Of Course We Watched The O.J. Simpson Trial--The Story Touched Our Heart
Daily News, Sunday, June 26, 1994
Some people don't have a clue - the O.J. Simpson story we've been hearing about this last week is some of the most riveting stuff I've seen and read and heard since the first moon landing. But then I tune in to "The John and Ken Show" on KFI radio and some caller is berating the media for wasting our time on sensational murder stories involving celebrities and totally ignoring much more important stories, such as whether or not the North Koreans are building an atom bomb.
I don't know if the caller was married, but if he is, I pity his wife 'cause this guy had the psychological insight of a ball peen hammer. Anyone with an ounce of sensitivity or emotional depth would find the O.J. Simpson story far more compelling than anything going on in North Korea. Nuclear proliferation is a political issue, not a human emotion. What really touches the human heart is a story like Simpson's with its elements of Greek tragedy, passion, pathos, despair and inevitable fall from grace. It doesn't matter if the media coverage is sometimes overblown, uninformed, inane or misguided (such as when it fixates on whether or not the police made a mistake in not arresting O.J. sooner). The truth is people are interested in the O.J. Simpson story for all the right reasons - it touches the human heart. It doesn't need any more justification. Justification doesn't come any better than that.
You undoubtedly never have heard of "applause deficit disorder," which isn't surprising since I just made up the term, but there's nothing new about the concept. It's what happens to famous athletes like O.J. Simpson after enjoying a decade or so of some of the most intense applause and adoration accorded any human being on the planet. Suddenly they've lost a step on the playing field. Their sinews don't snap anymore. Their injuries don't heal and eventually the day comes when a 22-year-old kid takes their place in the lineup.
When sportswriters (those depressing jock sniffers) write about this inevitable happening, they treat it as a catastrophe, a disaster, an unparalleled tragedy of the greatest magnitude. The way they mourn about the problem you'd think not only was the athlete's career over but his life was over, too.
Well, that's a crock. So what if the athlete is not a superstar anymore? It won't kill him to install plumbing, repair cars or run a fried chicken franchise. The problem is that many men who have achieved overwhelming fame and success early in life somehow think they are entitled to stay on that plane forever. And then when the applause stops we are supposed to consider their despair a mitigating circumstance in understanding why some men might go off the deep end, rage at their wives, beat them up and maybe even slash them to death in a frenzied rage.
Well, this isn't the English peerage. You aren't entitled to have people call you sir just because some distant blood relative broke the French line two centuries earlier at the battle of Waterloo. Times change. Life goes up and down. O.J. Simpson might have been under a lot of strain once the cheering stopped, but what about those of us for whom the cheering never started in the first place?
My life has gone up and down as long as I can remember, but I'm not going to let it give me hemorrhoids. Twenty-five years ago, I was flying around the world, a Naval flight officer in a patrol squadron, staying in the best hotels, going to the finest restaurants in Athens, Manila, Madrid, not even looking at the prices, ordering whatever struck my fancy.
I recall once sitting in a restaurant in Rota, Spain, on Christmas Eve 1968, studying a 25-page menu, including roast goat a la good woman (i.e. goat with tomatoes), drinking 30-year-old brandy, being served by senior waiters in tuxedos, amid candles, crystal, spotless table linens and fine china plates.
I never asked the price of anything because whatever it was, it wasn't much and in any case I could easily afford it. The dollar was king. I was a single young man on flight pay, only cashing every third paycheck (and depositing the rest directly in the bank).
And now here I am a quarter-century later and when I go out to dinner on a Friday night with my two boys, ages 9 and 7, we end up in a fast-food chicken joint, eating on red Formica tabletops out of plastic-foam containers, while garlic-flavored chicken grease runs down my elbows and stains my khaki pants. I suppose it's a come-down on some cosmic level, but I'm not in therapy because of it.
Two things about the people who jumped in the air while cheering for O.J. Simpson as he rode up the 405 Freeway last week: (1) it was indeed depressing that so many Los Angeles residents couldn't tell the difference between a celebrity and a hero; and (2) this is anything but a new phenomenon in Los Angeles.
Twenty-five years ago, the Navy sent me out to Los Angeles to work with Lockheed on their four-engined turbo-prop patrol plane. I found a furnished apartment in a singles complex in the Valley, played tennis till 11 p.m. every night, drank martinis and soaked in an outdoor Jacuzzi. The complex had a barbershop right next to the weight room.
The first time I got a haircut there I sat down and before I could even say how I wanted my hair cut the barber instantly began telling about his brush with celebrity. Every day, he smugly explained, he drove out to Debbie Reynolds' husband's house to cut and comb and style his hair. Now this barber was someone who was twice removed from celebrity himself (he was next to someone who was next to someone who was a star). But even that secondhand encounter with glory was to him a source of endless pride.
Of course it was pathetic. But how did he get that way? How did so many of us get that way? How did the people who cheered O.J. driving up the San Diego Freeway get that way too? Well, I think I have one idea. It used to be people got their values from their family and their church. Now they get them from TV. According to the Los Angeles Times' Greg Braxton, the average black family in America watches 69 hours of TV a week, the average white family 47. No wonder so many of us can't tell the difference, as William Bennett observed over the weekend, between a hero and a celebrity - we think being famous (or infamous) is the same as being significant.
We haven't watched television in our house now for nearly four years. It was too much of a battle; the kids got up before us and flicked through the channels. When we were tired and needed a break, we would give in and let them watch TV. It was our baby sitter, our old maid aunt we could call upon at any time to help share the load. The only problem was, it wasn't good for the kids.
We could see it happening. My son talked about being famous, being an actor, being on TV. Finally, we called the cable company and canceled the service. Then providentially a Santa Ana wind blew down our old roof antenna. We couldn't get any TV picture at all. Nada.
Now after four years, we wouldn't any more think of letting cable into our house than we would let the people who live up the hill run their sewage line into our living room. I know there are good shows on TV. But even the good ones have a bad effect. They make kids think that the only thing that matters is celebrity, not character or accomplishment. It reduces their attention span, muscle tone, and chances to build community.
I don't hate TV. Mainly it just frustrates me. Still, I would be lying if I said there weren't times when I didn't miss it - as when the helicopters followed O.J. Simpson on that long slow drive up the 405 Freeway.
Some people don't have a clue - the O.J. Simpson story we've been hearing about this last week is some of the most riveting stuff I've seen and read and heard since the first moon landing. But then I tune in to "The John and Ken Show" on KFI radio and some caller is berating the media for wasting our time on sensational murder stories involving celebrities and totally ignoring much more important stories, such as whether or not the North Koreans are building an atom bomb.
I don't know if the caller was married, but if he is, I pity his wife 'cause this guy had the psychological insight of a ball peen hammer. Anyone with an ounce of sensitivity or emotional depth would find the O.J. Simpson story far more compelling than anything going on in North Korea. Nuclear proliferation is a political issue, not a human emotion. What really touches the human heart is a story like Simpson's with its elements of Greek tragedy, passion, pathos, despair and inevitable fall from grace. It doesn't matter if the media coverage is sometimes overblown, uninformed, inane or misguided (such as when it fixates on whether or not the police made a mistake in not arresting O.J. sooner). The truth is people are interested in the O.J. Simpson story for all the right reasons - it touches the human heart. It doesn't need any more justification. Justification doesn't come any better than that.
You undoubtedly never have heard of "applause deficit disorder," which isn't surprising since I just made up the term, but there's nothing new about the concept. It's what happens to famous athletes like O.J. Simpson after enjoying a decade or so of some of the most intense applause and adoration accorded any human being on the planet. Suddenly they've lost a step on the playing field. Their sinews don't snap anymore. Their injuries don't heal and eventually the day comes when a 22-year-old kid takes their place in the lineup.
When sportswriters (those depressing jock sniffers) write about this inevitable happening, they treat it as a catastrophe, a disaster, an unparalleled tragedy of the greatest magnitude. The way they mourn about the problem you'd think not only was the athlete's career over but his life was over, too.
Well, that's a crock. So what if the athlete is not a superstar anymore? It won't kill him to install plumbing, repair cars or run a fried chicken franchise. The problem is that many men who have achieved overwhelming fame and success early in life somehow think they are entitled to stay on that plane forever. And then when the applause stops we are supposed to consider their despair a mitigating circumstance in understanding why some men might go off the deep end, rage at their wives, beat them up and maybe even slash them to death in a frenzied rage.
Well, this isn't the English peerage. You aren't entitled to have people call you sir just because some distant blood relative broke the French line two centuries earlier at the battle of Waterloo. Times change. Life goes up and down. O.J. Simpson might have been under a lot of strain once the cheering stopped, but what about those of us for whom the cheering never started in the first place?
My life has gone up and down as long as I can remember, but I'm not going to let it give me hemorrhoids. Twenty-five years ago, I was flying around the world, a Naval flight officer in a patrol squadron, staying in the best hotels, going to the finest restaurants in Athens, Manila, Madrid, not even looking at the prices, ordering whatever struck my fancy.
I recall once sitting in a restaurant in Rota, Spain, on Christmas Eve 1968, studying a 25-page menu, including roast goat a la good woman (i.e. goat with tomatoes), drinking 30-year-old brandy, being served by senior waiters in tuxedos, amid candles, crystal, spotless table linens and fine china plates.
I never asked the price of anything because whatever it was, it wasn't much and in any case I could easily afford it. The dollar was king. I was a single young man on flight pay, only cashing every third paycheck (and depositing the rest directly in the bank).
And now here I am a quarter-century later and when I go out to dinner on a Friday night with my two boys, ages 9 and 7, we end up in a fast-food chicken joint, eating on red Formica tabletops out of plastic-foam containers, while garlic-flavored chicken grease runs down my elbows and stains my khaki pants. I suppose it's a come-down on some cosmic level, but I'm not in therapy because of it.
Two things about the people who jumped in the air while cheering for O.J. Simpson as he rode up the 405 Freeway last week: (1) it was indeed depressing that so many Los Angeles residents couldn't tell the difference between a celebrity and a hero; and (2) this is anything but a new phenomenon in Los Angeles.
Twenty-five years ago, the Navy sent me out to Los Angeles to work with Lockheed on their four-engined turbo-prop patrol plane. I found a furnished apartment in a singles complex in the Valley, played tennis till 11 p.m. every night, drank martinis and soaked in an outdoor Jacuzzi. The complex had a barbershop right next to the weight room.
The first time I got a haircut there I sat down and before I could even say how I wanted my hair cut the barber instantly began telling about his brush with celebrity. Every day, he smugly explained, he drove out to Debbie Reynolds' husband's house to cut and comb and style his hair. Now this barber was someone who was twice removed from celebrity himself (he was next to someone who was next to someone who was a star). But even that secondhand encounter with glory was to him a source of endless pride.
Of course it was pathetic. But how did he get that way? How did so many of us get that way? How did the people who cheered O.J. driving up the San Diego Freeway get that way too? Well, I think I have one idea. It used to be people got their values from their family and their church. Now they get them from TV. According to the Los Angeles Times' Greg Braxton, the average black family in America watches 69 hours of TV a week, the average white family 47. No wonder so many of us can't tell the difference, as William Bennett observed over the weekend, between a hero and a celebrity - we think being famous (or infamous) is the same as being significant.
We haven't watched television in our house now for nearly four years. It was too much of a battle; the kids got up before us and flicked through the channels. When we were tired and needed a break, we would give in and let them watch TV. It was our baby sitter, our old maid aunt we could call upon at any time to help share the load. The only problem was, it wasn't good for the kids.
We could see it happening. My son talked about being famous, being an actor, being on TV. Finally, we called the cable company and canceled the service. Then providentially a Santa Ana wind blew down our old roof antenna. We couldn't get any TV picture at all. Nada.
Now after four years, we wouldn't any more think of letting cable into our house than we would let the people who live up the hill run their sewage line into our living room. I know there are good shows on TV. But even the good ones have a bad effect. They make kids think that the only thing that matters is celebrity, not character or accomplishment. It reduces their attention span, muscle tone, and chances to build community.
I don't hate TV. Mainly it just frustrates me. Still, I would be lying if I said there weren't times when I didn't miss it - as when the helicopters followed O.J. Simpson on that long slow drive up the 405 Freeway.
posted by Paul Ciotti at 10:26 PM
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