Posted on 04/28/2015 12:51:27 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Conservatives have rightly reacted with amusement to various elements of the modestly titled blockbuster ABC special, “Bruce Jenner, The Interview.” After all, Diane Sawyer was literally more shocked that Jenner came “out” as a conservative, than she was that he came out as a woman.
Also, much of the highly-rated two-hour special felt much like an exercise in pushing the public to embrace, or even celebrate, something that many believe to be an acquired mental disorder. Understandably, conservatives get very nervous when a liberal media monolith determines that only one opinion on a subject (theirs) is valid and all variance from orthodoxy is immediately deemed to be a grievous violation of decorum.
But as someone who respects good storytelling and journalism (both of which are sadly in decline), I was most offended by how Sawyer completely blew it when it came to explaining the real story of how this bizarre interview ever came to be in the first place. Specifically, Sawyer somehow totally left out how the murder of O.J. Simpson‘s wife and her friend created the series of events which directly led to anyone caring about Jenner’s sexual identity.
Remarkably, the ABC special only very briefly showed Robert Kardashian’s photo but never touched on his key role in this soap opera. This is roughly the equivalent of telling the Hillary Clinton story without mentioning how she was basically handed a Senate seat after having endured the Monica Lewinsky embarrassment.
Those under the age of 35 who watched the ABC special would probably be shocked to know how this current-day incarnation of Bruce Jenner became “re-famous.”
The real story is this: Robert Kardashian was the man who read O.J. Simpson’s apparent suicide letter on live television in the prelude to the infamous “Bronco Chase,” an event which changed television news forever. He was also the person who stood next to Simpson during the reading of the outrageously false “not guilty” verdicts. The stunned look on his ashen face said more about the grotesque injustice which had been done that day than anything the prosecutors or the victim’s families could have possibly said.
At best, Kardashian helped a friend he knew to have likely brutally murdered two people beat the charges against him. At worst, he was an accomplice to double murder, after the fact.
Regardless, the celebrity Kardashian gained from his role in the case was critical to how the rest of this saga has played out. When his daughter Kim did a sex tape (back in the dark ages of the internet when such things were still excitingly new and not yet clichéd), the only reason the tape got such notoriety and public traction was because people recognized her last name from the Simpson case. (And it helped that the boyfriend involved was a famous singer.)
Without Kim’s sex tape exploding into the public consciousness, there never would have been a Keeping Up with the Kardashian’s reality television show. Without that program, which featured Kim’s stepfather Bruce Jenner as a minor (mostly mocked) character, the media wouldn’t care if he is going through gender transition, because the ratings, especially among younger demographics, simply wouldn’t be there.
If you doubt this premise, ask yourself how excited ABC would be if Nadia Comaneci — a far bigger star from the 1976 Olympics than Jenner — decided today that she was becoming a man. There is zero chance that news would get a network primetime special (unless Jenner agreed to take part in it, perhaps with Kim and Kanye as well).
It seems as though Jenner’s role on the Kardashian reality TV show may have played a small but significant part in his decision to publicly go through gender transition in the first place. It had to be gnawing at him all these years to be an Olympic champion being mocked on television by far more famous step-children who had accomplished nothing discernable in their lifetimes. When he told Sawyer that during all those years of the show it was he who really had the best story, I sensed that there was more than a little “let’s see who the real star is now, girls!” in his delivery.
At the very least, this resentment was clearly a part of why he decided to make this decision in such a dramatic public fashion (even announcing his own TV reality series documenting the process). If he actually goes through with the surgery and fulfills his promise of using his platform to make life better for those deal with issues similar to his, I will be more than willing to believe that this entire situation was at least entirely sincere, if not also likely very misguided.
However, until then I remain skeptical that, very much like Sawyer’s extremely stunted version of the Kardashian-Jenner family narrative, there isn’t a lot more to this story than was presented during ABC’s two-hour special.
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John Ziegler is a conservative documentary filmmaker who focuses on media-related issues. He is also a nationally-syndicated radio talk show host.
He killed a woman?
who the hell is this Jenner guy as I’m fed up of hearing his name?
Funny nobody is talking about that car accident Bruce caused.
Transgendered Privilege?
yes, in a traffic accident as he fled from reporters
RE: who the hell is this Jenner guy as I’m fed up of hearing his name?
I gather from the above question that :
1) You are not a fan of the Olympics ( especially Track and Field )
2) You don’t watch reality TV shows.
To the latter, I say, good for you.
He's not a woman. He might end up being a mechanically and chemically mutilated man, but never a woman.
Thanks for that, I’d completely forgotten Robert Kardashian’s association with OJ. I’d been wondering who the heck the Kardashians were and why on earth we would care.
Bruce Jenner witnessed two car accident tragedies in his life.
In 1976, only 90 days after his Olympic triumph, Jenner’s younger brother was tragically killed in a horrible accident in Jenner’s automobile. Jenner had been given a new Porsche, and his 18-year-old brother, Burt, had wanted to take his sweetheart, Judith, for a ride. On that cold November day in Connecticut, Jenner handed the keys of his Porsche to his little brother, who lost control of the car and hit a utility pole. The crash took the lives of both Burt and Judith.
Also, In the last year, Jenner has suffered great emotional stress, with his separation and divorce from Kris Kardashian and the end of his participation on the lucrative family reality show, “Keeping Up with the Kardashians.” While these difficult losses were still painfully fresh, tragedy struck again on the California Pacific Coast Highway. The car Jenner was driving pushed another car into oncoming traffic and resulted in the second driver’s death. Being involved in someone’s death creates the kind of emotional pain that never goes away.
LOL Only reality show I have seen is mountain men.
Stress??!?!? Oh poor baby, he's better off than that woman he killed.
According to a former Transgender who fortunately, changed his mind later,
See here:
A whopping 41 percent of transgenders report attempting suicide. We saw a glimpse of how fragile Jenner is when he shared that he recently considered suicide. The paparazzi had camped outside the clinic where he was undergoing some “feminizing” surgery. Home alone later that day, he said he paced the hallways of his home and considered shooting himself. Thankfully he didn’t. It’s a measure of his vulnerability that this particular frenzy of tabloid attention shook him up. After all, he has spent his entire adulthood in the public eye. He should know the paparazzi never stop.
As long as the television lights are on and the cameras are rolling, being in the spotlight he enjoys, Jenner will be fine. But when the lights go dim and the cameras are no longer rolling, he will face the most difficult time of his life. His celebrated change of gender could turn on him and become the cause of deep depression, which, left untreated, according to those who study the causes of suicide, is the number one cause for suicide.
So, that’s what O.J. REALLY deserves the gas chamber for. Inflicting the Kardashians on us.
Just proves that he can’t drive a stick anymore.
The Turks killed 1.5 million Armenians and they couldn’t get to the Kardashian clan?
I agree with most of what this post says, other than the notion that Jenner was not that famous. Jenner was the face of America in the 1976 Olympics.
Duh.
It's not a 'change of gender'. It's a mechanical and chemical mutilation. The result is not a woman. The result is a castrated, emasculated, poisoned man.
Depressing condition.
” emotional pain that never goes away”
So does being f’ed up.
O.J. isn’t in great health. It would be a nice treat for America if he would die soon in prison. (If “Mumia” died the same week, I’d throw a party.)
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