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April
29, 2002 8:45 a.m. |
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nyone
who has attended a Super Bowl knows that the game itself is merely the
final act in a weeklong drama, the conclusion of a seven-day spectacle
of American self-indulgence. Yes, the athletes have the starring roles,
but all the peripheral hangers-on are on the stage as well, and they all
bask in that adoring light emanating from what has become so much more
than just another football game. The Super Bowl is an event, one
that the NBA Finals, the World Series, and heavyweight championship fights
can only aspire to equal in terms of pure bacchanalian excess. Thus are
these and other lesser contests often referred to as the "Super Bowl
of" what-have-you when the sporting wags set about frothing up the
fans. "The atmosphere here is like the Super Bowl, Bob," one
ex-jock in the press box will remark to another. "It really is, Steve,"
comes the reply. Well, no, it really isn't, but Bob and Steve so desperately
want it to be like the Super Bowl that they can't resist making
the comparison in the hope that the frothed-up fans will believe them
and make it so.
A similar orgy of self-delusion is underway here in Los Angeles, where reporters from all over the country and beyond have converged for the Robert Blake murder trial, which they so ardently wish will be a replay of the O. J. Simpson opera.
It won't be.
I had something of a front-row seat at the Simpson trial. To be more accurate, not to the trial itself but rather to the vulgar circus that surrounded it in the courthouse and on the streets outside. Though the world didn't know it, the clanky machinery of L.A.'s criminal-justice apparatus continued to grind away even as the players in the Johnnie Cochran Show were bringing shame upon the legal system and themselves in Judge Ito's courtroom. Elsewhere in the courthouse the standard brands of miscreants were all the while being processed along like so many widgets passing down the assembly line. As Simpson and his cadre of smooth-talking suits were flimflamming their way toward an acquittal, armed robbers, dope dealers, burglars, and murderers were hauled in to pass through arraignments, pre-trial hearings, plea bargains, and trials. And in some of those proceedings I was called to testify, obligating me to fight my way through the crowds of photographers, reporters, carnival barkers, and assorted freaks who lined the sidewalks on Temple Street every day, all of them exulting in the experience of the Big Trial.
The Simpson case really was the Super Bowl of crime stories. Across the street from the Criminal Courts Building, in the parking lot of the old Hall of Justice, there rose from the asphalt what came to be known as Camp O. J.: temporary studios pieced together in mobile homes and trailers, clusters of huge trucks bristling with satellite dishes, scaffolding, and camera platforms reaching to the sky so as to offer Mr. and Mrs. America a better view of . . . the street outside the courthouse. And huddled cheek-by-jowl in the confines of the parking lot were reporters from the disparate worlds of hard news, the tabloids, sports, and entertainment, all of them chasing some new angle, any new angle, in what at its core was a simple case of a jealous husband venting his rage on his wife and an unfortunate friend. There was the odd sensation of watching the same story leading off the network news, ESPN, and Entertainment Tonight, of seeing nearly identical headlines on the front pages of the Los Angeles Times and The National Enquirer.
Yes, the Simpson trial was the Big Show, and for a reporter who covered it it must have been like an addict's first hit from the crack pipe: a high so intense that it can never be equaled, yet against all reason he continues to seek the euphoria of that first indescribable rush. And that hydra-headed creature we call "The Media" is still in search of the sublime buzz it got way back in '95, when for nearly nine months it was almost as much a star as Mr. Simpson himself but without the accompanying risk of life imprisonment.
And now they're trying to relive the good old days through the Robert Blake trial. How disappointed they will be, for in the Blake case there can be found only shadows of the elements that held observers rapt through the course of the Simpson trial right up to its ignominious conclusion. First, there is the simple fact that in the Simpson trial the major players, i.e. Simpson and his two victims, were people blessed with abundant physical charms. Helping to lure the viewers were videotape and still photos of Simpson's rugged athleticism, Nicole Brown's sensuality (imagine Marilyn Monroe if she went to the gym every day), and Ron Goldman's all-American good looks. Neither Robert Blake nor his wife Bonny Lee Bakley, whom he is accused of murdering, achieved that level of sex appeal on the best days of their lives.
Next there is the matter of comparative celebrity. Simpson parlayed excellence on the football field into a second career as a celebrity pitchman and hack actor. His acting gifts were modest, to put it charitably, but he truly was a giant in the history of the NFL, and no matter how many cheesy roles he played on screens large and small he could nonetheless claim the level of stardom that attended his exploits as an athlete. Robert Blake, on the other hand, is known for nothing but his efforts as a hack actor, and his celebrity quotient had precipitously declined since his "Baretta" days to the point that, until his wife's death, few people would have recognized him on the street, even if he had that bird on his shoulder.
Compare also the victims. Yes, there were reports of Nicole Brown's drug use and promiscuity, but for all the efforts by Simpson's defenders to sully her memory she remained a tragic symbol of abused women everywhere. And even if the more scandalous descriptions of her private life were true, she couldn't begin to compete with Bakley in a sleaze contest. Bakley scammed extra cash from desperate men by placing lonely-hearts ads in magazines all over the country and in Europe, then asking the hapless respondents to send money. The envelopes were still coming in weeks after her death. Harland Braun, Blake's defense attorney, claims that it was Bakley's career as a grifter that finally caught up with her and resulted in murder. Omnipresent in the media lately, Braun tells anyone who will listen, especially those potential jurors out there, that just about everyone who ever met Bakley had a motive to kill her. Everyone, that is, except his client, who of course would never dream of such a thing. Trashing the victim may work with the jury, but I wouldn't bet on it. O. J. Simpson benefited when the prosecutors acquiesced to seating twelve dullards in the jury box. It is unlikely that twelve similarly dim-witted people can be found to serve in the Blake case.
Near the end of the Simpson trial, when the dark clouds of acquittal began to appear on what was once the clear blue horizon of a slam-dunk case, I was in the hallway of the district attorney's office as Marcia Clark, Christopher Darden, and the supporting members of the once-vaunted O.J. Team headed back to court after the lunch break. They were grim-faced and determined, unwilling to accept what most people in the building were beginning to think but few would say publicly: They were going to lose. I noticed that their coworkers cleared the way for them, but in doing so they averted their eyes, like soldiers watching from the safety of the fort as the doomed platoon marched off to certain death at the front.
That Mr. Simpson is today free to golf, sign autographs, and mug for tourists' snapshots without fear of being chased and pummeled by an angry mob is evidence of the decline in America's moral health. Robert Blake won't be as lucky. He's going down, but, to the media's chagrin, not many people will care.
— Mr. Dunphy is an officer of the Los Angeles Police Department. Jack Dunphy is the author’s nom de cyber. The opinions expressed are his own and almost certainly do not reflect those of the LAPD management.