a very odd column in today's latimes by erin aubry kaplan says this:
Of course, the O.J. indignation is driven in large part by racial indignation: the idea that a black man may have killed a white woman and gotten away with it. That's a violation of decorum.
then she goes on to say that the difference between the happy reception of kramer's racist rant and the outcry over oj is a racist thing. it seems, let us say, tendentious to equate stabbing people to death with hurling insults, and though a black man killing a white woman is indeed a violation of decorum, one might suggest that it is appropriately subject to more definite forms of disapproval. she also seems genuinely puzzled about whether oj did it or not; i would have thought that oj had put that question to rest once and for all. at any rate, the implied equivalence of a racist rant to a double murder is puzzling, and i'm not sure what more in the way of outcry kaplan could want: a third-tier celebrity has been vilified everywhere for days. if there's one thing we all agree on, it's that saying nigger is not allowed. but i hadn't thought we'd actually confused words with murder weapons.