How O.J. Simpson Led to Candidate Trump
It is a strikingly appropriate that FX is running its surprisingly gripping true-crime series "The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story" during the presidential campaign of Donald Trump.
How are they related? Let me count the ways.
Trials, like political campaigns, are contests between dueling narratives. The side with the best story wins, says the Johnnie Cochran character in the FX show. (Cochrane was the defense attorney who masterminded Simpson's acquittal.) His teammate, Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, expands on that axiom:
"Look at what the culture is becoming," he tells his students as they watch the trial on live television. "The media, people -- they want narrative too. But they want it to be entertainment. And what's out in the world osmoses back into the courtroom, sequester be damned. If there's gonna be a media circus, you better well be the ringmaster."
Twenty-one years after the Simpson trial, the era of so-called "reality TV" that it launched with its slow-speed white Ford Bronco chase, bloody gloves and Kardashians (the series reminds us of how Simpson hid out in the bedroom of Kim Kardashian, daughter of his since-deceased pal Robert Kardashian) has led us to Trump's surprisingly successful presidential campaign, an example of how far you can get if you're rich, famous and stubbornly resistant to any sense of embarrassment.
Trump has made himself a ringmaster of the 2016 Republican presidential political circus, although he might well prefer comparisons to professional wrestling, an industry for which he has shown personal fondness over the years.
He starred in Wrestlemania's "Battle of the Billionaires" in 2007 and hosted Wrestlemania events in his Atlantic City property.
Now, as he seeks the nation's highest political office, his gifts for grabbing attention have paid off by distracting us from his startling lack of experience or knowledge about the job he seeks.
Trump's latest victim, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, sounded like he didn't know what hit him as he explained why he had suspended his own campaign for the Republican nomination. He found a familiar suspect to blame: the media.
"When the media is constantly telling you 'So-and-so is winning and so-and-so is losing,'" he told supporters in Minnesota, according to the Twin Cities Pioneer Press, "it impacts voters."
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(c) 2016 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
