The People V. OJ, Ron Goldman, Studs and Kathie Lee

Best line from last night's People V. OJ installment? Travolta/Shapiro casually asking the assembled members of the defense team: "Who thinks OJ did it?" 

"Oh oh oh ohhh I do Mr. Kotter!" 

Heh.

Anyway, I liked this episode. I'm glad that the show is so blunt about how sympathetic the black women jurors were to Simpson. That's something that still makes me want to vomit. It was bad enough hearing men defend OJ, what with that bullshit sports star hero-worship complex a lot of them (even some members of the media) had going on at the time, but the thought of any woman--regardless of color--sticking up for OJ is totally inexcusable. Would these female jurors have found OJ so "charming" and "charismatic" if they were getting pummeled on a regular basis by this fuckstick? Inquiring minds want to know. 

It was also nice to see Kim and Fred Goldman acknowledged in this episode. As I mentioned before, I've always appreciated their tenacity and refusal to fade into the woodwork during and after the trial, and the way they've kept up the good fight for Ron. Maybe it's me, but I'm baffled by people who preach about "forgiveness" to victims (and families of victims) of violent crime. It's like, yeah, if a family goes on TV after a loved one has been murdered claiming that they forgive the perpetrator, that's all well and good and--if that's the way they really think--they are obviously more evolved than I am. But personally, if (God forbid) I were in their shoes, I'd be on every TV station screaming for justice and I wouldn't stop until they let me escort the murdering bastard to the gas chamber myself. Kim Goldman even wrote a book called Can't Forgive about the murders and her life after the trial, and she talked about Oprah interviewing her and saying something like, "Don't you think it's time to forgive OJ and move on?" (I couldn't find the exact quote), which really annoyed me. Seriously, Oprah? Go back to what you're good at: licking Beyonce's ass and quoting Maya Angelou and don't be pontificating about forgiveness to someone whose brother was callously slaughtered by a smirking psychopath. Oprah can't even talk about people fat-shaming her without getting all teary-eyed and verklempt, so don't even tell me she would be the model of grace and compassion if something similar happened to a loved one in her life. My point is, people have no business telling victims of violence how they should feel about it.  

On a lighter note, remember that show Studs? For you young 'uns, it was a late-night dating show from the early '90s where two guys and three girls would go on dates and then compare notes and hear what they had to say about each other. It was basically Love Connection with younger, better-looking contestants and more bad puns and cheesy innuendo. Studs was considered fairly racy at the time, but now it all seems very quaint and almost innocent compared to the reality shows of today. Anyhoo, it came out back in the day that Ron Goldman had been a contestant on Studs back in 1991, and someone unearthed the footage and posted it on YouTube (the title says 1992 but the copyright is 1991, so I'm going with that)....

Ron Goldman on "Studs"

....and although the clip is basically a big steaming pile of bad 1990's fashion and cringe-y sex jokes, I found it strangely entertaining. (And speaking of cringe-worthy, the Sam Kinison video for Wild Thing is inexplicably tacked-on at the end of the clip. While the song is kind of amusing, the video has NOT aged well, and I'm not just talking about the stupid dancing and big hair. It's all just so rape-y and gang-bang-y and it made me embarrassed for everyone involved).

My biggest memory of Studs is that Hitomi, my senior year ('91-'92) boarding school roommate, was morbidly fascinated by the show, and when she came home with me for October break we ended up watching it every night that it was on TV. We had some good laughs. I also remember something about how Kathie Lee Gifford was horrified by Studs and made a big stink, threatening to walk off when (Studs host) Mark De Carlo was scheduled to be a guest on that morning show she had with Regis. This was several years ago, back when Kathie Lee was all uber-Christian and loved to talk about how religious she was, something that I find interesting now that she's (allegedly) best buds with Kris Jenner, the woman who (allegedly probably) peddled that infamous sex tape of her daughter getting peed on by a D-list rapper to the media. I say interesting. but not surprising, since I'm never all that shocked when a self-righteous moralizer turns out to be a flaming hypocrite. Remember, I grew up in the '80s when Jimmy Swaggart was getting caught with hookers and that whole mess with Jim Bakker and Jessica Hahn (star of the Wild Thing video!) was going down. 

Anyway, Mark De Carlo did end up appearing on Regis and Kathie Lee after all, and here's what the Studs guy had to say about it:    

"Kathie Lee Gifford is a hypocritical, Bible-beating, insincere media whore. She invited me on her show specifically to insult me. I flew on a red-eye from Utah, where I was doing a charity event Christmas week, to appear on her show and she said I was propagating rampant immorality in America. And then the very next week she was kissing Hugh Grant’s ass. So who’s immoral there?” ---Mark DeCarlo 

To wrap it all up, here's a masterpiece from Everything Is Terrible featuring Mr. and Mrs. Gifford, because Kathie Lee totally deserves this.