I’m not sure why I turned on the television that Friday night. Mountains stand between me and most airwaves, and my old TV set tunes into only two channels. I like it that way; I’d much rather spend an evening with friends or a good novel. But it had been a hard week, and I was exhausted.
Somehow it seemed right to stretch out on the couch and catch the 11 o’clock local news before heading to bed.
But there was no local news that night. There was only a bizarre picture of a white Ford Bronco, flashers going, winding its way along the Los Angeles freeway with a phalanx of police cars in pursuit. I’m not sure why I turned on the television that night; I’m even less sure why I didn’t turn it off.
Like 95 million other viewers, I became riveted on a three-hour non-event. I listened to ABC newscasters offer such astute commentary as, "Is that a dog we see in the picture? I think it is a dog" (it was obviously a dog). The consummate comment was Barbara Walters’ breaking newsflash that when he was finally apprehended, O.J. Simpson would be placed in a cell next to parent-killer Erik Menendez.
Ms. Walters, after all, had had her show 20/20 pre-empted by the live coverage from LA. Perhaps she was only doing her part to deliver to America what America wanted? Were viewers hoping for some three-hour special edition of Hard Copy, Cops, and America’s Most Wanted rolled into one? Was there some expectation that the low-speed chase was going to end in a grisly police shoot-out or macabre suicide scene?
If our televisions are any indicator, we have become a nation obsessed with violence and voyeurism. It is telling that one TV ratings expert compared the popularity of the O.J. Simpson chase to the start of the Gulf war, which was viewed by 118 million Americans.
I SIMPLY COULDN’T get over the sadness of it all. As I watched the non-drama unfold, I pondered the two events that had made my week so difficult. Monday morning I had received training as a court advocate, to be able to help abused women make their way through the legal maze of assault charges, restraining orders, and divorce and custody hearings.
Thursday evening, as the facilitator of a domestic violence support group, I listened while a woman with a badly bruised face recounted how her husband had hit her repeatedly with a telephone receiver, then tried to strangle her with the cord. On Thursday evenings I have heard stories of incredible brutality—beatings to unconsciousness; attacks with guns, knives, and axes; rapes and kidnappings of children.
On Friday night, one newscaster commented that the O.J. Simpson case might do for domestic violence what Anita Hill and the Clarence Thomas hearings did for sexual harassment. If indeed it brings to light the plight of the six million women who are battered—and the 4,000 who are killed—by their husbands or partners every year in this country, then this terrible tragedy may be redeemed.
Police records show that O.J. Simpson had abused his wife, Nicole Brown Simpson. On New Year’s Day in 1989, she emerged from the shrubbery around their home—her lip bloodied, her face swollen, and an eye blackened—screaming, "He’s going to kill me!" O.J. Simpson pleaded "no contest" to wife beating charges; he was sent to counseling. There were other threats, other beatings, other desperate calls to 911.
It was hard for those around him to believe that O.J. Simpson could be an abuser; that’s often the case in situations of domestic violence. "We all got lulled into thinking it would be OK," said an official in the Los Angeles district attorney’s office. "He’s such a big star."
On a football gridiron, O.J. Simpson was speed and grace personified. A star, yes. A hero, no. District Attorney Gil Garcetti was probably right—but shouldn’t have been—when he called Simpson’s arrest "the fall of an American hero." The hundreds of people who lined the LA freeway and cheered Simpson on—and the scores who lined his Brentwood estate holding signs of support—wanted him to be a hero. But it’s way past time for this nation to stop blindly idolizing people simply because they can run faster or jump higher than the rest of us.
The twist to this tragedy that kept me awake that Friday night was the fact that—if indeed O.J. Simpson is found guilty of murdering Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman—his conviction could carry the death penalty. Most death row prisoners enter public consciousness as criminals. Public opinion often renders them different from the rest of us, seen as a little less than human. In an era in which fear of crime and criminals seems to be another national obsession, vengeance is the operative attitude.
O.J. Simpson is a person who needs help. That is true of everyone who abuses or kills. I am angry at Simpson’s abuses of his former wife, and the refusal of his friends, the media, and the appropriate authorities to take them seriously enough. I am saddened when I think about his two young, motherless children, and disturbed at Simpson’s efforts to paint himself as the victim in this tragedy. I will be upset if the 60-mile chase through LA becomes a substantial plank in an insanity defense.
But I will also vehemently defend O.J. Simpson’s right to live. Maybe—if we’re lucky—this episode will bring us all closer to hating the crimes and helping the criminals. The tragedy is that so much suffering had to take place for us to be able to see. n
JOYCE HOLLYDAY, a former Sojourners associate editor and now a contributing editor, writes, leads retreats, and works with survivors of domestic abuse in western North Carolina.
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