Correspondence
Correspondence Tracking the Simpson Travesty Your reaction to the Simpson verdict echoed the conventional wisdom, both on the left and the right, in that it revealed a level of anger and...
...The basic, ancient difference between conservatives and liberals is whether one sees the basic building block of society as the family or the individual...
...Himmelfarb falsely asserts that the movement from group identity to individualism is "progress...
...Stanley A. Bowker New York, NY One wonders what will be next in the Simpson nightmare...
...The media have the nerve to explain reasonable doubt to us...
...I have followed this trial from the beginning...
...The individual does not provide a complete or adequate foundation...
...I find it disturbing that you are not only apologists for an investigation that, in your view, only suffered the tiny defect of being less than perfect...
...What has the cultural elite done to help cultivate the intellect required for doubt...
...Harvey Gordon Kalamazoo, MI...
...Of course, I should be careful...
...Turns out that Simpson's best defense was on the bench...
...Thomas M. Edwards San Francisco, CA Formal Aesthetics Tom Wolfe ("Frederick Hart: A Tribute," Oct...
...The family, in contrast, is the smallest self-sufficient unit which can mirror the interdependence of a larger society...
...If you and your editorial staff wanted a "better" verdict, then perhaps you should have quit your jobs and gone to work for the Los Angeles District Attorney's office...
...Perhaps you should get a copy of Court TVs viewer call-in segment regarding the Simpson trial...
...A travesty, indeed...
...If the Simpson trial had been held in Arkansas, it would have lasted no longer than two weeks...
...How many members of your editorial staff closely followed this trial or sat in the courtroom during the proceeding...
...I commend The Weekly Standard for eloquently sounding the alarm John Podhoretz's article ("Yes, We Do Understand") should be required reading for the the media who seem to think middle-American whites "just don't get it...
...Is the American public only those people who agree that Simpson should have been found guilty...
...The "Travesty" issue reflects a disappointing, knee-jerk, emotional reaction...
...However, she was wrong in one of her wider judgments of what this means...
...Justice is supposed to be blind, not dumb...
...As a proud charter subscriber, I expect better from you than this kind of tantrum journalism...
...Far from being airtight, the prosecution's case was built entirely on circumstantial evidence, much of it suspect for various reasons...
...This is called "reasonable doubt," and it clearly justifies an acquittal, even against the most brilliant prosecutors and blameless police departments...
...Television cameras would have been excluded from the courtroom...
...Kevin Kelley San Jose, CA Idisagree fundamentally with your views of the verdict in the Simpson case...
...Despite being a white conservative, I believe that cold-eyed criminal trial law dictated an acquittal...
...Hart's work is devalued both by its failure to assert the nature of his artistic process and, with the notable exception of his Vietnam Memorial, to represent the dynamic, problematic world in which we actually live...
...But it goes to show I was wrong when I thought that Bill Clinton moved the Fruitcake Capital to Washington, DC, when it turns out to be in California...
...In cases that have received national attention in the 1990s, it appears that they are very reluctant to do so...
...This strategy failed...
...but the only worthy and enduring artistic ideal is an aesthetic beauty attained by the skillful, sophisticated deployment of a given medium's formal elements, not a pre-determined literary construct...
...William R Hawkins Burke, VA Fred Barnes ("The Shame of Lance Ito") said more than all the multiple commentaries in the national media...
...What role does reason play in today's culture...
...The verdict might have been the same, but the uproar would have been minimal...
...When tyranny tastes blood, we should all be concerned...
...The strangest thing about the entire mess is that only Barnes picked up on it...
...The question to ask is not if black juries will convict when the victim is black, but how likely they are to convict when the victim is not black...
...Unlike other high profile acquittals (the Lemrick Nelson case, for example), there was no murder weapon, no eyewitness testimony, and no confession...
...Who is this...
...The results in this case, far from being surprising, were extremely predictable, at least for those who have neither a vested interest in, nor an emotional attachment to, the proposition that Simpson is guilty...
...How many people on your editorial staff read any of the trial transcripts before writing...
...Feminism is rooted in an extreme individualism that places a woman's self-interest above all else, even the lives of her children...
...And what should we expect from a jury that admits to having sharpened its sword of justice on "Hard Copy...
...Perhaps a Christmas album: "All I want for Kwanzaa is an all-black jury...
...You refer to the "American public...
...2) presents an affirmative perspective and directs some valid criticism at the ideological corruption and elitist insularity of the contemporary "art world...
...Experienced trial attorneys will tell you that they are never surprised at what a jury does...
...Then you will see that 90 percent of the callers who responded or commented on the Simpson verdict were white Americans, many of whom believe in Simpson's innocence and/or feel the prosecution did not prove its case in the courtroom...
...This can be defined in criminal law as jury nullification (of evidence, fact, and testimony) generated by exploiting race and racism thereby causing the jury to focus on and address social and political issues rather than a search for truth and justice...
...Marcia Clark, a woman, was picked to lead the prosecution...
...Correspondence Tracking the Simpson Travesty Your reaction to the Simpson verdict echoed the conventional wisdom, both on the left and the right, in that it revealed a level of anger and astonishment that borders on hysteria ("Travesty," Oct...
...Mary May Benton, AR With dubious gratitude to that "Travesty" known as the Simpson verdict a new "ism" has ingloriously snaked its way into America's lay and legal lexicons: "Cochranism...
...Stephen J. Adamek San Diego, CA David Tell writes ("Johnnie Cochran's America") that "Black juries send black men to prison for violent crimes all the time...
...The problem is, they do get it...
...but you also ignored forensic test results in blood-typing, footprint, and fingerprint analysis that pointed away from Simpson...
...No jury would convict after that spectacle...
...During jury selection the prosecution gambled that a predominantly black jury would still convict if made up primarily of women because of Simpson's wife-beating record...
...The district attorney's office seems to have been influenced more by feminist pseudo-intellectuals than by street-wise experience...
...This, however, is a good sign from a social-conservative perspective...
...Diane Turner Arlington, VA Gertrude Himmelfarb ("The Gender Card Loses") was correct in noting the clash between race and gender in the O.J...
...They understand that the media and the entertainment industry have ground middle-class morality and values into the dirt of a cultural dust bowl...
...Mark R. Voss Cottage Grove, MN In my opinion, the real "travesty" is how the media, including members of your editorial staff, have covered the aftermath of the Simpson trial...
...Further there was no credible evidence of motive...
...How many members of your staff listened to the actual witnesses' testimony rather than what was reported on the nightly news shows like Rivera Live...
...In view of this, anyone might have supposed that the prosecution had an airtight case and only the playing of the infamous race card allowed the defendant to be acquitted...
...Isn't reason just the intellectual whip the white man uses to maintain his power...
...The solution to the race problem is not the further destruction of communities in the nihilist rush to self-centered individualism, but rather building upward from local communities to a renewal of national allegiance and a sense of common purpose...
...Simpson trial and the resulting injustice...
...Unfortunately, in spotlighting Hart as an exemplar, Wolfe undermines the strength of his own argument...
...Representation constitutes the absolute, irreplaceable essence of art...
...When a storm blows through, the media grab a handful of dirt and throw it in our eyes, telling us that we don't see...
...After all, we have just witnessed what amounts to P.C's first execution and a double one at that...
...He then refers to Mike Tyson, who raped a black woman...
...As a lawyer (a white, conservative lawyer, if you must know), I find all of this slightly preposterous...
...Los Angeles District Attorney Gil Garcetti claimed the jury reached its decision out of emotion, not reason...
Vol. 1 • October 1995 • No. 7
