OJ: Made In America

I found director Ezra Eldeman's ESPN 30 For 30 five part documentary, OJ: Made In America (2016), absolutely fascinating in its scope and context of the one man's life and how it reflected trends in society. I lived through most of the documentary, but Eldermans chronicles how athletes in the 60s began politicizing sports and notably how OJ refused to join when approached, saying, "I'm not black, I'm OJ." He would go on to chronicle the long standing history of violence by the LA police department against blacks and the how racial tension mounted from the Watts riot up to the furor over the Rodney King beating. This documentary sheds light on many of the more unseemly aspect of American culture and history. I, too, was disgusted that the cops that beat Rodney King got off without any punishment. OJ's stardom and embrace of white culture embodied by his home in lily-white Brentwood neighborhood of LA cements his aspiration. It would come as no surprise that he would marry a beautiful white woman, Nicole Brown, many years his younger. His cycle of abuse against his wife and special privileges are well-documented. Elderman also does a great job of capturing the media circus of OJ's run eventual surrender-bizarre and in my mind an admission of guilt, if he were innocent why would he run? The evidence did not lie-there was a blood trail from the scene to his, car, and home of the blood of his victims and his own wound. It should have been a open and shut case, but then things really got out of hand since he had seemingly unlimited resources. Now OJ was a "black man"-a victim of the corrupt LA police department-and the symbol of black disenfranchisement giving it to "the man." I can remember the day the verdict was read, I was doing my teaching internship at Shorewood High School, north of Seattle in a almost all-white and Asian community. When we turned on the TV to see the verdict. When OJ was found not guilty the class erupted in cheers as I turned away disgusted buy yet another miscarriage of justice. It was not a black man being exonerated, it was a rich man duping the system. Shockingly some of the jurors would admit that it was payback in the documentary. I'm glad to see that the civil case had an impact on his life after getting away with murder. And his eventual downfall was another bizarre and poetic example of hubris-I guess he thought the laws of society did not apply to him.