There's no escaping O.J. drama // Fascination with mystery fuels spectacle

Mark Potok; Jonathan T. Lovitt

06/30/1994

USA Today

FINAL

Page 03A

LOS ANGELES - Jamie Buttell has bronchitis and a stomach ache from thinking

about the O.J. Simpson murder case. Bartender Stewart Tanner is so upset he's

almost quit watching TV. Kari Winski was fascinated enough to drive hours for a

shot of O.J. Simpson's children.

"I just had to see it," says Winski, an 18-year-old from Chicago who took time

out from her graduation trip to San Diego to bring her disposable camera to the

police barrier outside Simpson's luxurious mansion. "I can go to the beach

anytime. I'm not always going to be able to see this."

With coverage of Simpson's preliminary hearing opening on live TV today, some

express dismay. But the public, by and large, is riveted by the drama.

"I would be very surprised if there is an individual in this world who is not aware

of the case," says an amazed Leonard Jackson, pastor of the First A.M.E. Church

in Los Angeles. "The media is out of control."

But if the media has overdone it, it is not alone.

From Buffalo to Los Angeles, T-shirts proclaiming an opinion on the case are

selling by the thousands.

Almost three weeks after the murders, tourists from across the country still

gather outside Simpson's mansion and the condominium where Simpson's

ex-wife, Nicole, and her friend Ronald Goldman were murdered. Simpson

football cards are hot; bar talk about the case is buzzing; and still the madness

seems to mount.

Why the endless fascination? "Someone opened the bedroom door and let us in

and it's very stimulating," says Alan Ravitz, University of Chicago associate

psychiatry professor. "It feeds into all our fantasies about what goes on behind

closed doors."

Adds Lawrence Friedman, a Stanford University law professor who has written a

history of spectacular legal cases: "Here you have a combination of all the things

people find endlessly fascinating - murder, a crime mystery, coupled with the

very first rank of celebrity."

Sermons have been preached from pulpits around the nation about the case, in

which Simpson has pleaded innocent. Angry opinions pro and con have flitted

through the Internet computer network. For some people, the barrage of publicity

on TV and radio and in newspapers has raised stress to the level of actual

sickness.

Nowhere, perhaps, has the cacophony been louder than in Brentwood, the

neighborhood where the Simpsons and Goldman lived.

"I just stopped watching," says Buttell, 24, a friend of Goldman who says she's

gotten physically ill from worrying. "It gave me this weird, queasy feeling every

time the news came on."

At the Mezzaluna restaurant, where Nicole Simpson dined shortly before the

murders, bartender Tanner has taken to switching channels every time the news

comes on. "It's like a bad relationship. At some point, you just have to call it

quits."

"It has been miserable," adds Heather Berkowitz, 25, who also knew Goldman.

"In this community there's a lot of tension right now."

To the Rev. Jackson, it's simply too much.

"Vietnam was the first televised war we had, and initially people were glued to

the TV set," he says. "But after a while, they only wanted to see so much killing,

so much maiming. It's the same with the Simpson situation."

Ravitz says the spectacle, much like reading true crime, gives people an

opportunity to cross the boundaries of civilized behavior vicariously. But

Friedman says at least part of the interest is media-generated. "The media creates

a false sense of intimacy," he says. "In a perverted way, (celebrities) are

members of the family."

Many people take pleasure in seeing the rich and famous tumble, Ravitz says.

"Misery loves company," he says, "and we're all a little miserable."

PHOTO,b/w,Chris O'Meara,AP