Tales of Survival From Eye of O.J. Storm and Beyond

Now that the torrid debate over Mickey Mantle’s role-model ranking is fading and those embattled dudes of the Citadel are getting on with their manly mildew in private, it’s time to return to issues that matter. For example . . .

Even beyond Los Angeles, the O.J. Simpson murder trial still has legs.

I learned this last week during a trip to New Haven, Conn., where I picked up a copy of Sunday’s Washington Post featuring a massive takeout on lead prosecutor Marcia Clark that had her taking “her place among other maligned, adored and misunderstood modern women.”

The piece, by Lorraine Adams, carried these subheads: “The Men,” “The Lawyer,” “The Children,” “The Consensus” and “Through the Looking Glass.” Under the latter, Adams wrote: “Los Angeles is always abuzz with talk of her social life, but friends say the truth is she has gone to only two Hollywood parties since the trial began.”

Earlier, at a large family gathering in New Haven not far from the leafy campus of Yale, where such talk would probably defoliate the ivy, I was introduced to a man who wanted to know: “What effect is the O.J. Simpson trial having on Los Angeles?” Perhaps he, too, had heard we were abuzz with talk of Clark’s social life.

Regardless, his question carried an urgency that you’d associate with someone asking a Bosnian: “What effect is Serb shelling having on Sarajevo?”

That’s because Angelenos who venture from their city these days are seen as curiosities, viewed by others as shellshocked survivors and pathetic witnesses to the unthinkable. They search our eyes with compassion, trying to see what we have seen, trying to conjure up the horrors that they believe confront us daily, the largest of which--greater even than fires, earthquakes, gang violence and the Ventura Freeway at rush hour--is the media-impacted triathlon where Simpson stands accused of slaying his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Lyle Goldman.

I answered the man’s question forthrightly, replying that the trial’s effect on Los Angeles has been enormous, largely, I believed, because of the intensity of the media coverage, but now, in particular, because reports of the Fuhrman tapes have re-energized charges that the Los Angeles Police Department is racist. But I added that, even though I personally was hooked on live TV coverage of the trial, I didn’t believe that most Angelenos came even close to sharing my interest.

Although the man thanked me for my thoughts, he appeared unpersuaded, perhaps because the trial was foremost in his mind.

Way up there in New Haven?

Well, why not? They have TV, don’t they? And unless Judge Lance A. Ito follows through on his threat Tuesday to “pull the plug” to stop lawyers from “pandering” to the camera, TV coverage of the trial will continue.

Someone else at the gathering, whose husband is a police detective, told me that her day job stops her from watching most of CNN’s live coverage, but that she rarely misses its weeknight half-hour trial summary.

As a result, her expertise is beyond question and she can summon trial coverage lore instantaneously: “If [defense attorney] Carl Douglas says ‘compelling’ one more time. . . .”

Why does she watch? “Because it’s like a real soap opera,” she said. “I mean, I don’t watch soap operas, but this has celebrities, money, fame. It doesn’t seem real, and you get wrapped up in it. It’s better than other TV.”

She can quote in detail CNN anchor Jim Moret and Dominick Dunne, who covers the trial for Vanity Fair and comments on it for CBS News. She said she’d also “read all the O.J. books” and that “Faye Resnick’s book was terrible.”

All of this makes her sound like a stereotype who sits at home in curlers all day, reading tabloids and popping her chewing gum. Yet, on the contrary, she’s a thoughtful woman who teaches at a day-care center, affirming that O.J. trial watchers represent a broad cross-section.

“I guess I watch also because it bothers me so much when I think about what the Simpson kids are going through,” she said. “And I have little kids, too.” She also feels a personal connection, she said, knowing that if the case had happened in her small community (a rural suburb of New Haven), her husband would have been the cop collecting evidence, handling forensics and inspecting the white Ford Bronco.

The big question: Is Simpson guilty? “Oh, yeah,” she replied. “Look at all the evidence. I definitely believe the DNA.” But she was aware of her own subjectivity, adding: “Where I live, everyone is white. I’ve never come into contact with someone [a cop] who would pull me over. I’ve never been arrested. I’ve had only good experiences with the police department. But I can see where some black youths [in Los Angeles] would feel differently.”

The African American woman I saw Sunday morning didn’t. A New Yorker and fellow guest in the New Haven hotel where we were staying, she was in the lobby watching a live CNN program analyzing the Simpson trial. And she was fuming. When I asked her why, she said she thought Simpson was guilty and couldn’t tolerate hearing the program’s attorney-analysts say that the trial was going badly for the prosecution.

I was fuming for a different reason. Moret adroitly anchors CNN’s daily live coverage with attorneys Greta Van Susteren and Roger Cossack. But now a different set of attorneys was being ineptly quizzed by a couple of Moret’s CNN colleagues, the worst moment coming when the lawyers were shown brief courtroom sound bites of Clark and Simpson’s lead defense attorney, Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., and were asked: “Who got the better of that exchange?”

What was this, point-counterpoint?

CNN is to the Simpson case what the beast of “Jaws” is to human flesh. All is devoured. So naturally there was Monday night’s “Larry King Live,” opening a Los Angeles segment with former Simpson juror Jeanette Harris, reaffirming that being booted from this panel qualifies you for a lifetime gig in front of the cameras. Expect to see even more of these professional ex-jurors at the conclusion of the trial when CNN is scheduled to launch a daily legal program with Cossack and Van Susteren.

And finally, Cochran himself traveled east last weekend to give a speech to the National Assn. of Black Journalists in Philadelphia, where the Washington Post quoted him as charging “white media” with being unfair to Simpson and his family.

According to the Post, Cochran denigrated “the white media’s brand of unbiased reporting,” saying it created the impression that “the only people in this case are the families of Nicole Brown Simpson and Goldman.” How often, he asked, “is it that Mr. Simpson’s family is portrayed in a sympathetic light despite all of the hardships they have suffered and continue to suffer? . . . Even Mr. Simpson was a victim but nobody talks about that.”

There’s no question that the murders have caused his family anguish. But was Cochran saying that the African American reporters covering this story--and there are a slew of them--are being manipulated by white bosses, or was he referring only to white reporters? And does he really advocate media sympathy for an accused murderer whose guilt or innocence has yet to be determined?

Whatever. Like the trial itself, Cochran’s sense of humor just keeps going . . . and going . . . and going . . . and going.