Opinion: The post-OJ verdict paradise – Ann Coulter

The death of OJ Simpson last week reminded me of that glorious period in American history when we finally got the liberals to stop their hellish race fighting. It came right after OJ was found not guilty of a double murder he clearly committed. That too-brief suspension of racial agitation, what preceded it and what followed, is recounted in thrilling detail in my book “Mugged: Racial Demagoguery From the Seventies to Obama.”

For thirty years, the nation’s cities were a maelstrom of race riots and inner-city violence, fueled by feckless politicians and an army of journalists who chronicled demented defenses of the perpetrators.

In other words, life was pretty much what it is now. Every police shooting of a disaffected inner-city youth was immediately branded an act of unadulterated racism, every racist accusation was accepted as true, and every crime committed by a disaffected inner-city youth was denied.

Eventually the truth would come out, disproving the official version, and then the story would simply disappear from the news, like the media reading a child a bedtime story, whispering the ending, and tiptoeing out of the room.

(Speaking of which, where are the big, blaring headlines following the February Kansas City Chiefs parade shooting, the 2022 mass shooting on a New York City subway train, and the 2021 Christmas parade massacre in Waukesha, Wisconsin ?)

A journalist’s main job was to round up gangs of angry, disaffected inner-city youth, awarding prizes to those who managed to incite the most destructive riots.

In 1991, the Los Angeles television network KTLA edited the tape of police officers subduing a disturbed suspect, Rodney King, cutting about ten seconds from the beginning. Viewers never saw King lunge at an officer with Taser darts hanging from his body. This made the police response look more like a senseless act of police brutality than the officers’ last attempt to subdue a powerful and violent suspect after all other methods had proven futile.

When the jury acquitted the officers—as everyone who watched the trial believed it should—the resulting riot left 63 dead, thousands injured, and a billion dollars in damage. (See especially Roger Parloff and Lou Cannon’s reports on the trial.)

KTLA won a Peabody Award for presenting the tape.

The most lasting image of the LA riots was the brutal beating of Reginald Denny, who accidentally drove his eighteen-wheeler into the middle of the chaos. Four black men pulled Denny from the cab of the truck and brutally beat him, crushing his head with a 5-pound oxygenator and a claw hammer. As the world watched live footage of the riots, Damian “Football” Williams dropped a concrete block directly on Denny’s head, fracturing his skull in 91 places, and then did a victory dance around Denny’s lifeless body.

Or, as Rep. Maxine Waters put it, “There were mothers who took this as an opportunity to take some milk, take some bread, take some shoes.” No sooner was Williams arrested than Waters showed up at his mother’s house and offered to help him, saying “her doors were open.”

This was life in America, before the OJ verdict.

But then at 10:07 a.m. on October 3, 1995, the world changed, when an estimated 150 million people turned on their TVs to watch the verdict in the OJ Simpson murder trial: not guilty.

Ninety-five million Americans had watched the slow chase that ended with OJ’s capture.

Thanks to the live television coverage of the trial, almost everyone in the country had seen the same evidence that the jury saw, including OJ’s blood all over the crime scene.

People watched as the Black Congressional Caucus gave OJ’s attorney Johnnie Cochran a standing ovation three days before his closing argument.

They saw the juror, a former Black Panther, give OJ the “black power” salute after the verdict was read.

And they saw blacks across the country cheering the outcome — most shockingly at the esteemed, historically black Howard University Law School. Seeing black law students cheering and applauding OJ’s acquittal had the same emotional impact as seeing Muslim and BLM students celebrating the October 7 attack on Israel.

In black neighborhoods across the country, cars honked in victory when OJ was acquitted. At a McDonald’s in Clayton, Missouri, the all-black staff erupted in cheers and high fives as the mostly white customers looked on in disbelief. At a St. Louis high school where television films were being made, black students cheered for five minutes.

At another high school, after hearing the verdict, twenty black students punched, kicked, and stomped a younger white student while shouting “black power!” shouted. Outside the Los Angeles Criminal Court building, a Hispanic man was attacked by an angry mob of blacks just because he said he thought OJ was guilty. In Colorado, a black man beat up his white girlfriend because she disagreed with him about the verdict. He told her that Nicole Simpson deserved it, and maybe she did too.

White people took it all in and said, that’s it. As a result, the last reserves of the Debt Account have been removed. After that, mau-mauing calls for white self-condemnation were futile. Accusing someone of racism suddenly stopped working, as if there was a glitch in the subway system and Metro cards no longer opened the turnstile.

It was the best thing that had happened to black people in a long time. They no longer had to put up with pompous white people who treated them like children: do you like your ice cream? Is that good?

Black criminals were locked up, saving tens of thousands of black lives. The following year, welfare reform became law and hundreds of thousands of black women left the rolls and got jobs. Racing hucksters lost their ability to intimidate, and talented black people rose to prominence.

Black Americans had won the last battle for civil rights: the right to be treated as adults.

But you can’t suppress liberal patronization forever. A decade passed, memories faded, and a half-black Hawaiian who had never faced racial discrimination except in his favor ran for president on the most left-wing agenda in history. (That is, until President Senile Dementia’s staff became president.)

With that, white liberals breathed a sigh of relief and returned to their favorite hobby: accusing other white people of racism.

So now we’re back where we started, but this time with a vengeance.

COPYRIGHT 2024 ANN COULTER

DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION