When Is It Time For Right And Wrong?
The Santa Ana winds are blowing hard, so hot and dry, as Raymond Chandler wrote, that “meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study the back of their husbands’ necks.”
The weather suits this city’s edgy mood, just as the verdict suits this surreal case.
Any finale except an instant acquittal capped by a clenched-fist salute from a juror who was once a Black Panther, anything other than the white van going down the freeway while motorists cheered and waved would not have been artistically fitting for this Babylon tragedy-turned-farce that crystallizes everything warped about our society at century’s end.
How else could this day of the locust end but with O.J. sipping champagne and the vile Mark Fuhrman triumphing by ensuring a verdict that deepens the racial distrust he preached?
“It is the anatomy of all the tensions, polarizations, suspicions, distrust, grudges and reasons for the grudges writ large,” said Robert Coles, the child psychologist and social critic, with a deep sigh.
This made-for-TV case is the nadir of our fascination with celebrity, psychological compulsions, victimhood and redemption.
A week ago, polls showed the country ready to elect a black president. Now, polls show that we are still two separate societies, that whites cannot fathom the distrust that blacks feel given their day-to-day experiences, an accumulated rage that can counter rational arguments.
“Richard Wright wrote famously that the Negro is America’s metaphor,” said Henry Louis Gates Jr., the chairman of African-American studies at Harvard. “Now we have Colin Powell as a metaphor for consolidation and O.J. as a metaphor for division.”
Many whites don’t understand how blacks can so jubilantly embrace a man who, at the very least, was a wife-batterer. Many blacks don’t understand how whites can be so outraged about Simpson getting off. “Blacks were cheering against 100 years of lynch law,” said Gates. “The jurors were not knee-jerk race loyalists. They were defending an ideal of American justice most black people in O.J.’s situation never experienced.” He added that he knew that some blacks felt “the brother should walk,” even if he was guilty, because of Mark Fuhrman’s racism.
That’s why blacks have tempered their anxieties about money buying justice to lionize Simpson - who preferred white women, white businessmen and white country clubs.
The Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearings also began with gender and switched to race. Addressing an all-white Judiciary Committee, Judge Thomas cowed its members with the word “lynching.” Even though he had distanced himself from the black community after being the beneficiary of affirmative action, blacks rallied to him. Now that they know Thomas, Gates said, “blacks do not support him.”
Even though women were allegedly victimized in both cases, black women supported Thomas and Simpson. “You never go against your men,” said a black woman I know. “You don’t want to give the whites any more ammunition.”
On the morning after, the giant media maw was devouring our twin national obsessions: marketing and psychobabble. Katie Couric interviewed one psychologist about how Simpson should behave with his children and another about how Ronald Goldman’s father should grieve. (“Rage is good,” the shrink said.)
“Instead of dealing with right and wrong, we talk about psychology,” Coles complained. “Give me St. Augustine any day.”
No time for morality or introspection. Everyone’s too busy brokering deals. “Wanted: O.J. for PPV chat,” blared The Hollywood Reporter. “This could be the biggest pay-per-view event ever,” said Eddie Kritzer of Eddie Kritzer Prods. “If boxers can get $35 million - $40 million, Simpson could easily draw $20 million.” With the memory of Nicole Simpson’s bruised face still burning, the boxing analogy was grimly apt.
Simpson says he will try to find the killer of Nicole Simpson and Goldman. (“Let’s watch,” says Dominick Dunne.) He wants to go trick-or-treating with his kids and - chillingly - regain custody of them. He may move to New York.
Who knows? Maybe he’ll end up with his own talk show. It’s America, after all.
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