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New York Post
Stephen A. Smith excoriates BET Awards for including O.J. Simpson during ‘in memoriam’ segment
By Andrew Battifarano,
20 days ago
One prominent sports media member is taking issue with the 2024 BET Awards.
The show, which aired Sunday, included an “in memoriam” segment that showed the likes recently deceased baseball icon Willie Mays and actor Carl Weathers.
Nevertheless, the award program also included O.J. Simpson , the Pro Football Hall of Famer and Hollywood star who was accused and later acquitted of killing his wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman in the mid-1990s, who died earlier this year at 76 years old following a battle with cancer.
The inclusion of Simpson, later a convicted felon from a 2007 armed robbery case, irked many on social media, but it particularly perturbed ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith.
Stephen A. Smith took issue with the BET Awards including O.J. Simpson in an “in memoriam” segment. Stephen A. Smith Show/YouTube
On Tuesday’s episode of his eponymous podcast, Smith went on a lengthy diatribe about Simpson being shown during the segment.
Smith prefaced his monologue by giving the awards and the BET network executives some praise by commending them on their viewership totals and how the show is supposed to celebrate black people and culture.
An image of O.J. Simpson is displayed during the In Memoriam segment during the BET Awards on Sunday, June 30, 2024, at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP
But Smith said he was “pretty pissed off about” how Simpson’s name and image were shown on a screen onstage during the show.
“In the eyes of most people, regardless of an acquittal, O.J. Simpson is a double murderer,” Smith said on his show.
Smith said he had an issue with the show, one that is supposed to honor black people, including a person that the “First Take” host didn’t believe cared about black people until he was on trial.
O.J. Simpson sits during a break on the second day of an evidentiary hearing in Clark County District Court, May 14, 2013, in Las Vegas. AP
“My attitude is this, O.J. Simpson never gave a s–t about black people until he was indicted — never gave a damn,” Smith added.
“Here’s the bigger issue, we should never be given a reason to talk about him again. We certainly shouldn’t be celebrating O.J. Simpson. I’m sorry. Not when two people were damn near decapitated and he was the prime suspect,” Smith added.
“I thought it was wrong,” Goldman told the outlet. “I thought it was just wrong. It’s hard to imagine that he would fall in the same category as the vast majority of other people they honor.”
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