Everybody who was over the age of 10 or so at the time remembers where they were when they heard the verdict in the OJ Simpson trial. It’s one of those seminal societal moments in time, like the John F. Kennedy assassination, 9/11, and the Clinton administration’s burning of the Branch Davidians. It’s just one of those events that is so impactful on society that it becomes burned into your brain.
I was in the lobby bar of the El Dorado Hotel in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where I was attending the annual meeting of the New Mexico Oil & Gas Association. I was far from alone - probably a third of the 1,000 or so mostly white attendees of that conference were right there with me, fully prepared to drink their sorrows away following what we all knew was likely to be the travesty of justice to come.
I saw one TV commentator last night talking about how “shocking” the jury’s verdict was when it came down. But it wasn’t really shocking, was it? I suppose it might have been if you hadn’t paid much attention to how the LA police and prosecutors in the case botched the whole thing from start to finish, including the likely planting of DNA evidence that sealed the decision in the jury’s hive mind.