Got burned on the O.J. Trial

Stephen Doll

1996

Published in:

Social Trends Newsletters, Jan. 1996, No. 143

Now that the Simpson verdict is in, it's time for the real indictment -- first, on the media and second, on a public that allowed a commercially contrived mockery of our justice system divert so much of its attention from the things that really affect our lives.

While American Neroes fiddled -- cameras rolled, tabloids titillated, and cash registers jingled (with millions more to be made), all at the expense of two brutally murdered people. Here are a few more things that went on during that 37 weeks of morbid thrill-seeking on the part of a bored, befuddled public:

The national debt, at $4.7 trillion, climbed at a rate of $10,000 per second.
With 4 million American children undernourished and another 9.6 million on the brink (not to mention adults), every day we spent enough on weapons to feed almost 3 million malnourished children for a year.
Hundreds of thousands more Americans were thrown out of work to protect corporate profits.
Those corporations reaped legislative benefits totaling $148.7 billion over seven years through tax breaks and write-offs.
Species of living creatures vanished from the face of the Earth at the rate of three per day.
China quietly continued its massive military buildup, with scarcely a murmur from the American companies heavily invested in that country.
Ocean levels continued their rise at the rate of 4 to 8 inches over the past century.

America showed its worst possible face to the world by its choice of priorities. It is to our shame, and to the credit of the commercial media, that we allow it to pander to the basest human behavior patterns and willingly follow along. Have we progressed beyond medieval times, when crowds gathered to see prisoners drawn and quartered, then returned to their homes to continue to pay exorbitant tribute to the nobles who ordered the atrocities? I don't think so.

The verdict? The American people are guilty of mindless self-indulgence. Their sentence: more of the same tactics by the corporate world to further exploit them, ruin their Earth, dehumanize them and play upon divisive issues to drive them apart.