Oct. 1, 2017, in Nevada will be remembered, at least as long as anything that finds a place in the collective memory of Americans.<\/p>\n
O.J. is paroled<\/p>\n
If you\u2019ve perused the Internet over the past week, you\u2019ve probably seen \u201cThe Juice is Loose\u201d on a few hundred unimaginative postings. The reference, of course, is to the fact that O.J. Simpson was released from Lovelock Correctional Center in northern Nevada this past Sunday morning. Mr. Simpson acquired the nickname \u2014 a reference to Orange Juice and his \u201cO.J.\u201d initials \u2014 during his years as a football player, a running back for University of Southern California (USC) in college and the Buffalo Bills during most of his years in the N.F.L. \u201cJuice\u201d is also a colloquialism for \u201celectricity,\u201d and the Bills\u2019 offensive line was known as \u201cThe Electric Company.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Simpson\u2019s case, \u201cO.J.\u201d stands for Orenthal James. I\u2019ve never known anyone else named Orenthal. Many people assumed his middle name was \u201cJulius,\u201d perhaps because of the association with \u201cOrange Julius.\u201d I\u2019ve only known of a few people named Julius. Of course, there was Julius Caesar, the leader who was stabbed to death by the Roman Senate. Then, there was Julius Marx, who used the name \u201cGroucho\u201d to make his mark in show business. And finally there was a fellow named Julius LaRosa who is probably best remembered as being the only singer to have been fired on live television. He had been a regular on Arthur Godfrey\u2019s shows until LaRosa hired an agent and appeared on other venues, both having been strictly forbidden by Godfrey.<\/p>\n
I confess to having been a fan of O.J., starting when he was at USC. O.J. was a winner of the Heisman trophy (1968) and an inductee into both the College Football Hall of Fame (1983) and the Professional Football Hall of Fame (1985). However, I rarely watched his games for the Bills. Buffalo reminded me of the cold winters that I lived through during my childhood in New York. The worst being when I was a cadet at Xavier Military Academy and was required to attend our football games on Randall Island where the wind-chill factor made igloos seem like desirable abodes.<\/p>\n
After O.J. retired from football, he developed a successful career in television and, especially, movies. I watched his performance in \u201cThe Towering Inferno\u201d when my ex and I occupied a room on the 46th floor of the Peachtree Plaza Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia, in the mid-1970\u2019s. The movie was about a disastrous fire in a high-rise building. I didn\u2019t sleep that night.<\/p>\n
About a year later, I admired his performance as Kadi Touray, the father of a girl in Africa who is being courted by a young Kunta Kinte (supposedly the ancestor of American author Alex Haley) in the television mini-series \u201cRoots: The Saga of an American Family,\u201d based on Haley\u2019s wonderful novel.<\/p>\n
Simpson also had significant roles in a number of movies through the 1970s and 1980s. Aside from his acting career, he provided commentary for \u201cMonday Night Football\u201d and appeared on \u201cThe NFL on NBC.\u201d During its third season, O.J. was a \u201cguest host\u201d for \u201cSaturday Night Live.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the early 1990s, Simpson played the leader of a group of former U.S. Navy SEALs in a two-hour pilot for NBC. Before the show, called \u201cFrogmen,\u201d was scheduled to be aired, O.J. was arrested on suspicion of murdering his wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ron Goldman. The ensuing trial has been called \u201cThe Trial of the Century.\u201d I watched every televised minute of the fiasco and believe that he was guilty. However, his \u201cdream team\u201d of attorneys managed to secure a \u201cnot guilty\u201d verdict from the jury. Simpson\u2019s prison stint was due to a verdict concerning an armed robbery in Las Vegas in 2007. Now a free man, on parole, he is theoretically bankrupt, although he may still be receiving a $28,000 annual pension from the NFL. And that can be claimed by the Goldman family.<\/p>\n
Gunman shoots hundreds<\/p>\n
Later in the day, about 22,000 people were attending a concert at the Route 91 Harvest Festival adjacent to the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino. While country music artist Jason Aldean was performing \u201cWhen She Says Baby,\u201d the first shots were heard. According to videos that were monitored after the incident, the volley lasted 9 seconds.<\/p>\n
People seemed to think that the noise was caused by fireworks or a glitch in the sound system because the initial shots were followed by 37 seconds of silence from the weapon. However, there was some panicked screaming from the crowd. Then, the firing began again. When CNN interviewed Jack Owen, a country singer who was onstage at the time, he said, \u201cThis is not an exaggeration: This shooting was going on for at least 10 minutes. It was nonstop.\u201d<\/p>\n
Police identified the shooter as Stephen Paddock, a 64-year-old multimillionaire who lived a quiet life with his girlfriend in a retirement community in Mesquite, Nevada. On Oct. 1, he occupied Suite 32135 of Mandalay Bay, a room that had a sweeping view from its two windows of the Las Vegas Village and Festival Grounds, where the concert was held.<\/p>\n
A total of 23 guns was recovered from his room, including automatic rifles. On Monday, an additional 18 firearms were found in the Mesquite house, along with explosives and thousands of rounds of ammunition. Ammonium nitrate, a fertilizer that can be mixed with certain fuels to make a bomb, was found in his car. After searching a second house near Reno, police came up with a total of 49 guns.<\/p>\n
Sheriff Lombardo of Clark County said, \u201cWe believe the individual killed himself prior to our entry.\u201d Additionally, police believe that Paddock was a \u201clone wolf,\u201d not connected to any terrorist group. At this time, there is no apparent motive to his killing spree. But, according to ABC news, 59 people are dead and 527 are injured, some by gun shots, some by having been trampled, some by accidents connected with the attempt to flee the killing field.<\/p>\n
I wish that I could say that none of my heroes, like O.J. Simpson, will turn to violent criminality. I wish that I could say that there will never be an event as horrendous as that which just occurred in Las Vegas. But, I\u2019ve lived too long, been disappointed by too many heroes, and seen too many senseless slaughters to be so na\u00efve.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Oct. 1, 2017, in Nevada will be remembered, at least as long as anything that finds a place in the collective memory of Americans. O.J. is paroled If you\u2019ve perused the Internet over the past week, you\u2019ve probably seen \u201cThe Juice is Loose\u201d on a few hundred unimaginative postings. The reference, of course, is to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"elementor_theme","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_angie_page":false,"page_builder":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[27,33,43],"class_list":["post-6222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion","tag-celebrity","tag-death","tag-law"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6222\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}