THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 26, 1994 TAG: 9406280346
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ANN G. SJOERDSMA, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: 940626 LENGTH: Long
Football superstar O.J. Simpson may have brandished the knife that ended the lives of his second ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald L. Goldman, in an unholy bloodbath June 12, but he was not alone. A longstanding fraternity conspired with him.
{REST} Firmly behind Simpson, and now anxious in its implication, was the insular male sports culture - the players, coaches and owners, the sportswriters and broadcasters, the PR men and corporate sponsors, and the fans - who taught O.J., either through silent condonation or ``manly'' encouragement, to disrespect women. In this culture, women do not exist as separate individuals with interesting, full, complex lives of their own. They are mere extensions of men, available at their pleasure. Associated with the children they bear and nurture, they are treated as children.
In an interview last year with The Buffalo News, Simpson, 46, spoke about his new relationship with 25-year-old model Paula Barbieri: ``This is the first woman I've been involved with who had a career and has been successful in her own right, which is interesting. It is the first time I had to make concessions to another schedule, which is weird to me.'' Notice he spoke of ``concessions,'' not compromises. Indeed, ``weird.''
It is no accident that the preeminent ``sports'' magazine in the nation devotes an issue each year to showcasing women's breasts and buttocks, to sexuality and ``beauty,'' as many men perceive and desire it, touched up and glossed over. Or that the ``wives' section'' in a major-league baseball park could be a department store display for California blondes with vacant looks.
Women may appear on the playing-field sidelines wearing scant costumes, false smiles and big hair, to cheer the boys on. They may wait outside the warrior's arena or his hotel room and be treated to a one-time romp in superstar hay. And every now and then, the culture permits a Lesley Visser, a Gayle Gardner. But women as serious partners in sport? Hardly.
The values of this culture, which bred, rewarded and then exploited Simpson, are physical - power, speed, strength, toughness, occasionally grace - and its goals superficial and meaningless to a virtuous or moral life - money, success, fame, luxury, sexual conquest. Good looks, muscular bodies and sexy images dominate. A part of the entertainment business, which commercially exploits violence against women, this culture is defined by a male point of view.
Among its ``128 Best Things Anyone Ever Said,'' published March 6, 1989, People magazine lists this quote by Simpson: ``. . . I value money. I value my home. I do not like credit. I want to own things.''
Athletes who exude a loose, easy ``class,'' ``charm'' and ``style'' - as Simpson did, with his handsome, chiseled features, expensive clothes and years of image and language coaching - become much beloved. They become that falsest of the false idols: the modern-day Narcissus, the jock extraordinaire, the ``man's man.''
The mythological O.J. was a perfect athlete who made the perfect transition from a perfect Hall of Fame football career to a perfect movie-star life. (Most importantly, he had sex with beautiful women.) That Simpson is black made him a media dream-come-true. As long as he smiled and looked like a Greek god, he didn't have to seem relaxed or provide cogent, insightful commentary. He wasn't and he didn't.
How many of you even knew, before two weeks ago, that O.J. Simpson had been married and divorced twice and that he had five children, one of whom died? If you didn't and you considered him a ``hero,'' ask yourself how you could possibly idolize a man who was a father and husband without knowing how he treats his family?
I may be the only sports fan
/journalist in the country who knew and cared that O.J. Simpson was both a womanizer and a wife beater. Why?
It was no secret that Simpson's first marriage to high school sweetheart Marguerite Whitley, who was his good buddy Al Cowlings' girlfriend when O.J. started pursuing her, ended with recrimination and less-than-heroic behavior.
In the 1976 book ``The Superwives,'' Whitley describes the teenage O.J. as a rowdy troublemaker and popular girl chaser who wore down the reserve of the shy, religious 15-year-old. They married in 1967 when Simpson was 19. Notes ``Superwives'' author Jeanne Parr, a CBS correspondent who once co-hosted a program designed to attract women to football: ``Of all the girls who were chasing him, (O.J.) wanted the one who wasn't interested.''
Described in her ``Superwives'' chapter as like a ``butterfly,'' soft and fragile, Whitley recalls an incident when O.J., a ``great practical joker,'' reassured a dejected airline stewardess that the woman sitting next to him on the plane was not in fact his wife, but rather his sister. Thus relieved, the flirtatious attendant spent the flight whispering and giggling in Simpson's ear, falling into his lap whenever the plane lurched. ``It's disgusting,'' Whitley says with resignation, ``but it would appear that I have the most desirable husband in the world.''
Theirs was a troubled marriage marked by separation. In ``Superwives,'' Whitley talks freely, and with anxiety, about sex and the predatory ``jock lovers'' who stalk and seduce professional athletes. Unfortunately, she sees her jealousy of these insecure women as ``her'' problem, not as the couple's problem. (Battered women often believe that the abuse is their fault.) Conflicting reports indicate that Whitley was either pregnant or had recently given birth when her 30-year-old husband started dating an 18-year-old high school homecoming princess named Nicole Brown. She filed for divorce in 1979.
That same year, the Simpsons' 23-month-old daughter, Aaren, died after being found unconscious at Marguerite's Los Angeles home. Simpson publicly chastised his first wife, but declined further comment, and the matter ended there. I wanted to know much more about what actually happened.
I also read - in 1989, not just the other day - about the now notorious 1989 New Year's Day beating, about Nicole Simpson's numerous 911 calls to the police preceding it, and I followed the case. As a lawyer who has represented battered women and as an admirer of Simpson's sports achievements and his affable public persona, I was especially interested. Thus, I knew that he arrogantly denied the seriousness of his crime and rebuked the lenient sentence he received, failing to perform properly either the mandated community service or the psychological counseling. The patriarchial judicial system, which has long turned a blind eye to domestic violence, let Simpson off the hook. That the press buried the story made it worse.
Like so many battered women who do not value themselves - they protect their children, but not themselves - Nicole Simpson did not ``press charges'' in the case, and I thank the male prosecutor who conscientiously proceeded to court. Los Angeles District Attorney Gil Garcetti seems to be cut from the same mold as that prosecutor, who appreciated that the beating was not ``a private matter,'' it was a crime against the state. Against you and me. (I would like to know, however, why Simpson was not charged with resisting arrest, as reports indicate he did.)
In a TV interview last Sunday, ABC sportscaster Al Michaels, a friend of Simpson's, acknowledged that the media knew of the crime and downplayed it, in effect, excusing it. After all, Michaels noted, the couple had been drinking, just partying.
Men frequently ask: Why do women stay in abusive situations? What they need to ask is: Why don't men leave women alone?
I believe Garcetti has made an error in appointing a woman to lead the prosecution against Simpson. He must understand he is fighting an entrenched culture, not just an image. It would be much more effective to have a black man prosecute the ``American hero,'' thus sending the message that men, powerful men, especially men of color, do not tolerate violence against women. A woman's outrage is not enough. In fact, it is insignificant.
Similarly, the news media have to stop assigning the ``hard-news'' stories about the Simpson case to male reporters and the ``soft'' sidebars on domestic violence to women. Until the male-dominated culture makes this statement, loudly and forcefully, women's lives will continue to be minimized and, tragically, lost.
A gifted and dazzling athlete who thrilled me many times 20 years ago, O.J. was never a ``hero,'' courageous in crisis and noble in choice - at least, not in public - until he surrendered to police on June 17, thus saving his life for his children. Yes, he transcended a fatherless life of poverty and privation and excelled at a tough sport. Yes, he was outwardly charming and kind. But he always served himself, often at the expense of others. That people would cheer him on while he fled from justice - and from himself - treating him as a movie action-adventure hero, is an affront to society. These fools mock the pain of women. They mock the human condition.
I am not without empathy for O.J., nor have I found him legally ``guilty.'' He has a history, which, although not well-publicized, was always discernible, of mistreating women, emotionally and physically. That he personally may not have appreciated the abuse for what it was - not having learned to be introspective, altruistic or rationally reflective - is possible. I believe his remorse and feel for his pain. But he crossed an uncrossable line.
O.J.'s ``suicide note,'' read by his friend Robert Kardashian at a news conference after Simpson's flight, suggests a breakdown of self, a dissociation of the ego into the ``good O.J.'' - whom Simpson calls the ``real O.J.'' - and the ``bad O.J.'' - the ``lost person.'' One ``self,'' it seems, might be capable of killing, while the other ``self'' would recoil from it.
Of course, had O.J., or the California court that convicted him of battery, taken seriously the probationary condition that he undergo psychological counseling, especially group counseling, in which he would be more likely to be held strictly accountable, he might not be where he is today.
Before and since the spectacular media frenzy and chase of O.J., the fugitive, to his suburban Los Angeles home, many journalists, predominantly male, but some female, have registered their disbelief and shock. ``Not O.J.!'' they've cried. In their shallowness, in their worship of a false mass-market idol, they perpetuate a sexist sports culture that views women as objects to attract, seduce, conquer, possess, control and, sometimes, kill.
Ask Wilt Chamberlain or Magic Johnson or Wade Boggs, all sports ``heroes,'' about their attitudes toward women. Popular boxer Sugar Ray Leonard beat his wife. Former Washington Redskins quarterback Joe Theismann, now a glib ESPN commentator, recently traded in his latest, now aging, blonde for a new-model brunette and was none too sensitive in the transaction. Stories about O.J.'s womanizing were always ``out there.'' So, too, were Nicole Simpson's allegations of abuse. But they were ignored; the womanizing probably envied.
In his coverage of the stakeout at Simpson's home, CBS anchorman Dan Rather compared Simpson to Shakespeare's distinguished black Moor of Venice, Othello, a war hero who, deceived by the crafty, vengeful soldier Iago into believing his new bride Desdemona had been unfaithful, smothers her and falls on his own sword when he realizes his wrong. Two days later, ABC's Sam Donaldson also invoked the Bard's name in describing the Simpson ``tragedy.'' Newsweek preferred Julius Caesar, with O.J. no doubt cast as the noble Brutus, not as the brooding Cassius.
Oh, what fools these mortals be! The O.J. Simpson story has nothing to do with the intellectual hand-wringing of complex Elizabethan tragedians and even less to do with the high-minded Greek heroes who, nobly and futilely, made reasoned choices in their struggle to resist fates they could not escape. Like it or not, Simpson is a 20th century Everyman.
by CNB