Will O.J.’s Notoriety Sell as Well as His Celebrity?
If you think O.J. Simpson’s lead attorney, Robert C. Baker, had a difficult sell trying to convince the civil-trial jurors that his client had never worn certain shoes or hit a certain woman, consider the impossible task he faced during the punitive portion of the trial, concluded last week. No wonder it ended with a $25-million judgment for the plaintiffs: Baker was trying to convince the jurors not that Simpson didn’t receive Paula Barbieri’s phone message or that the blood was planted; he was trying to convince them that they didn’t live in America.
After all, this is a country where, at least according to the plaintiffs in the Simpson case, a Lee Harvey Oswald autograph is worth more than that of the man he assassinated. (Of course, there’s a supply-and-demand element; whether out of shyness or because he was under orders from the CIA, Oswald gave few autographs during his lifetime.) Someone does a thriving business selling a collection of serial-killer trading cards. And there continues to be a market for the clown paintings of mass murderer John Wayne Gacy.
More? Mike Tyson’s autograph rose in price following his rape conviction. Any given rap artist’s sales increase with the length of his rap sheet--a couple have gone gold while awaiting murder trials. Political consultant Dick Morris got a book deal out of sucking a prostitute’s toes. It cannot come as news to any breathing human in late 20th-century America that celebrity has been decoupled from accomplishment, and that fame is now as indistinguishable from notoriety as Richard Bey is from Jerry Springer.
Sure, as his defense contended, Simpson suffered a brief sales slump last year, albeit after grossing more than a million on murder-related items during his incarceration. The dip could well be attributable not to disgust per se, but to a nagging feeling among many people that, since the guy had gotten away with murder, it might be bad taste to put more money in his pocket. But now the court system has branded him, if not a murderer, at least a wrongful deather, and our morbid curiosity will soon be released from its corset of guilt.
Simpson himself, or his handlers, seemed to know all this. Mere weeks after the crime, they took steps to trademark his name for, among other things, cutlery products. One’s mind reels at the marketing direction they might have been contemplating: “O.J. Simpson Knives--Cut to the Chase.” The Bruno Magli shoe people similarly could well be waiting for the appropriate moment to launch their multimillion-dollar ad campaign, pegged to the slogan, “Ugly Ass Shoes--Never Say Never”.
For the greatest marketing opportunities, of course, Simpson should learn to paint or draw, since the art market is, as the case of Gacy’s--and Adolf Hitler’s--works prove, the most wide open to the appreciation of evil-doers. The No Excuses Jeans folks, who might ordinarily be among the first to queue up for a deal, have unfortunately cast their lot with the Goldmans, but any company that’s done business with Dennis Rodman should at least be good for a meeting.
Professional boxing is probably out of the question, just on grounds of conditioning, but pro wrestling and Simpson could be a nice fit. His acting needs the tiniest bit of tweaking to be on a par with Rowdy Roddy Piper’s.
J. Gordon Liddy and Oliver L. North are two examples of the felon-turned-talk-show-star syndrome, and, given the fact that “Rivera Live’s” ratings rise and fall so sharply depending on the program’s O.J. ratio, Simpson might even get to replace his bespectacled nemesis. Cable’s not great money, but it’s regular. Liddy did the lecture circuit as well, teamed with the late Timothy Leary. Simpson and Gloria Allred could absolutely clean up with a similar tour, and one of them, at least, would get a huge book out of the behind-the-scenes stuff.
If Simpson went to, say, Shaquille O’Neal’s rapping coach, he could tour Asia, opening for Michael Jackson. Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., who represents Jackson, can probably make that deal faster than he could slip on a knit cap.
Asia is, in fact, the great lucrative waiting room while America forgets its anger. Nobody over there cares about American football, but Simpson and the Japanese share a passion for golf, and Japanese pop culture loves everything that’s American and famous. “Back to you, commentator-san.”
But it’s on these shores where Simpson’s real future lies, if indeed the future can lie. Here, where evil is not even banal any more, just irrelevant.
