Why America ODs on O.J.

Anyone who looks for Higher Significance is missing the point

by Kenneth Auchincloss

Why in the world is America, where homicide is not exactly a rare or outlandish phenomenon, so utterly obsessed with the case of O. J. Simpson? Every clue in the case has been chewed over in the tabloids weeks before the trial begins. Why didn't Nicole's ice cream melt? When precisely did she finish her phone call to her mother? What siginifies the dog that barked in the night (yes, Watson, this time the dog did bark)? All America is hanging on the answers, and it will get them, presumably, during a trial that promises to fill most of the television hours between Sept. 19 and sometime after Christmas. Christmas, like the World Series, may have to be canceled this year.

Before diving into the glutinous depths of Significance, where dark forms like Racial Intermarriage and the Curse of Celebrity slither about, let's admit straight off that it's a pretty damn fascinating case. The sports hero up from the ghetto, the stunning blonde, the terrible wounds, the gouts of blood, the L.A. freeway chase, the mysterious object in the manila envelope, the defense's metastasizing legal team (the O.J. bar association?), the book contracts, the movie deals... you don't have to be American to love this kind of thing. Besides, it's a big country with a whole lot of people who don't know anything about each other but want to act sociable. Americans regularly need a fresh subject that everyone can talk about, the cabbie with his fare, the seatmates on a plane, the techies on the Internet. The Clintons wanted this summer's subject to be Health Care-- 'Hey, heard about the new soft-trigger amendment?' Fat chance! But O.J. was just the ticket.

Binge and purge: Still, there has been something excessive about it all. When it comes to Big Stories in this country, there almost always is. We Americans like to go on news binges. We binged on the Lindbergh kidnapping, we binged on the Kennedys, we binged on Watergate (and all the other little -gates), we binged on the Gulf Warlet, we binged on Tonya Harding. Give us a moderate political scandal, and these are the times that try men's souls. Give us a juicy killing, and it's the Crime of the Century. It's all a bit like an eating disorder, a national case of bulimia, the binge-and-purge syndrome. We stuff ourselves with some Event, we purge by blaming ourselves for our silliness (already some Americans are denouncing the media for O.J. overkill), then we stuff ourselves some more.

Perhaps we need a lower threshold of boredom, but not at the expense of our native enthusiasm or our fascination with novelty. Yawns R not us. Perhaps we need a more fastidious press, but try telling that to editors or television producers who are currently worried about maintaining their audience. News goes in cycles in this country. Politics was hot in the '60s, business was hot in the 80s, foreign affairs were briefly hot when communism collapsed. Now tabloid stories are hot: Michael Jackson's sexuality, Nancy Kerrigan's knee, John Bobbit's penis - and O.J. in the dock. The currency of news has been debased. The television networks have plunged into lurid prime-time "magazine shows" that fondly explore topics like incest; talk-radio has handed over the microphone to ranters and lunatics. Lots of people tune in to this kind ot thing. Where ratings are to be found, the mainstream media will surely follow - and they have.

The lower depths: So the old boundaries have come down. Privacy is dead - or rather, it's a property, to be sold for cash or exploited for circulation. Write a memoir, and the publisher will demand more titillating revelations. Commit a crime or run for president - the distinction between them is growing a bit obscure - and your private life becomes a playground for public gumshoes. Americans have long been accused of dancing along the smooth surface of life; now we are plunging into the lower depths.

It's no accident that tabloidism is rampant at a time when public interest in government has dropped close to the vanishing point. The current debate - burble is perhaps a more accurate word - over health care illustrates the situation perfectly. One might think that Americans would be salivating eagerly at the prospect of a new benefit bobbing up in the public trough. Instead, they are repelled at the prospect of more government nannies interfering in their lives. The infinite capacity of government to Make Things Worse is a piece of conventional wisdom. This is nothing new: it's been a major strain in American political attitudes since the Constitution was written. Washington moans regularly about the wall of public cynicism that surrounds the dreaded Beltway, but it shouldn't be surprised.

So, if no one could care less about health care, if there's no Soviet Union to kick around anymore, if the economy is neither very good nor very bad, if there isn't even a baseball game to watch on TV, is it any wonder that Americans are ODing on O.J.? It's fun. It's easy. It's completely lacking in Higher Significance.

Newsweek, August 29, 1994