Consider This from NPR - O.J. Simpson's trial divided the nation. What legacy does he leave behind?

Episode Date: April 11, 2024

O.J. Simpson was more than a football star. More than a pop culture icon or a defendant acquitted of murder.He became a symbol of America's complicated relationship to race, celebrity, and justice. His family announced that he died of cancer Wednesday at age 76.The murder trial of O.J. Simpson became not only about one man and two victims, but the entire country. Coming up, we assess the legacy of a case, and a verdict, that put race in America on the stand. For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.Email us at [e-mail]. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Yes, Your Honor, I stand before you today sorry, somewhat confused. I feel apologetic to the people of the state of Nevada. On December 5, 2008, O.J. Simpson stood before a Nevada judge pleading for mercy in a case where he stood accused of a robbery at a Las Vegas hotel. I am sorry. I didn't mean to steal anything from anybody, and I didn't know I was doing anything illegal. O.J. would ultimately serve nine years in prison. It was the final ignominious low in the public eye

for a man who had scaled the heights of American life. As a football icon with the USC Trojans and later the NFL's Buffalo Bills... O.J. is at 25 to 20 and falls ahead of the 15. O.J. Simpson just set a new National Football League record. Starring in commercials. With New Hertz number one express service, I fly nonstop from my plane to my car. And in Hollywood films.

Police! Throw down your guns! But beginning in 1994, O.J. Simpson would captivate American audiences for completely different reasons. The focus of the investigation, Nicole Brown's former husband, O.J. Simpson. Still traveling very slowly northbound along the 5 freeway. It's a case that's captured the attention of the world. If it doesn't fit, you must acquit. Consider this. The murder trial of O.J. Simpson became not only about one man and two victims, but the entire country. Coming up, we assess the legacy of a case

and a verdict that put race in America on the stand. From NPR, I'm Ari Shapiro. It's Consider This from NPR. O.J. Simpson was more than a football star, more than a pop culture icon, or a defendant acquitted of murder. We, the jury, in the above entitled action, find the defendant, Orenthal James Simpson, not guilty of the crime of murder. He became a symbol of America's complicated relationship to race, celebrity, and justice. His family announced that he died of cancer Wednesday at age 76.

To talk about the contradictions in O.J. Simpson's life and what he revealed about this country, we've called sports writer Dave Zirin. Thanks for being here. Oh, hey, great to be here. Thanks for having me. O.J. Simpson's life and what he revealed about this country. We've called sports writer Dave Zirin. Thanks for being here. Oh, hey, great to be here. Thanks for having me. Let's begin with a moment when O.J. Simpson was near the height of his influence.

He had been a huge celebrity on the football field, and this was an ad he made for Hertz in 1978. Nobody has more of what it takes to get you into a new LTV or other fine car faster. At that point, what did he represent? What did people see when they looked at and talked about him? I mean, O.J. Simpson represented a kind of post-racialism in commercial culture in the United States. His appearance in those Hertz commercials was something we really hadn't seen before, which is a prominent black American spokesperson for a major national company attempting to have a national appeal to consumers across the country. That made O.J. different.

And in a lot of ways, it was the culmination of something that O.J. had been saying since his early days in the NFL, which is when he was asked about what his feelings were about issues like the civil rights movement. He would say, don't ask me that. I'm not black. I'm OJ. So he really not only embraced but promoted that post-racial idea. It was an idea that in his own mind, he linked to economic success. It was linked in his mind to actually being unshackled by racism. And it was linked in his mind to being a celebrity first and any sort of spokesperson for a cause second. Well, in 1994, he was accused of killing his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ron Goldman. The country watched this car chase in real time on television, the famous white Ford Bronco.

How did that accusation of murder land in the culture? Well, it turned the United States into a giant Rorschach test. Immediately, what you thought about racism, about police violence, about gender, about corruption, about domestic abuse, and about a two-tier justice system that favors the wealthy and the famous. People had strong opinions and opposing opinions about all of these topics. So OJ, who always saw himself as this kind of figure of unity in the United States, all of a sudden became this figure of profound polarization where what you said about OJ and the case actually indicated what you believed about a whole host of other incendiary topics. Yeah. And if the accusation and trial

became a Rorschach test, then the verdict was even more so. His acquittal divided the country down racial lines. What did we learn from that acquittal about the different ways that Americans viewed race? Well, it's interesting. If the trial was a Rorschach test, then the verdict became like an early form of a social media algorithm, obviously decades before social media, with people turning on each other instantaneously based upon what they felt the case said about the United States. And it was strongly divided among racial lines because in the black community, when they looked at the trial, what they saw first and foremost was Los Angeles with its own history of police corruption.

Let's talk about that because the verdict had a lot to do with another famous case in Los Angeles involving a man named Rodney King, who was beaten by LA police in a traffic stop. So how did the King case factor into the Simpson case? Well, the King case and the L.A. uprising, L.A. riots that followed was only two years prior to the O.J. case. So still very fresh in the mind of Los Angelinos and people all around the United States. That's a very important point to remember. Also, people's lived experience, though, with corruption in the police force of L.A., which later broke out grandly in the Ramparts corruption scandal, was also a part of how people were viewing the case. officers who engaged in actions or past commentaries that were racist, like police officer Mark Furman's use of the N-word in a recording that was played in the trial. And it made people say, well, wait a minute, maybe this isn't just about OJ. Maybe this is about a broader corruption among police and a broader racism in U.S. society, while a whole other side was saying,

well, wait a minute, what about Nicole Brown Simpson? What about Ronald Goldman? Where is the justice for them? And here we are nearly 30 years later, and people still ask me if I'm related to Robert Shapiro, who was one of the lawyers in the trial. I am not. There is now a band called White Ford Bronco. I mean, all these decades later, what is the legacy of that trial? Well, the legacy of the trial is an entire era of the United States. The legacy of the trial is division. The legacy of the trial is the recognition, if we didn't have it before, we certainly had it after the trial, that different people see this country in profoundly different ways. And speaking about a united states of America can be a pipe dream at times. What do you see as OJ Simpson's legacy? OJ Simpson's legacy is as a Rorschach test for

how people view the United States on a whole host of subjects, all of which are still deeply, deeply important to people today. And that's why the legacy lives on. Because when we talk about these issues, we're also talking about the OJ Simpson trial. And when we talk about the OJ Simpson trial, we're talking about these issues. David Siren is sports editor at The Nation, and he writes the blog, The Edge of Sports. Thank you so much. Thank you. This episode was produced by Mark Rivers, Catherine Fink, and Kat Lonsdorf. It was edited Thank you.