Hiram Lee on O.J. Simpson

In the wake of the media response to O.J. Simpson's arrest back in 2007 Hiram Lee published a piece titled "The Media's Obsession with O.J. Simpson" (emphasis added).

As the title of Lee's item indicates the piece was about how the media, not the public, was obsessed with Simpson, even as with extreme stupidity and sanctimoniousness the media's talking heads relentlessly insisted that it was the public was obsessed, and forced the media against its will to attend to the matter to the neglect of all the rest of what was happening in the world. (As Lee wrote, the "anchors and pundits . . . occasionally pose the question: 'Why are we so interested in O.J. Simpson?' . . . lament the drawn out and salacious" coverage, and "[t]hen, with feigned regret . . . return to the tawdry story at hand.")

As Lee remarked, those in the media who did so "attribute[d] their own shameful behavior to the supposed demands of a coarsened, celebrity-obsessed audience," while totally eliding "their own role in cultivating and directing such attitudes toward celebrity culture."

An obscenity in 1995, their behavior was more obscene still in 2007. If, contrary to the celebration of the era as one of peace and prosperity the actual '90s were very troubled years, and the truth was that anyone of even slight intelligence knew it. (Indeed, as one of Mr. Lee's colleagues put it, "Despite the official triumphalism, America was coming apart at the seams.") However, the situation in 2007 was graver still amid the war in Iraq, and the first signs of a historic financial crisis, in the shadow of both of which we have lived ever since.

Talking about O.J. was a way of diverting public attention away from that, to say nothing of more broadly stultifying the public mind--and if some of the public went along with it that did not change the fact that it was the media, not the public, driving this particular piece of idiocy.

Remember that as the remembrances of the trial in which the media is now awash speak of us all having been "captivated" by the trial.