have been publicly disclosed.
Sadly, the sports columnists don’t seem to have much sympathy for Bryant’s accuser or even consider that he might, in fact, be guilty. They just want the mess to be over and done with so everybody can go back to the fantasy world of sports.
We all should have no time, sympathy or room in our autograph books for anybody who abuses women or children. We should turn these individuals into pariahs, regardless of how famous they are.
The only autograph I would ever want to see from O. J. Simpson would be the signature on a confession. No person who values simple decency could think otherwise.
I don’t get it. Somebody needs to explain to me why so many people seem to worship celebrities, even if they’re the worst dregs of our society.
Take O.J. Simpson. Please. This killer (convicted of wrongful death by a civil jury) shows up at the Kentucky Derby and people actually ask for his autograph and treat him as if he’s a hero.
Did it even cross their minds that the very hand that was signing those autographs is probably the same one that brutally and fatally slashed his ex-wife, Nicole, and her friend, Ron Goldman?
Why would anybody with any sense of decency want anything from O.J. Simpson? He deserves to be shunned anytime he shows his face in public. At least (chuckle, chuckle) until he succeeds in his relentless quest to find “the real killer.”
And did you get his latest attempt at humor? He asks, “Who’s the only Jewish man to have a Heisman Trophy?” The answer: “Fred Goldman (the victim’s father), because he’s got mine.”
How disgusting. How tasteless. How O.J. The man has no redeeming social value. Instead of rushing to get his autograph, people should recoil in horror and disgust when they’re in his presence. Instead, he’s a magnet for the rubes who somehow seem to think that television has the power to wash him clean of his his sins.
The same goes for Mike Tyson, the convicted rapist, well-known cannibal and washed-up boxer. Yet apparently he will fight soon in Louisville, which “beat out” St. Louis and another Midwest city for the right to host this non-event.
No self-respecting city or state would want Tyson anywhere near it.
He’s a thug, a lowlife, a Neanderthal. His presence in Louisville is an insult to a hometown boxing champion by the name of Muhammad Ali.
Yet because Tyson is a “celebrity” who’s instantly recognizable anywhere on the planet, there are dimwits who think that a city that plays host to one of his fights has achieved some kind of civic and public-relations “coup.”
Instead, it’s just another example of small-minded, small-town thinking. Only in the boondocks, where the thirst for “celebrities” is as pathetic as it is pathological, is a social misfit like Tyson welcome. Even Las Vegas, hardly an arbiter of taste, doesn’t want him.
There’s something terribly screwed up here. Largely because of television, the line between heroes and villains, once as stark as a prison wall, has been blurred to the point where it’s almost unrecognizable, practically non-existent.
Instead of good guys or bad guys, there’s now a special category for celebrities that somehow transcends both. No matter what they’ve done, celebrities get to play by a different set of rules than the rest of us.
They get the benefit of the doubt in almost direct proportion to how big a star they are and how much TV time they’ve logged.
Celebritism, to coin a term, skews the judicial process. How can it be that O.J. walks and Martha Stewart has to do some time? Did former NBA star Jayson Williams, like Simpson, get away with murder? At the end of his trial for inadvertently shooting a man to death during a party at his home, the jury found Williams guilty, sort of, but didn’t penalize him as harshly as it could have.
Kobe Bryant’s trial will be next. Is it possible to find a jury that will judge the case strictly on its merits and not be influenced by Bryant’s status as a Los Angeles Lakers’ star and as a black man in what’s essentially a lily-white state?
Already the jock-sniffers in the sports media have tacitly sympathized with Bryant, mewling about how Bryant has dealt with his “adversity” or been distracted by his “legal problems.” Whatever Bryant deserves, it’s not sympathy even before the facts have been publicly disclosed.
Sadly, the sports columnists don’t seem to have much sympathy for Bryant’s accuser or even consider that he might, in fact, be guilty. They just want the mess to be over and done with so everybody can go back to the fantasy world of sports.
We all should have no time, sympathy or room in our autograph books for anybody who abuses women or children. We should turn these individuals into pariahs, regardless of how famous they are.
The only autograph I would ever want to see from O. J. Simpson would be the signature on a confession. No person who values simple decency could think otherwise.
