A few years ago, back when Twitter was a place where you could have debates with reasonable human beings, a discussion arose: Would any modern-day celebrity’s hypothetical murder case match the all-encompassing media circus that was the O.J. Simpson trial? There were a few possible candidates — the Rock was a popular one, and Tom Brady popped up a couple of times — but the obvious answer was no, there was no equivalent. There couldn’t be.
Part of the reason for this is the diffuse nature of modern culture, in which no single figure or event can command universal attention and obsession the way the Simpson spectacle did in the mid-’90s. But the primary reason is Simpson himself. The Hall of Fame running back/television personality/professional celebrity, who died of cancer on Wednesday at 76, was ubiquitous in American life for decades. His athletic brilliance (he somehow combined the quick-twitch running ability of Barry Sanders with the brute force of Jerome Bettis), along with his savvy, ahead-of-his-time knack for inhabiting the role of empty pitchman and spokesperson, into whom Americans could pour all their beliefs while not knowing anything about him at all (creating a blueprint for Michael Jordan, Derek Jeter, Tiger Woods and Shohei Ohtani to follow), allowed him to be a universally beloved figure during one of the most tumultuous eras in American history.
How everywhere was O.J.? Andy Warhol painted him; he hosted The Muppet Show and Saturday Night Live; he starred in The Naked Gun and a movie with Elliot Gould; he appeared in Roots. He was aspirational for everyone. We wanted to believe in him so much that three months after he was arrested for beating Nicole Brown Simpson in early 1989, he went on David Letterman’s show and joked about running from the police. Simpson believed he was untouchable because he was.
Simpson’s murder of Nicole and her friend Ron Goldman in 1994, along with the subsequent trial, is all we will ever really remember about him, because how could it be otherwise? But as brilliantly illustrated in the masterpiece, Oscar-winning 2016 ESPN documentary, OJ: Made in America, Simpson’s story was America’s story, one that showcased the ugliness of our infinite contradictions on matters of celebrity, domestic violence, the legal system, and, of course, race, which inevitably took center stage at the trial. Simpson was always an unlikely civil-rights hero. When he was at his football peak, he steadfastly rejected getting involved in the civil-rights movement, unlike fellow athletes Muhammad Ali, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Jim Brown, famously saying, “I’m not Black, I’m O.J.”; he’s quoted in the documentary as wondering, when he saw protesters showing up to support him outside his home after his arrest, “What are all these n—–s doing in Brentwood?”
But while white people may have been confused why anyone would back him in 1994, no one can harbor any illusions today. The legal system’s inequitable treatment of Black people is far less of a revelation now than it was to white trial observers 30 years ago. Simpson may not have deserved that support then — the case against him was airtight and, if anything, has become even more so as DNA-evidence techniques have advanced — but as the saying goes, Deserve’s got nothing to do with it. Simpson was happy to accept any sympathy he could get: After all, he was always about himself more than anything else. Simpson didn’t care who his followers were, whether civil-rights advocates in the ’90s or Bob Hope and Brentwood Country Club members in the ’80s; he just wanted everything all the time. He was narcissistic in a way that, today, seems even more familiar than it did then.
He was a great football player—arguably the greatest pure running back of all time — a polished pitchman, a professional celebrity, a lousy actor, a philandering louse, a horrific spousal abuser, and a brutal murderer. We will never see anyone else like him in American culture. Thank goodness for that.
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Thankfully, O.J. Simpson Was One of a Kind
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12.04.2024
A few years ago, back when Twitter was a place where you could have debates with reasonable human beings, a discussion arose: Would any modern-day celebrity’s hypothetical murder case match the all-encompassing media circus that was the O.J. Simpson trial? There were a few possible candidates — the Rock was a popular one, and Tom Brady popped up a couple of times — but the obvious answer was no, there was no equivalent. There couldn’t be.
Part of the reason for this is the diffuse nature of modern culture, in which no single figure or event can command universal attention and obsession the way the Simpson spectacle did in the mid-’90s. But the primary reason is Simpson himself. The Hall of Fame running back/television personality/professional celebrity, who died of cancer on Wednesday at 76, was ubiquitous in American life for decades. His athletic brilliance (he somehow combined the quick-twitch running ability of Barry Sanders with the brute force of Jerome Bettis), along with his savvy, ahead-of-his-time knack........
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