Free Associations: Violence in Our Midst

The O.J. Simpson Trial: As I write these words, I am vacationing at Paradise Lake Estates, a beautiful, perfectly-contained community in Florida. One hundred and sixty-two, separate, air-conditioned homes, with manicured lawns and grapefruit, lemon and lime trees, surrounding a picture-book, man­made lake. The garage floors and most of the driveways are painted pastel colors. I am sitting by the lovely swimming pool looking out at the lake. The palm and flowering trees sway over my head and the birds sing their songs and fly past. When I turn my head I see the security gate.

The guards, smiling to the residents and their guests, are protectors of this tropical Garden of Eden. Security’s job is to keep out the annoyances and the evils of the world: to exclude the casual strangers, salespeople, burglars, muggers, rapists, and murderers who might want to enter. The guards are assisted by an eight-foot high, tree-and-shrub-covered wall surrounding this oasis, as well as a moat which doubles as a drainage canal.

Whenever I turn on the television news or the car radio I am reminded that the rest of the world is less idyllic than our friends’ home and community in which we are staying for a week. The radio focuses on crime and punishment: Colin Ferguson’s sentencing for randomly shooting non-African American commuters on the Long Island Railroad, the trial of the stepmother in an nearby town charged with killing her ten-year-old stepson, but mostly the O.J. Simpson Trial. I have my choice of stations on which I can listen to “THE TRIAL.”

The station we listen to claims to provide continuous coverage of the Trial — a radio smorgasbord of gossip and comedy, interspersed with so called “experts” on the law. A female commentator takes the “O.J. must be innocent” position and interprets all evidence in this light, while the male host assures the audience of the famous man’s guilt. The callers are asked to “rate the actors” (witnesses) on the basis of their performance and credibility. The

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radio personality then defends his referring to witnesses as “actors” on the grounds that radio is an entertainment medium. Ad­libbed comments and voice­overs are used to keep the audience entertained and tuned in to “WJNO — 1230 on the dial.”

Why has the O.J. Simpson trial become the most-watched event since the Gulf War? Why is it on television when we return from any afternoon’s pastime, whether shopping or drinking margaritas at the Banana Boat Restaurant on the intercostal waterway? Our friends work long hard days, yet they make time for this “mega media” event (What a strange term!). What does it offer viewers? What do we as psychohistorians say about it?

My own experience in studying the emotions of the Gulf War led me to realize the incredible importance of our feeling connected to each other by following some major media event. The Simpson case is doing this for America in 1994­1995. Discussing the trial brings Americans together as nothing else — until the Oklahoma City bombing or some other catastrophe displaces it.

But why? Is the national focus because a sports and media celebrity has fallen and faces life in prison? Because a black man is accused of killing a white woman? Is it to see the best legal talent money and the spotlight can buy look inadequate to the task one day and brilliant the next? To see a white, female prosecutor in action in the mostly male world of lawyers? To see if the Los Angeles Police Department will be acquitted or convicted (in the Court of Public Opinion) of racism and sloppy evidence handling? To see if a jury (at my last count) of eight blacks, one Hispanic and three whites — of nine women and three men — can find an African American celebrity and wife­beater guilty of killing his white ex-spouse and her white friend?

There is a vast cast of “actors” in the Trial for the prosecution and the defense, as well as the hangers-on waiting for their fifteen minutes of fame. On the verge of a mistrial, Judge Lance Ito, mocked even by a United States Senator, struggles to play the role of a “tough judge” for which he is poorly cast.

Meanwhile, back at Florida’s Paradise Lake Estates, the self-appointed head of the Pool Committee comes around to straighten the lounge chairs. His glance reveals a resentment of anyone who would spoil the symmetry of the row of unused chairs by using them for sunbathing. A man vacuums — yes, vacuums rather than sweeps — his driveway, while another complains about the ducks, who pay no property taxes or rent, leaving their droppings around without shame. The only danger within paradise appears to be the alligator who allegedly lives in the lake and will devour any swimmer or small creature available. Pet owners are careful to walk their animals on a leash. I ask people I meet if they have seen, with their own eyes, the alligator and they all say no, but they are positive it lurks in the lake. Fear of the unseen alligator certainly keeps most people in line.

But the primary danger cannot lurk within this perfect man­made paradise! With their high walls, stand of trees, security guards and moat to protect them, Americans can’t be vulnerable. The danger must be outside! But maybe it is inside, like the unseen alligator. After all, Simpson’s dead, ex-wife Nicole Brown also had a beautiful, gated compound, but within she was an abused and isolated wife, and ultimately a murder victim. There is a relationship between our spending so much time wanting to feel safe within our homes and communities while focusing on violence outside.

We are the same people who paid to see the former gang member and inmate of the San Francisco Youth Guidance Center (reform school) tear through a line of hulking football players as we watched his number “32” run down the sidelines to score touchdown after touchdown. We also paid millions to see O.J. in The Killer Force, Firepower, The Towering Inferno, The Klansman, Naked Gun 2 %, Naked Gun 33 %, and other movies.

Why are we now more intrigued by his present role? Maybe the difference is that O.J. is paying instead of being paid. No longer satisfied with Hollywood scripts or even docudrama, we want the real thing. But O.J.’s lawyers do not trust him to play himself on the witness stand. Nicole Brown has given her final performance and will never testify, except for reruns of her desperate calls to 911.

We watch the trial for many reasons. There is our need for some danger to make our lives more interesting since we live in dull safety (though we do like to worry) in places

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like Paradise Lake Estates, suburbia, and high-rise buildings with doormen and complex security systems. We may identify with O.J., the celebrity on trial fighting for his life, freedom, and reputation, or with the victims, Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman.

The beautiful enclosed community in juxtaposition to the Trial is a metaphor for the situation of America and our problems of violence. There is much attention to the Simpson estates, to the compounds which were designed to keep good things in and bad things out but failed because the primary threat to the well­being of the occupants was within. We would like the enemy — the problem of violence and murderous rage — to be without but the enemy is in fact within our homes and within ourselves. It was most upsetting to many people that they would not be able to blame some foreign terrorists for the terrible destruction in Oklahoma since, once again, the danger came from within.

Law as therapy: Whenever something terrible happens someone says “there ought to be a law against that.” Politicians react to the outcry and start the legislative process. There are many laws applicable to the terrible bombings in Oklahoma City. After the Bombing we will end up with more laws. But these after-the-fact laws will only be applicable to future tragedies.

Laws need to be enforced, not just passed. The dust had not settled at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, when the Attorney General called for the death sentence. The President’s call for “swift and certain” justice was the right tone to avert vigilantism.

Are there any good books or articles on the psychology and therapeutic impact of law and the underlying legislative process? The legislative process is about helping people feel less frightened. However, is feeling better, better law? I doubt it. I always try to keep in mind a basic rule of psychohistory I learned a generation ago: Problems are forgotten more often than they are solved as our emotional needs and focus change. And laws, too, are forgotten.

I suspect passing laws is a less intrusive step than building more jails, which, in most cases, I oppose. Jails take troubled young people and train them to be criminals for the next 20­30 years. And the recent slaughter of 100,000s of Rwandans after the terrorist assassination of the Rwandan president reminds me that there may be some advantage to our legislative processes to help us deal with the difficult feelings following a catastrophe. Our fury is much more constrained as we talk of new laws. Talking gives us time — time to heal.

Hate Radio: In the wake of the Oklahoma Bombing, our President provokes a debate, for the first time, on talk radio. “Anger on the Airwaves” was the name of an unpublished article I started writing in the second half of the 1980s. The occasion was my own frustration and anger at the replacement of calm, reasonable talk radio hosts with angry, opinionated individuals such as Bob Grant, Jay Diamond, Gordon Liddy, and Rush Limbaugh. Whereas the older hosts sought to inform and educate, the newer ones sought to denounce and ridicule. The day after the Oklahoma City explosion I tuned in the radio to the station dominated by these hatemongers and found they were true to form as they sought to blame it all on foreigners and advocated tougher U.S. immigration laws and their enforcement. As the domestic roots of the Oklahoma blast became apparent, these angry talk show radio hosts saw the right­wing militia movement as an ally to be protected against liberals like Clinton rather than as a breeding ground for fanatics like Timothy J. McVeigh.

Infanticide in America: When ideals of motherhood clashed with a suspicious situation 25 ago, denial reigned supreme as five times in a row police accepted a mother’s story of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, as baby after baby died mysteriously in the crib in a small town in New York State. When finally confronted by a prosecutor, Mrs. Waneta Hoyt told of smothering the infants with a pillow because she could not stand the crying and was sentenced to a long prison term. Today there are child abuse hot lines that distraught mothers can call, yet the support mothers get in raising children is certainly less than it was 25 years ago when there were more two parent families and grandparents able to help.

Infanticide did not stop a quarter century ago in America. Ten years ago a baby was rescued from death by exposure in a trash dumpster behind the gas station I stopped at every week in the lovely suburb of Teaneck, New Jersey. Her college student mother had

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sought to get rid of her in sub­zero weather. Last year the country was mesmerized by the plea of Susan Smith for the return of her two young sons, who were allegedly carjacked by a black man. It was revealed that she had killed them both, apparently to please her boyfriend who did not want to be bothered with young children. And, while infanticide is alive and well in America, millions of our countrymen have come to identify so intensely with recently conceived fetuses that they engender a climate conducive to the harassment and even killing of doctors who would perform abortions.

The Denigration of the Presidency: Last November the Republican victory was part of the white male backlash against the strong federal government, affirmative action, the current administration, and politicians in Washington. After Election Day the nation then acted as if Newton Leroy Gingrich was President rather than William Jefferson Clinton. But what is most amazing, precisely as Gingrich and the Republicans completed their first 100 days, in which they overwhelmingly succeeded in achieving their legislative goals, is that Americans remembered (talk about the return of repressed memories!) that their actual President is from Arkansas rather than Georgia. If by some chance the Speaker of the House should at some future date replace our current President, we would still have a Southern, draft dodging, pot sniffing, cigar smoking, career politician in the White House. But would our society focus so on these negatives then?

The blast in Oklahoma helped to bring the country back to its reality as it “galvanized national attention on the man in the Oval Office in a way that was routine during the Cold War (New York Times, May 7, 1995, p. 30).” We have once again rallied around the flag. Though we might prefer a foreign enemy, a domestic one does prompt Americans to focus more on our actual President and allow him to actually lead — for awhile. But as soon as Clinton has a “winning streak,” the Whitewater accusations come back into public focus. The denigration of our presidents, especially this one, seems endless.

Violence in Our Midst: This article has been about a variety of subjects revolving around America’s violence and need for enemies. If our country can’t have foreign enemies than domestic enemies will have to do. It is about the enormous violence in our midst, a violence we would rather externalize. Domestically, the violence we would rather localize in African American and Hispanic ghettos keeps spilling into our lives because it is within us, regardless of our skin color. The O.J. Simpson trial is a reflection of our voyeuristic need to dwell on mayhem and our fascination with the law. Our legal system, which many feel has little relationship to justice, is all the rage in the current era. We psychohistorians would do well to probe deeply what unconscious needs “law and disorder” and the judiciary serve.

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