Oprah_ A Biography - Kitty Kelley [149]
People who did not know their next-door neighbors came to know everyone associated with Orenthal James Simpson: his bumptious houseguest, Kato Kaelin; the 911 operator who took the call from Nicole in 1989 as O.J. was beating her; the criminal defense attorney Johnnie (“If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit”) Cochran; the prosecutors, Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden; the celebrity-loving judge, Lance Ito; and the disgraced LAPD detective Mark Fuhrman, whose racial epithet and Fifth Amendment evasions greatly swayed the jury. As Eric Zorn wrote in the Chicago Tribune: “The O. J. Simpson trial became the most tabloid friendly story since Elvis died on the toilet.”
Until that night in June 1994, Simpson had reigned as the golden boy of American sports, who, upon retirement from football, never stopped hearing the cheers. The former Heisman Trophy winner, who for most of his career played for the Buffalo Bills, extended his fame as the high-flying star who galloped through airports in a series of television commercials for Hertz rent-a-car. He appeared in films such as The Towering Inferno and The Naked Gun, and worked with stars such as Paul Newman, Fred Astaire, Faye Dunaway, and Sophia Loren. He played golf at the most exclusive country clubs and received hefty honorariums just for showing up at Hollywood benefits to smile and shake hands. A black man embraced by white America, O. J. Simpson had it all—money, position, national recognition, and universal respect—until the night his ex-wife was found butchered alongside the waiter who had stopped by her house to return the sunglasses she had left at the Mezzaluna Trattoria earlier in the evening.
When the trial began in January 1995, Oprah saw her ratings tank. “I can look at the numbers and say, ‘Was Kato on the stand? Who was on the stand?’ Like yesterday, our numbers shot up a point and a half from what they’ve averaged for the past couple weeks because there was no court.” Tim Bennett, the new president of Harpo Productions, defended her dip in the ratings. “While these are not the most outstanding numbers we’ve ever had, they’re leading our nearest competitor by close to 100 percent. What other genre in all of television—comedies in prime time, network newscasts, late-night talk shows—can claim that?” He conceded the impact of the trial coverage “to the tune of 15 percent almost on a daily basis.”
During the court’s first day off in April 1995, Oprah leaped to recoup some of that lost percentage by booking four network trial commentators, plus the writer Dominick Dunne, who had been given a prize seat in the judge’s courtroom because he was covering the trial for Vanity Fair. As soon as Oprah’s audience had a chance to speak, they quickly established themselves as passionately in support of O. J. Simpson, and for the next six months they and the rest of the country wrangled about whether he could or would or should be found guilty. The debate went on behind the scenes at Harpo as well, and Oprah decided to do a show on October 3, 1995, following the verdict. When it was announced that O. J. was found not guilty, she appeared visibly shocked. Most of the black members of her audience shrieked and clapped and danced around, while some of the white members sat in stunned, disbelieving silence. The trial had splintered the country on race. Polls showed that 72 percent of white Americans believed O. J. was guilty, while 71 percent of black Americans believed he was innocent. Although privately Oprah had predicted the outcome, publicly she stood with white America. Ten years later polls recorded a shift, with only 40 percent of black Americans believing O. J. innocent, which brought black opinions closer to those of whites.
“For a long time after that, people wrote in asking