Get the latest gossip

The Rise and Fall of O.J. Simpson Changed Media Culture Forever

The rise and fall of O.J. Simpson, who died April 10 at the age 76, jolted a generation and ushered in a new era of celebrity tabloid news culture.

Judge Lance Ito’s decision to allow television cameras into his courtroom turned each player in the trial (including and especially prosecutor Marcia Clark) into media celebrities, but it was Simpson, sitting at the center of it all, who had the highest voltage. Simpson’s acquittal, dramatized by FX as a day of racial reckoning, read extraordinarily differently by Black and white trial-watchers, kicked off a new stage of his life. Simpson’s sheer ambition for finding the camera’s gaze, shamelessly choosing to play unaware of why it was he was being broadcast at all, made him an ideal cast member for the country’s ongoing reality show.

Get the Android app