O.J. Simpson Case at 25

On June 12, amidst daily hyperventilation across the Internet and cable TV about our current cultural scene, America will mark the 25th anniversary of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, killings for which Nicole’s ex-husband — the retired NFL superstar and movie/TV fixture O.J. Simpson — was soon arrested. By January of the following year, the “Trial of the Century” had begun, ending nearly a year later with an acquittal for “The Juice” despite overwhelming evidence. He was later found civilly liable for wrongful death, and he was imprisoned from 2008 to 2017 on armed-robbery and kidnapping charges that, in a convoluted way, ultimately stemmed from that civil verdict.

The O.J. case certainly didn’t invent “outrage culture” — which reached its pre-social-media peak during Vietnam and Watergate. Nor was it the first celebrity courtroom case about the “deathstyles” of the rich and famous, a fact to which Claus von Bulow, the Menendez Brothers, and Jean Harris can attest. But the trial was both the lowest moment for old-fashioned legacy media — “respectable” newspapers, magazines, book publishers, and nightly network news shows — and also their last gasp of untrammeled relevance before the “World Wide Web” (as it was then starting to be known) rewrote everybody’s story.

TD

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Telly Davidson

On June 12, amidst daily hyperventilation across the Internet and cable TV about our current cultural scene, America will mark the 25th anniversary of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, killings for which Nicole’s ex-husband — the retired NFL superstar and movie/TV fixture O.J. Simpson — was soon arrested. By January of the following year, the “Trial of the Century” had begun, ending nearly a year later with an acquittal for “The Juice” despite overwhelming evidence. He was later found civilly liable for wrongful death, and he was imprisoned from 2008 to 2017 on armed-robbery and kidnapping charges that, in a convoluted way, ultimately stemmed from that civil verdict.

The O.J. case certainly didn’t invent “outrage culture” — which reached its pre-social-media peak during Vietnam and Watergate. Nor was it the first celebrity courtroom case about the “deathstyles” of the rich and famous, a fact to which Claus von Bulow, the Menendez Brothers, and Jean Harris can attest. But the trial was both the lowest moment for old-fashioned legacy media — “respectable” newspapers, magazines, book publishers, and nightly network news shows — and also their last gasp of untrammeled relevance before the “World Wide Web” (as it was then starting to be known) rewrote everybody’s story.