As the World Turns While Watching O.J. : Transfixed by this wholly atypical trial, Americans didn’t notice the death of programs that really deal with justice, race.
Don’t you feel the least bit foolish? You’ve wasted more than a year of your life obsessing about a celebrity murder. By now, you’re an expert on arcane bits of evidence and legal arguments that will never again be relevant. Like any sad couch potato hooked on the soaps, you even managed to convince yourself that the show had serious lessons for the real world. In case you didn’t get it, an army of media-savvy lawyers, commentating round the clock, spelled out the implications for justice, race and the legal system.
What rubbish.
This case was so atypical that it serves as a reverse barometric guide to a criminal-justice system in which most of the accused don’t even get a jury trial. Guilty or not, 90% of criminal cases are pleaded out because neither side can afford the expense.
The main lesson to be learned from the O.J. Simpson trial is that a rich person, black, white or purple, can hire high-priced lawyers with the ability and resources to drag a trial on to insufferable limits. When is the next time that a black man accused of murder will have that option? Last year, the Yale Law Review reported that a disproportionate number of blacks end up on Death Row because they are represented by incompetent attorneys who barely know their clients’ names and spend only a few days preparing for trial.
True, the Simpson trial also reminded us that even rich minority defendants have to contend with racist cops who brag about planting evidence and prosecutors capable of parading a known pathological liar as a credible witness. Important, but not justification for obliterating all other news.
Was it really necessary to have a total TV blackout of the White House signing of the Mideast peace accord? It was important enough for the leaders of Israel, Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinians to show up, but what’s that compared to going live with Johnnie Cochran on Proverbs?
Maybe it’s just as well we don’t observe that peace is breaking out in the most strategically important spot in the world, or we might question spending $243 billion on our post-Cold War military budget, $9 billion more than the Pentagon asked for, at a time when we are gutting every important domestic program. Why debate those perverse priorities when you’ve got O.J.’s socks to argue about?
While you were away this past year, all the programs that really do have to do with justice and race were being systematically destroyed. The list is long, but let me help bring you up to speed in case you want to get involved, even at this late hour.
It’s too late to save the 60-year-old federal entitlement of poor people, 70% of whom are children, to the minimum necessities of life. We’ve decided to return to the good old days when Mississippi set the standards.
Head Start is to be cut by $133 million, meaning that 50,000 kids will be eliminated from the program. Let me help you with the math here: $133 million pays for about 13% of one B-2 bomber. This Congress wants to build 20 more of those nuclear-war fighting planes, which have no strategic purpose now that the Soviet Union is history.
Gone also is AmeriCorps, an excellent effort cut out of pure spite simply because President Clinton favored it. And forget the Summer Youth Employment and Training Program, which helped 600,000 kids get work experience. There will also be more homeless kids due to the $5-billion cut in HUD funding and the slashing of homeless assistance grants by one-third.
The earned-income tax credit is to be phased out, which means that the working poor will pay higher taxes. But tax breaks for the rich are a sure thing. If O.J. gets off, this will benefit him as well as all those rich lawyers we’ve become familiar with.
Lawyers for the poor won’t do as well. Perhaps you’ve heard that the Legal Services Corp., which has protected the rights of the poor with groundbreaking class action suits, is to be destroyed?
Even clean water and fresh air are now at risk. The Environmental Protection Agency budget is being reduced by 23%. And the Superfund program to clean up hazardous waste sites will be cut by 36%.
While the nation was focused on the murder of one woman, Congress cut $75 million from the President’s request for grants to fight violence against women.
I could go on; we haven’t even talked about the Draconian cuts in Medicaid and Medicare, but you get the point. Anyway, nice to have you back from the brain dead, at least until the Menendez brothers soap opera gets going.