Magazines Analyze O.J. Verdict

Post-O.J. verdict analyses consume most of the magazines, including Oct. 16 issues of Time, Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report, and a too-screechy Weekly Standard (“Travesty,” proclaims its dark cover).

One of the more interesting points is made in Oct. 23 New Republic by Harvard law professor Randall Kennedy, a black who derides lawyer Johnnie Cochran’s summation for suggesting the imperative of either finding Simpson guilty or sending a message on police racism. “To subordinate the need to convict a murderer to the need to protest the intolerability of official racism is a moral mistake. Both could have been done and should have been done.”

The Oct. 16 New Yorker has a lovely issue devoted to different perspectives on the importance of home in our lives. In a Brendan Gill introduction, he notes “how close a house we own can come to owning us, enslaving us to possessions.”