In Foundation, a First Act Tragedy and Second Act Farce

It is a round decade since the fall of the Berlin Wall, but at least Karl Marx is still good for one thing: his useful observation that in history, events and important personages occur twice-- the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.

The tragedy was a 1994 double murder. The sad farce is what has become of a foundation intended to honor one murder victim by saving other women. The Nicole Brown Charitable Foundation, we have learned, has lately been spending almost twice as much on overhead as it has given away to battered women’s causes.

Five years ago, Nicole Brown Simpson’s father acknowledged that, when it came to this charitable stuff, he and his family were “novices.” This is a foundation with more heart than smart: from the launch party at the Rainbow Room, the dissonantly glamorous restaurant atop New York’s Rockefeller Center, to a fund-raiser in June at another eyebrow-raising address, the Playboy Mansion, an event that netted only about $5,000.

In between came the hiring of a foundation president who turned out to be a convicted felon and accused wife-beater, and large checks from the publisher of Penthouse, the publisher of Nicole’s best friend’s raunchy memoir, and the parent company of the National Enquirer.

Denise Brown says the bills keep coming but the donations don’t. The “hype” that got the foundation going has waned. Perhaps now is the time for her to serve her sister’s memory best by folding the foundation tent to do as she is often asked to do: speak at fund-raisers for other, established groups, whose memory of Nicole is not of hype, but of the horror of might-be.

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There is another foundation, a thriving one, begun 10 years ago to keep young inner-city men from becoming either gang victims or gang victimizers.

Its name is Amer-I-Can. It works with lawmen and politicians, and its big fund-raiser is a golf tournament with a field of such big names as Jack Kemp.

Its founder, who used his own money to start it, is Jim Brown--the same Jim Brown who was ordered into domestic abuse counseling after a jury convicted him of misdemeanor vandalism.

Jim Brown, Hall of Fame athlete and actor, beat the window of his wife’s Honda with a shovel. O.J. Simpson, Hall of Fame athlete and actor, beat the windshield of his wife’s Mercedes with a bat.

Monique Brown called 911 and said she was afraid her husband was going to “snap my neck.” Nicole Brown Simpson called 911 and told police she was afraid her husband was going to kill her.

Jim Brown was convicted of smashing the car but acquitted of making terrorist threats against his wife, who recanted her charges and hinted that police had doctored the tape of her 911 call.

Women seem to have a history of changing their minds about Jim Brown. In 1968, he was arrested after his girlfriend turned up unconscious outside his apartment; she later said she had fallen. In 1971, two women who accused him of misdemeanor battery did not show up to testify. In 1986, a woman who told police he had beaten her then refused to cooperate.

And now Monique Brown says she was wrong when she said her husband had once given her a black eye and choked her. He hadn’t threatened to kill her; she called 911 because she was in the grip of PMS and was afraid he was having an affair and was just using the cops to embarrass him.

O.J. Simpson claimed one of his accusers had racist motives. Jim Brown has, in a motion to overturn his conviction, accused the judge who sentenced him to probation, community service and domestic violence counseling of “waging a war against all men.”

On top of this, Monique Brown says she and her husband are being used to avenge Simpson’s acquittal on double murder charges. “Based upon the city attorney’s humiliating and shameful loss of the O.J. Simpson case, we are being used--my husband is being used--as an example to make a stand on issues that are not related to us.”

Doesn’t it make any difference to her that it was the district attorney, not the city attorney, who prosecuted O.J. Simpson?

First act tragedy, second act farce.

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For years, cops were accused of not taking domestic violence seriously. More often than not, one cop would wrap a buddying arm around the batterer and tell him to calm down, sleep it off, and the other cop would suggest that the woman might want to stay at her mother’s for a couple of days.

Now they’ve begun hearing that they’re being too zealous. Yet no cop wants to answer a 620-D, a domestic disturbance call, see it fall apart in court . . . only to be summoned back to the same address a few weeks or months later, except this time it’s a 187, a homicide.

First act tragedy, second act--tragedy.

Patt Morrison’s column appears Fridays. Her e-mail address is patt.morrison@latimes.com.