Ten years later Zach Baker remembers everything about O.J., including where he was the the Juice got loose.
By Zack Baker
210 west Writer [send email]
Most of us probably remember where we were when we heard the words nine years ago.
“Not Guilty.”
In what was dubbed “the trial of the century,” the curtain had fallen on the stranger-than-fiction O.J Simpson trial, with those two words.
It’s now been 10 years since the murders took place, but every once in a while a story about the case will pop up, this month it has been with intense frequency. Usually its O.J opening his mouth again, bashing the victims and emberassing himself.
In fact, when the case does come up, it’s more for a joke than anything else.
Most people seem to believe Simpson to be guilty, so the case that found him not guilty is nothing but a farce, a joke.
Nine years ago however, it was no joke. It was the biggest story in the world. From June 1994 to August of 1995, there was little else on CNN. The only exception was the Oklahoma City bombing, which was as big of a story, certainly bigger in its aftermath.
The tales of Simpson and the cast of characters that surrounded him made for good television. Much of the trial itself was carried on the station.
Here we are 10 years later. We live in a post-9-11 world, a world where the words that make headlines are “war” and “terrorism.”
I wonder if O.J would even make a dent today in the news.
Robert Blake has seen no real headlines for his murder case, or at least not to the level of Simpson. In fact as I write this, I couldn’t tell you how far along that case is. (Of course, Robert Blake was not as big of a star as O.J, and certainly did not have the spotless smiling image.)
But in 1994, I followed the whole trial of Simpson, and I know I wasn’t the only one. Why was O.J such a big story?
It may have been that it came along at just the right time. We were three years past the gulf war, and we weren’t in an election year. We were five years from the height of the President Clinton sex scandals.
It may have been the celebrity of Simpson himself. He was an NFL Hall of Famer, a television analyst, and played the likable Nordberg in the Naked Gun films.
Or it may have been the idea that we thought we knew someone, but in fact didn’t know him at all. Perhaps O.J. proved that we build up heroes just so that we can destroy them.
But in this case we didn’t need to. O.J destroyed himself.
Then there was the race issue. It had only been two years since the race riots after the Los Angeles Police officers had beaten Rodney King, and then were aquitted.
The murder of Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown had nothing to do with race on the surface, but it became the central issue of the trial. It may have been the bloody glove and the alleged racist cop named Marc Fuhrman. Or it may have been that polls said that whites firmly believed in Simpson’s guilt, while African Americans believed in his innocence.
It was a murder case, but it was played up as something more.
Our grandparents had Pearl Harbor, our parents had the Kennedy Assassination and the Challenger explosion.
It may seem difficult to put the O.J Simpson and his trial in the category with those tragedies, especially in the wake of 9-11.
It didn’t mean as much, it doesn’t mean as much as those things.
But I was a freshman in high school, with my heart pounding in sixth period theatre class, when the television came on and I heard those two words:
Not guilty.
I doubt anyone will ever forget it, no matter how strange the whole thing seems nine years later.