The New Kato Kaelin

Do you remember Kato Kaelin, the “friend” of OJ Simpson who supposedly witnessed “strange movements” by OJ that poked holes in his alibi? In the end, he was pretty much exposed as a publicity-seeking media whore who tried to make money off his connection to the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldberg.

Now we have Joe Oliver, the self-proclaimed “close friend” of George Zimmerman, the murderer of Trayvon Martin. He was deconstructed last night when he appeared on The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell. He changed his story as many times as Diana Ross did the last time she played the Super Bowl Halftime show. He’s said that he’s a close friend of Zimmerman, but then said that he was only a “close acquaintance.”

Oliver claimed today on another MSNBC interview that he and his employer have been threatened, yet no one seems to know where Oliver works. It has come out that he’s a former television reporter, so one might surmise that he’s doing all of these interviews (MSNBC, CNN, Fox, CBS, Huffington Post ad naseum), so he can land a new job. All of the “information” that Oliver supposedly has about that dark night in February is hearsay. It’s supposedly what Zimmerman has told him.

Daily Kos picked up on the O’Donnell interview:

I’ve always like Lawrence O’Donnell, but his coverage of the Trayvon Martin tragedy has taken my respect for him to a much higher level.

He has done a tremendous job of reporting and interviewing, but tonight he really took Joe Zimmerman’s defender Joe Oliver to the woodshed in a tense interview. Bottom line: Oliver admitted that he’s not a close friend of Zimmerman’s and that he’s basing his defense of Zimmerman on nothing more than a gut feeling.

In short, Oliver does not really know Zimmerman very well at all and has no business running around telling anyone who will listen that there’s no way Zimmerman is a racist and that Zimmerman killed Trayvon in self defense and has been crying ever since.

In addition, O’Donnell knocked Oliver off balance by telling him that he (O’Donnell) had discovered that Oliver and Zimmerman were once co-workers, which contradicted Oliver’s initial claim that they only knew each other via social circles. Oliver really started backpedalling after that revelation. It seemed as though he was surprised to be told himself that he once worked with Zimmerman. In effect, O’Donnell caught Oliver in a lie of omission. I’m not sure why he didn’t hammer him on that point because it totally undermined Oliver’s credibility.

Here’s some advice, Joe – unless you can present some facts in this case, you need to shut up. You’re not doing your “close friend” any favors.