OJ Simpson died again. When the news hit the airwaves that he had died of cancer on April 10 at the age of 76, it was a bit of a shock to the system. I mean, if OJ Simpson was anything, he was a survivor, and survivors don’t die. He was the heartiest form of life, the cockroach after nuclear annihilation, the barnacle on the bottom of the Queen Mary, the lichen in the crack of the boulder.
I didn’t even know he was sick.
It still doesn’t fit with his public image. C’mon man, the Juice doesn’t get sick. Nothing catches him—he slips the tackle, grooves through the airport,
grins at the camera, evades police capture driving on a freeway at 60 mph
in broad daylight and on live tv, then beats the rap by becoming the real
victim in a double homicide.
I was 25 in 1994 when OJ stood
accused of murder, and at the time I had a head and heart full of belief in the
foundations of this country and the values of my upbringing under a good
Catholic mother and a Michigan State Trooper. I believed that justice was an unassailable
force that kept the promise that all humans are created equal and would be treated
as equals under the law.
Sixteen months later, when the verdict
was read that Orenthal James Simpson was not guilty of a murder that everyone, everyone
knew he committed, I learned that Justice wasn’t blind, but I was: to real,
systemic racism versus the abstraction of racism that was the only one I had wrestled with,
to the impact of mass media and celebrity on public opinion, to the surrender of
the moral high ground to television hysteria and high ratings, to the fact that
there are two systems of justice in this country if a person could afford
the members-only version.
In the thirty years since the televised
travesty of justice that was the OJ Simpson trial, a lot has changed. I have
changed. Television has changed. Now, thanks to the popularity of televised
trials that followed in the wake of the OJ trial, Judge Judy is one in a cohort
of household names, and the Court TV channel is available on your tv or on the
internet 24 hours a day with nonstop courtroom feeds of live adjudications and special programming
with sexy reenactments of slashing, beating, torture, and pain.
As I write this the channel is featuring
coverage of the Doomsday Prophet Murder Trial, the Apple River
Stabbings Trial, and the Border Migrant Murder Trial where viewers
can munch popcorn and watch a jury visit a chunk of pasture where an Arizona cattle
rancher is accused of gunning down a Mexican citizen crossing his land. America
has changed. Half of America would watch the Border Migrant Murder Trial
and cheer for justice for the rancher, and the other half would cheer for
justice for the shooting victim. Few would be cheering for the once blind Justice
balancing it all in her scales.
When the death of OJ was
announced it struck me as significant that OJ’s death happened days away from
the next version of the Trial of the Century, and perhaps the first of
several such trials. Former President Donald Trump will face justice in a New York City courtroom against the charges that he broke the law. This is just one case, of
course, the first to come to trial of four criminal cases that total 91 indictments and
counting. These cases also follow the civil cases where in one a court
found Donald Trump was liable for sexually assaulting his accuser and was ordered
to pay her $83 million and counting.
Donald Trump has the influence to demand
the unequal treatment under the law his money, celebrity, and gluttony of privilege affords
him, and while the 25-year old me would have been more outraged, the 55-year
old me now understands that America is the land of tv and the home of the
crave. We crave celebrity more than we crave virtue. We crave the momentary
rush of adrenaline more than we crave stability. We crave seeming more than we crave
being. We crave winning an inch of turf more than a mile of compromise. We
crave our side winning even if it’s not right more than we crave what’s right
winning even if it’s not our side. At least that’s how it’s been in the thirty
years since OJ Simpson died the first time.
To me OJ Simpson died in June of
1994 when he murdered two human beings. The man that lived on after was a body
of plundered parts, a Frankenstein’s monster of celebrity and spectacle and hubris.
Did the American justice system die, too? Did it stay dead? Is it dead now? Or
now that OJ Simpson is dead can we begin to repair what his legacy cost us as a nation?
Are there two systems of justice, or does justice just take longer to bring
down the monster? We’ll begin to learn more next week when the next Frankenstein
of celebrity and spectacle and hubris sits down in a courtroom to face a jury and
Justice raises her scales, and all of America leans forward on the couch to
wait and watch and wonder.
