(by Madan Mohan)
I heard a lot about The People v/s O J Simpson when it came out. But somehow, I never got around to watching it even though the crime beat has always interested me as someone who was a Hercule Poirot fan in school.
But perhaps it was for the better that I watched it now. Because the intervening Trump era gave me a completely different perspective about this docu-drama and the characters involved. Some reviews were already picking up on the parallels back in 2016-17 but that was when the Trump movie had just started to playing. That movie is either over or on a four year pause as of now and it culminating in George Floyd and a right-wing insurrection adds even more delicious sub text.
Now…if you haven’t watched the series at all, this parallel is coming from way left field at you. But imagine, if you will, a loudmouthed braggart, a terrible wife beater/abuser, a party animal and skirt chaser, a cunning liar and, lastly, a flamboyantly wealthy man whose privilege afforded him the best lawyers money could buy. Oh, and he stiffed them too (or so says Robert Kardashian anyway)!
Yes, all of the above was about O J Simpson and not Donald Trump. And the fact that O J is black made it impossible to frame him as an almost cartoonish villain in the way Trump was. If I didn’t write a word more, this would still be a tantalizing premise.
But we’re barely getting started. A woman tried to be the death of both men…and in both cases, the woman failed. If it was Hillary Clinton who nearly denied the man with “the best words”, public prosecutor Marcia Clark, along with co-prosecutor Chris Darden (who was, uh, black), passionately litigated the case against O J only to lose. Like Clinton, she too was hounded by disgusting sexism from her opponents. And just as Matt Lauer mysteriously missed the memo and spent the debate attacking Clinton on her emails, judge Lance Ito too curiously abetted the sexist attacks on Clark.

But it is when we get to why she lost that things get truly fascinating…as well as troubling. Early in the series, there is a discussion about where to hold the trial – Santa Monica, where the crime had been committed or downtown Los Angeles where the LAPD had its office. District Attorney Gil Garcetti elects to file charges at the latter (in effect, presaging the trial being conducted in downtown LA) because the LAPD infrastructure would be at their beck and call. The trouble is: downtown LA is overrepresented by low income and less educated black people who would naturally also make up the bulk of the jury. Or, as Trump would say, the “poorly educated”.
But this was a criminal trial and not an election. So it wouldn’t be O J who would befriend the poorly educated among black people. Hell, the fact that he was able to disguise his contempt for them for the duration of his trial was probably a bigger achievement for him than any in his storied football carrier. No, it would instead be black defence lawyer Johnnie Cochran.
Unlike Trump, Cochran was a powerful and erudite orator in the conventional sense of the word. And he was already a well known and very accomplished lawyer by the time the O J trial came around. Nevertheless, he too revealed a gift for manufacturing catchy, if contrived, expressions, including, most lethally, his “if it doesn’t fit, you must acquit” line in his closing arguments.
Cochran referred here to the glove that did not fit O J’s hands when Darden, overruling Clark, made him try on the gloves in the courtroom. Even though this was in fact the very make of glove he had worn on the night of the murder…and which had been discovered with blood on it by the police. So what gives? Well, the glove had possibly endured shrinkage when O J wore it and he was, in addition, wearing latex gloves so as to not leave his fingerprints on it. And, more importantly, O J was determined to show that the glove did not fit…as per Robert Shapiro’s advice. Whether it appeared to fit or not was all that mattered.
Yes, appearance and perception would come to determine the jury’s reaction to the trial to a disproportionate extent. The perception that the DNA evidence had somehow been contained, the perception that the glove O J allegedly wore at the crime scene didn’t actually fit him at all and, lastly, the perception that LAPD detective Mark Furhman had planted the glove with O J’s blood on it as part of an elaborate police conspiracy to frame O J for a crime he had not committed.
The police and black people. This was as relevant a theme then as it was in 2020. Perhaps even more so as the hurt from the killing of Rodney King and the riots that had ensued was then still fresh on the minds of black people. They did not care whether or if O J was guilty. To them, it was all but a cruder version of what Clarence Thomas described as a high tech lynching of an uppity black man.
And to that end, they eagerly embraced the various conspiracy theories that O J’s defence team trotted out. A scene in the series shows Darden taking Clark along to a pub in a black-dominated area. And there, upon encountering black men who repeat the police conspiracy theory, she diligently explains to them why a police conspiracy to frame him would have been utterly impossible. Perhaps out of deference to her position as well as her intellect, her black audience politely listens but when she’s done, she is met with a gentle shake of the head. Nah, they are holding right onto their fact free world.
This embrace of a theory that ultimately led to the conclusion that O J was innocent would split opinion neatly down racial lines with a whopping majority of black people believing him to be innocent and a similar majority of white people believing him to be guilty. That people could access the same facts and reach opposite conclusions alarmed observers then. That it alarmed them again in 2016 should be, well, alarming.
Because the glue that held together these flimsy and baseless theories designed to acquit O J come what may was not dissimilar to that which led Trump supporters to whole heartedly embrace fake news. If it was a white backlash to eight years of Obama that pushed Trump supporters to invent a bubble of alternative facts, it was decades-long discontent and anger against police brutality that similarly drove black people to fight for O J regardless of everything.
Some of what actually went down in 1995 was perhaps deemed too incendiary by the makers of the series. One passage from the trial has Cochran looking straight at the jury and saying, “Who then polices the police? You will police the police. By your verdict, you’re the ones to send the message. Nobody else is gonna do it in this society, they don’t have the courage.” Through impassioned rhetoric that had precious little to do with the trial of a murder that took place in a mostly white neighbourhood, Cochran compelled the jury to ignore the fact-driven argument of the prosecution. In other words, like Trump, Cochran simply altered the battleground itself to suit the battle he wanted to fight as opposed to the battle his opponents thought they were fighting.
There is another scene from the series, though, that does evoke eerie parallels to Trumpism. With the prosecution contesting the use of the Fuhrman tape as evidence in the trial, Cochran stirs up protests by black people who take to the streets demanding loudly that the tapes be released. Sounds like “Stop the steal” to you? Sure does to me.
Perhaps this assessment sounds harsh to you and I kept asking the same question of myself as I wrote much of the above. Would I in the shoes of these poor, wounded black people have reacted similarly to the O J trial? My answer is that I would empathise with someone from my community being led to victory against the police in a case of alleged police brutality even if the specific case wasn’t necessarily unjustified (against the person) keeping in mind the larger narrative of police brutality against my community. But…a filthy rich murderer, what would he have to do with me?
Cochran was utterly convinced that acquitting O J as well as publicly airing the story of police brutality would do a lot for black people. His bete noire was equally convinced that it would do a lot of harm. The series shows Darden telling Cochran that the verdict isn’t going to change anything and we (black people) are still going to get beaten up.
Whether he did utter these prophetic words to Cochran I do not know (and could not find any reference for it). But he was pretty emphatic anyway in his interview with Barbara Walters, saying, “I think that by making this case into a race case and because of the injustice, I think we are going to lose affirmative action. So I think this case and its verdict has strained race relations in America. I think it’s African Americans in the end who are going to suffer because of all the support we threw behind this man who has never ever done a thing for us.”
California voted against affirmative action in 1996. And O J’s post acquittal career and life could charitably be described as a downward spiral. His deeds post acquittal were disgusting enough to get some of the jurors to publicly state that they would have voted guilty in light of what they knew about him. Well, one could say that at least that modicum of honesty makes them a damn sight better than the stop the steal crowd. Nevertheless, the seeds of white backlash were sown then and the backlash has continued to grow if not necessarily via a linear progression.There is more, so much more, to write about this most fascinating and yet most disturbing of criminal cases. I originally intended to call this piece “The most unpackable docu-drama ever”. I will end by saying that rarely has a murder trial involving one prime suspect (in fact, the sole suspect) been filled with so much context, so much sub-text and had powerful ramifications beyond the immediate outcome of the verdict itself.
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Yajiv
October 22, 2021
Incredible narrative Madan! I had never thought of current events (be it fake news, deep state, BLM, etc) from the OJ trial angle. I think you hit the nail on the head that this show came out a few years too early.
Had no idea CA ended affirmative action 1 year after the OJ trial.
Fantastic read that’s making me look at zeitgeisty things from a very new historical perspective.
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Spandana
October 22, 2021
Well said, sir! Have you watched the next season based on the assassination of Gianni Versace and are you following the ongoing season on Bill Clinton’s impeachment?
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Madan
October 23, 2021
Thanks a lot Yajiv. Yes, well, rather than saying it came too early, it was a little ahead of its time. I think the makers would have hoped that Trump wouldn’t emulate Cochran in winning.
Spandana: Thank you! No, I haven’t watched either yet but I will because both are fascinating stories too.
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Aman Basha
October 24, 2021
I actually wanted to do a piece on the joke investigation of the Century, the so called Aryan Khan drugs case 🙂 After looking at your piece, that needs a better writer than me, I suppose.
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Madan
October 25, 2021
Go for it, Aman. FWIW it is the topic itself (of OJ) that offers so much to write about.
Yeah, I have seen that Chappelle skit, hilarious!
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gnanaozhi
October 26, 2021
Lovely write up. I just went down an OJ Simpson wiki rabbit hole and now am going to watch it as well.
As as aside, are we talking about the same “we came, we saw, he ded teehee” Hillary ?
And while this might not be the right thread, trump winning was far far more than “white people hating Obama”. And the Dems made that mistake , underestimated him and lost and I think he might just pull a comeback next elections.
It is about middle America being ignored. Job losses, declining standards of living and so much more that even a fool like trump (or was it Bannon ) could pick up on and come up with Drain the Swamp and Maga. That resonated with his voter base and will imo continue to. Once senile Biden (who has a piss poor approval rating not even a year into his tenure has the second lowest Gallup poll rating of any president at the 280 day mark (Trump was #1) he might sneak in again unless the Dems wake up and tailor strategies to counter his maga bs
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Madan
October 27, 2021
gnanozhi : Thanks, glad you enjoyed reading it.
Re Trump and Cochran, I am not trying to make an exact comparison but simply point to common aspects in their strategy. By the same token, the Simpson trial too was lost as much by the prosecution’s mistakes and Judge Ito’s failure to keep the defence from rambling off point as it was won by Cochran’s conspiracy theory strategy. But the conspiracy approach is what is fascinating about both Trump and Cochran as well as their ability to use simple catchphrases loaded with action that the ‘learned class’ looked down upon. When you hear Darden say that the Simpson trial was a circus and did not resemble what courtroom proceedings look like, you hear the shame shock and anger that career politicians vented when confronted with Trump’s unconventional tactics. But the tactics work so whatcha gonna do.
Likewise, while it is certainly true that Trump won because he spoke to a neglected Middle America, he did choose the weapon of mobilising white resentment to get the vote out with arguably poisonous consequences. It was perhaps not as necessary as he thought to desert the center and embrace inflammatory rhetoric and so too, Cochran perhaps hijacked the trial in favour of his pet cause too much.
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Yajiv
October 27, 2021
@Madan: Hah I prefer your phrasing. Definitely ahead of its time.
@Aman: Please do a piece on Jr Khan’s legal issues! I kind of lost faith in the NCB (and the media) after all the SSR/Rhea drugs nonsense last year. Will be good to get your take on it.
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