Kim Kardashian tweet resurrects O.J. verdict rage
theGRIO REPORT - Is the backlash against Kim Kardashian warranted or is she being unfairly singled out simply because of late father's involvement in the O.J. Simpson trial?...
It was the verdict heard across the country. And as people gathered in front of television screens and computer monitors to hear if the jury would find Casey Anthony guilty of first-degree murder, aggravated child abuse and aggravated manslaughter, there were already rumblings of opinions stirring on social media sites. Soon after the decision was read, celebrities like Kathy Griffin, LeAnn Rimes, Mandy Moore, Jason Biggs and TMZ’s Harvey Levin populated the Twitterverse with their opinions about the trial, and let their true feelings be known.
One of the first to comment on the verdict was Kim Kardashian, who wrote “WHAT!!!!???!!!! CASEY ANTHONY FOUND NOT GUILTY!!!! I am speechless!!!”. Within minutes, many people began responding negatively to her tweet, with comments like “LMAO at Kim Kardashian saying she’s disgusted at the Casey Anthony trial when her dad did the same thing with O.J. Simpson.”
Given the fact that many other celebrities took to Twitter to share their thoughts about the verdict is the backlash against Kim Kardashian warranted or is she being unfairly singled out simply because of late father’s involvement in the O.J. Simpson trial?
Earlier this morning, Kardashian was a topic of discussion on Fox News, and the consensus there seemed to be that Kim’s tweet about Casey Anthony was ironic because her father’s efforts had led to O.J. Simpson being set free and found not guilty of murder charges.
Many people on Twitter seemed to agree with this assertion. A sampling of the comments included one from Tim Kelly, a Digital Strategist at CampaignGrid, that read “Now we need one of Johnnie Cochran’s kids to weigh in,” and another person retweeted a message that stated, “Kim Kardashian is ‘speechless’ Casey was found not guilty. So was Nicole Brown Simpson’s family when her dad got OJ off.”
Kardashian was only 15 years old when Simpson was acquitted of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman. Her father, Robert Kardashian, had been a close friend of the Simpsons, and in 1996, he wrote American Tragedy, a book about the difficult decisions he had to make during the trial. That same year, while promoting the book, he did an interview with Barbara Walters, where he said, “I have doubts. The blood evidence is the biggest thorn in my side; that causes me the greatest problems. So I — I struggle with the blood evidence.”
While there is no doubt about Kardashian’s role in the Simpson case, is it appropriate to blame Kim for her father’s actions?Roz Zurko of the Hartford Examiner doesn’t think so. In an editorial she wrote earlier today, she states that the anger directed toward Kardashian is unfair and that “she doesn’t deserve this.”
“Kim Kardashian is a diva, granted, but for her to take time out to share her concerns about the death of this baby girl going unsolved with her fans, says something about the caring person that she really is,” Zurko writes in a commentary posted earlier today. “Kim and her sisters should not shoulder any part of the blame for their father’s decision to defend OJ and get him off his murder charge, almost two decades ago. This was just too much of a stretch to make any sense.”
Yet many people have been quick to draw a comparison to the O.J. Simpson trial, with some calling it “O.J. Number Two”. And even though interest in the case has stirred people’s emotions and generated an almost equal level of public outrage as the Simpson case, some in the media believe that the similarities between the two trials ends there.
Toby Harnden, the U.S. editor for the Daily Telegraph, suggests that there are major differences between the two cases because unlike the O.J. Simpson trial, where there was a great deal of evidence stacked against the former athlete, jurors in the Anthony trial made the right decision because the prosecution failed to “prove beyond reasonable doubt that Anthony killed her daughter.”
“Marcia Clark, one of the O.J. Simpson prosecutors declare the Anthony case ‘worse than O.J.,’” he writes in his editorial. “That makes a good headline but the evidence against Simpson was much more powerful. Despite all the cable blather and the almost universal consensus that Anthony was as guilty as sin, the jurors looked at the evidence they were presented with in court and made their decision. That’s how justice is supposed to work – jurors putting aside all other considerations and looking at the evidence. That is the price society pays to try to ensure that the innocent are not imprisoned. It sticks in the craw to say it, but justice was done.”
While it may be hard to determine exactly why Kardashian’s comments caused such backlash and resurrected the memories of the O.J. Simpson case, the reaction to the Casey Anthony trial did reveal the important role that social media sites are playing in the theater of public opinion. In a world where news and opinion are almost instantaneous, the buzz surrounding what some consider to be the first major case of the 21st century has shown that people are becoming more involved in current affairs and are taking to the Internet to let their voices be heard.
And with over 8 million followers, it looks like a lot of people are listening to what Kim Kardashian has to say. Despite the controversy surrounding her recent comment, it’s almost certain that many will be looking out to see if she posts any comments about Casey Anthony’s sentencing tomorrow.
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