The People vs OJ Simpson and the Presidential Election
We watched the American Crime Story: People vs OJ Simpson over the weekend (now streaming on Netflix).
We hadn't seen it before, but wow, what a powerful production. Great acting, amazing script. Everything about it resonated so much still.
The biggest thing that hit me though were the parallels of that crazy media environment of the trial to a presidential campaign, where every little thing gets blown up and there's endless intrigue, undercutting, infighting and skullduggery.
More specifically though, if you think of Marcia Clark as Hillary Clinton and OJ as Trump, there were just unbelievable parallels. Poor Marcia Clark works her butt off and can't catch a break, gets criticized endlessly for her style, not smiling enough and so forth. OJ is an obvious sleaze ball, a massive liar, an abuser and narcissist and has a weak, needy personality.
In the end OJ totally gets away with it because of a couple key mistakes by the prosecution and a lot of heavy work by his lawyers and serious demagoguery by Johnny Cochran. The prosecution was also totally over-confident (sound familiar?).
But mainly OJ got a away with it because people lost sight of the key facts in the case and the big picture.
I hope the lessons are are learned!
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