I have a niece who is 16 and she doesn’t quite get how big a deal the whole OJ thing was back in the 90s. I actually had to sit and explain it to her, and still I don’t think she got the magnitude of who he was, how big a deal his trial and its impact on race relations were back then, and why his parole is still a big deal in 2017.
Until I reflected on the JFK assassination which took place 5 years before I was born. Hell, I don’t even remember Watergate. Over time, I learned the impact of this tragedy, but to me, in terms of interest, conversation and notoriety, OJ to me is still bigger than JFK, for better or for worse.
The two other dates that resonate in my life were obviously 9/11, even bigger than OJ or JFK, and the Challenger explosion, which was a huge shock in high school but really didn’t carry the media load long term.
Off the top of my head, I’d say the assassination of John Lennon is #5, and over time the shock of Donald Trump getting elected might move up on this list, a lot of which depends on how his Presidency continues.
Does this make me a bad person? If there was “social media” in 1963 would JFK been bigger to me, and likewise, if it really existed like it does in 1994, to OJ to my niece?
To add another layer, my niece and all her younger brothers are too young to remember 9/11. Do you think for example Trumps election might in their lives be a bigger deal than that?
OJ was one of the first trials that generated mass media coverage. Starting with the low speed Bronco chase. It was a media obsession for at least two years. I still remember the daily coverage of the trial.
JFK’s assassination had a much bigger impact on the country. The shooting was captured on film and JFK’s funeral was televised live. Oswald was shot and killed on live TV. Then the story quietly went away. Except for the persistent conspiracy rumors that refuse to end.
Social media would have went into a frenzied meltdown in Nov 1963.
It scares me sometimes to think what might happen if another President is ever assassinated. The social media hysteria might actually destabilize the government.
You’re talking about JFK’s assassination almost 54 years after his death. In 54 more years people will still be talking about it. I doubt if very many will still be talking about OJ.
But it isn’t much of a mystery that events that happened during your lifetime are ‘bigger’ to you than ones you learned about as a part of history. To someone born in 2015 the Trump debacle will be about as meaningful as Watergate is to you.
I wasn’t living in the country when most of the OJ thing happened. I came back toward the end of the trial, and for the life of me I couldn’t figure out why everyone was so obsessed about this has-been, B-list celebrity–whether he killed someone or not.
Then I learned about the freeway chase, and realized that the import of this thing was 90% manufactured by media hype. Without that freeway chase, probably would even have this thread.
I was in my late 20’s during the OJ trial and I managed to avoid most coverage. I never watched the trial, or the news programs covering it. I didn’t see the chase when it happened. I remain to this day pretty unaware of the details.
Certainly I was generally aware of the situation and the outcome, but it had almost no impact on my life. Compare that to something like 9/11 which occupied most of my waking hours for weeks.
I feel the exact opposite. He was a former athlete & current actor/spokesman. I’m not big on celebrity watching. Before the brouhaha, I couldn’t even tell you anything about his family (whether he was married or divorced, how many kids he had, etc.) & had never even so much as met anyone involved with the trial &, at the time, had never even been to California. At least with a local crime scene, it’s “I know where that is” or maybe, “I was on that street two days ago”
I’m a news hound, & back then that meant watching TV, except every day, day after day, the lead story was the latest little thing in the trial. This meant the lead local story was pushed down &, in general, there was less local news. I boycotted watching the news for months because of this circus. Therefore, I was one of the least informed Americans when it came to this trial, something I was/am proud of as that means I was able to separate myself from some otherwise meaningless BS just because it was popular. I was not a lemming!
From what little I know about him, he seems reasonably educated, speaks proper English. I just can’t see someone with some intelligence committing a murder & then leaving one glove at home. Put it in a baggy & your luggage & then dump it in some random trashcan when you get to the airport (or wherever he was picked up to go)
I do remember that when they announced a verdict had been reached (but not yet what it was) I jumped for joy because it meant this thing was about to be OVER!
Yeah, I guess it did have an effect on me, but a negative one - sadness for our culture that some random crime, so far away from most people, was a [del]big[/del] huge deal just because one of the parties was famous.
We age and the big events to us are not to following generations.
The big event to my parents was WW2. The big event in my growing up was the Vietnam war. Now the Vietnam War is further behind me in years than WW2 was when I graduated from high school.
The OJ thing was massive because a bloke basically got away with murder due to the trial turning into a referendum on the institutional racism in the LAPD, rather than whether he was guilty or not.
I get exactly how big a deal the OJ trial was. Specifically, not very at all. He was a celebrity accused of murder. He wasn’t the first, and he won’t be the last. I think that, for instance, the duPont case probably had more real-world impact.
The only puzzle was why the media acted like it was a big deal.
That was part of it. And it’s certainly one of the reasons people love to talk about the case. But some of the “blame” for the verdict needs to be assigned to the prosecution team, which took months to present a case that could have been put on in a few weeks.
I know trials last longer in California, but if you can’t prove a murder case in four weeks, you don’t have much of a case.
I’ve consciously worked to dismiss/ignore anything about OJ. He would have never made my list because i don’t want to give that issue any more of my attention. The current media is fighting me on this.
Also, while John Lennon’s murder was senseless and sad, I wouldn’t be able to hold a rockstar to the same level of importance as JFK or MLK.
I understand what the OP’s saying and I don’t disagree with his perspective. I don’t share it, however. Also, would the OP’s examples have been the same 2 weeks ago when OJ wasn’t on the news?
Not sure if this depends on being a sports fan, but I would never consider a young retired Hall of Fame pro athlete a “has been.” That makes me think of someone holding onto a failing career as a B-actor or musician or something. Anyway, the guy set records in the NFL and retired at the top of the all-time leaderboards for NFL RBs. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1985, fairly recently. He was a very young and relevant all-time great professional athlete, who was constantly on TV, doing talk shows and sideline reporting/commentary, starring in hit movies, and doing endorsements including national commercials. He was “OJ.”
I could understand saying that about someone like Bruce/Caitlin Jenner, maybe, since it’s been 40 years since his Olympics. OJ, however, was young and all over the place and well liked. If Peyton Manning (or Tom Brady or Derek Jeter, you get the point) kills his wife 5 years from now, I doubt many people are going to be saying “who is this old has been and why are people talking about him?”
Since I was “around” for all of these, let’s consider them in terms of impact:
JFK - Possibility of nuclear war, if Russia had been involved, or a possible government takeover via internal coup. Either way, very bad things on the horizon…
MLK - Possible riots, increasing racial tensions; at the very least, a setback for those seeking racial justice.
911 - Again, is this going to start a “hot war”? Is some middle-eastern country about to get nuked?
(insert about a million other events here)
OJ Trial - somebody well-known gets off on a murder charge. Wouldn’t be the first time that happened. Not a big deal, for me.
OJ Released - meh. Explain to me why some aging felon getting out of jail now justifies wall-to-wall coverage.
I didn’t have cable at the time, but I think OJ was also one of the big feeders to CNN establishing itself. It had been around before, but this was one of the first things that had loads of people switching to 24-hour cable news to see what was new, rather than waiting for the scheduled network news.
I agree that OJ is not particularly important for most of the world, unless you are following the fields of sports, celebrities, or sports celebrities. It’s local news for US Americans.
The most puzzling thing about the original chase and events afterwards was the amount of attention the media in my country gave it. I was visiting my aunt in British Columbia, and we turned on the BCTV news to find wall-to-wall coverage of a slow-motion car chase. With a white Ford Bronco. On the streets of Los Angeles. No-one is saying it shouldn’t have gotten mention on the news, but to break into other programming for updates?
