The O.J Simpson Trial was not about race, and other things I learned from reading/Why I hate the TODAY show, today.

This is a thought in two parts. Part 1 came to me in the shower yesterday and part 2 arrived shortly after 8am this morning when I commenced my daily routine of getting showered and dressed to the sounds of the TODAY show on in the background (I live alone, I need the company). They are different parts of a whole that includes even more parts, pages and pages of parts, on a wide variety of subject matter, that all falls under the general category: criticism of an overly-electronic world (Or, the future of the U.S in a post-ipod era).

Part 1

I was in sixth grade when the O.J Simpson verdict was televised nationally. It is one of my most vivid elementary-school memories. I remember what I was wearing, what the room looked like-smelled like, I remember my mom was there (though I don't remember why), and I remember that it was one of those history making moments, those moments that freeze in time the way they do in the movies. It was epic, it was dramatic, it was...

It was a domestic abuse trial. It was a trial about violence. It was a trial about a man who murdered his ex-wife. It was a trial about a man who had gotten away with years and years of battery and assault because of who he was, who we wanted him to be, and now his wife and her friend had paid for it, and the whole world was watching. But at the time of the verdict, I knew none of this. Not because I had been shielded from it, or was too young to understand. Quite the contrary, I was both highly exposed to it (my stay-at-home mom was addicted to the trial coverage) and old enough to absorb and understand everything that was being said about it. I knew that O.J was black. I knew that the LAPD had a history of racial discrimination that was coming back to haunt them in a million, ugly ways. I knew that this was the trial of the century. I knew that an African-American hero was being disgraced and that it was another blow for racial equality. Those are the things that everyone talked about (those things and of course the real, crucial information like Marcia Clark's hairstyle, Kato Kaelin's rise to stardom and some other non-sense I'm thankful to have blocked out. Old habits die hard in the American media, it seems). What we knew of the case, of the trial, of O.J, of Nicole Brown, of Johnny Cochran, of isotoner gloves and louis vuitton luggage, was all told to us by cameras and voice overs, court TV experts and CNN analysts. It was all highly choreographed, planned and executed, and it wasn't until years later that I realized how much they were all leaving out.

About a decade after the Simpson trial ended I stumbled across an article written about it. bell hooks eloquently picked apart the politics behind the media coverage of the trial, identifying issues of gender and class privilege that were ignored by just about everyone. I was shocked. Not because I didn't believe the information in the article but because it occurred to me that all of us had been tactfully deceived. The media had drawn up a sensational, racialized narrative and for months and months we took it in as truth. fact. an absolute. The moment I put down the hooks reading was a defining moment for me. It was the moment that I really became critical of how many fallacies we are unknowingly accepting as a culture. I realized that the degree to and significance of our media exposure has exploded since the late nineties and the O.J media frenzy. "The Trial of the Century" marked only the beginning of the celebrity-obsessed, technology-dependent revolution that followed us into the 21st century.

The truth about O.J came to me in writing. It wasn't written in PDF or translated via someone's MySpace, but a real, tangible, textual document, the good-old fashioned kind you can rip apart, overly-highlight or crumple in the bottom of your backpack. Had I never READ about the trial, I probably would have retained the entire belief system that was generated by the media during the course of that landmark year in American justice. And the more I think about it, many truths of the world that had previously eluded me were revealed through reading. I've learned all sorts of things about women, politics, history and myself. I've learned to be skeptical of what I see and conscious of who is producing it. I've learned that my youthful ideas were shaped by suburban myths and legends that are somehow passed on through generations without anyone stopping to question them and find out the truth for themselves.

So I wonder, in a culture that is increasingly digital and decreasingly diverse in its output (didn't they already make this movie?) what will become of all of us? What will happen if we don't seek to expand our information consumption beyond the confines of network news, CNN.com and what's happening on Dancing with the Stars? What will we really know about anything? My guess is nothing. I anticipate that we'll all be walking, talking incarnations of advertising, reality television and apple electronics products who don't ever stop to analyze or critique themselves or the information around them. I worry about how young people will make crucial choices and exercise their voices when they've spent their entire formative experience in front of a computer monitor/television screen that more or less has told them what to think, wear and how to act. Our collective historical memory of the O.J Simpson trial (as a sensational, race-based, media-driven, national controversy) is a telling example of the social repercussion of our one-dimensional exposure to anything. It reveals our vulnerability and impressionability to the hypnotic imagery and information generated in the visual/technological realm. It suggests the consequences we face if we can't tune out the media and tune into the rest of the thoughtful, provocative, intellectual, expansive world.


Part 2

I don't know why I keep doing it. Every day I turn on the TV to provide a backdrop for my morning routine. 4 days out of 5 I regret it. I rarely catch the Today show visuals as I move from room to room in my house with the vague hum of voices in the background. On this particular morning I was in close hearing range as a segment was introduced: Are Americans getting dumber? Matt Lauer asked in his ever condescending-is that supposed to be endearing-tone. I bit the bait, I couldn't resist. As I watched the introduction to an interview with a woman who has written a "compelling" book about Americans becoming "dumber," I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Image after image of young, thin, attractive, blonde women came on the screen as Matt Lauer shrewdly examined the state of our collective national I.Q. I kept thinking that as the clip continued the images would diversify, but they didn't. They continued. Some of the women were famous, others vaguely familiar, some just random blonde women doing everyday things like grocery shopping and working out. When the segment cut back to the studio, I was so preoccupied with my disbelief about what had transpired, I couldn't even focus on the inane word exchange between the host and his guests. At a loss as to how I was going to articulate the feeling that had come over me to the people in my life that listen (my mom, my best friend, my australian shepherd), I did what any critically conscious viewer would do. I sent the following strongly worded email for the minions at the Today Show to read:

Dear Sir or Madame:

I am outraged. I just saw the segment about Susan Jacoby's new book that posed the question, "Are Americans Getting Dumber?" While I think it is a potentially provocative topic (particularly the way cultural inundation with technology affects the way we learn, spend our leisure time and raise our children), the imagery associated with the segment was astounding. The visual backdrop was exclusively female. The voice of criticism attacking our collective intelligence was read over image after image of young, thin, blonde women. Really? Are you putting such limited effort into production that the end result is a gender-biased, stereotype reinforcing hodgepodge of famous and vaguely recognizable women? I expect more from the number one nationally rated morning news show. I'd expect more from everyone. I understand the social risk that accompanies painting the picture of American stupidity in a particular way, which is why I can't understand why any well-minded, thoughtful producer or editor would send a segment to air that outlined our increasing "dumbness" in a one-dimensional way. Trust me, our culture doesn't need any more representations of stupidity in the form of young, attractive women in the media. Females of all ages and backgrounds are suffering enough from this phenomenon as it is. If I decide to put it on my TV again, I hope the next TODAY show segment I come across gives a broader visual definition of the topic it is addressing. That one was enough to drive me away forever.

Critical theorists and critical academics must have moments like this one all of the time. Watching media critique media while media continues to serve the same value-normative purpose it always does. While the voice of Matt Lauer questions the deterioration of our cultural intellect as a by-product of technological dependency, the images on the screen paint a perfect portrait of the problem the segment appears to address. The real danger of our over-exposure to mass media, especially in the absence of anything else, as a source for all kinds of information, is that it has a clever way of creating narrow definitions and limiting outlines of normalcy, truth and reality. Case in point: You get up in the morning and turn on the Today show to get your local news, weather and a taste of "what's going on in the world." You see a segment about how Americans are "getting dumber" and your visual reference is a bunch of thin, attractive blonde women. Yep, Jessica Simpson is dumb alright, you don't actually know her but you've seen her on TV enough to know what an idiot she is. Another stereotype reinforced, courtesy of the five corporations that own 80% of the U.S. media.

Maybe Jessica Simpson is a moron. And maybe it's important for Matt Lauer to question whether or not "America" is getting dumber. It is my suspicion however that Jessica Simpson (and thin, attractive blonde women everywhere) are dumb because that's how the media has constructed them, not to mention that the very idea of "America" being anything is preposterous. The notion of "America" itself is a product of the media imagination.

The point is two-fold (it's actually about a million-fold but I only have so much patience for this issue in any given sitting): While the O.J Simpson trial provides an example of the type of narratives of falsehood that can be generated and perpetuated by the media, the Today Show segment (under the guise of a provocative critique) illustrates the danger and prevalence of repetitive, discriminatory, reinforcing imagery from one-dimensional perspectives. The combination of these two issues creates an important consideration to take into account if ninety-percent of your daily information-intake is taken directly (or indirectly) from an electronic, mass-media source.