The O.J. Joke: How the Simpson Case Changed Comedy’s Boundaries

The weekend after a jury discovered O.J. Simpson not responsible of homicide, the comic Norm Macdonald opened Weekend Replace on “Saturday Evening Stay” at his desk subsequent to a photograph of the defendant. “Properly, it’s lastly official,” he mentioned. “Homicide is authorized within the state of California.”

The 1995 trial of Simpson, who died Wednesday at 76, didn’t simply dominate and revolutionize the media. It additionally turned an unlikely staple of comedy. The main points of the killings of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald L. Goldman had been each day fodder for punchlines on speak exhibits, sitcoms and stand-up phases. And Macdonald cemented his standing as one of many best comedians of his technology due to a fixation on what become one of many largest comedy genres of the Nineties: the O.J. joke.

In his 1996 breakthrough particular, “Carry the Ache,” Chris Rock’s button-pushing evaluation of the dynamics of the O.J. Simpson case helped change the course of his profession. He argued that fame is what saved Simpson. “If O.J. drove a bus, he wouldn’t even be O.J.,” he mentioned. “He’d be Orenthal, the bus-driving assassin.”

The O.J. joke was so pervasive within the Nineties that not telling one might make you stand out. Within the week after Simpson’s arrest, Howard Stern went on “Late Present With David Letterman” throughout essentially the most heated period of the late-night wars and requested the host why he was avoiding the topic. “I’ll inform you my downside with the scenario,” Letterman responded. “Double homicides don’t crack me up the best way they used to.”

Letterman finally did inform some jokes concerning the trial, together with a High 10 listing of issues that may get you kicked off the jury (No. 1: “Preserve frisking your self.”). However his warning was in sharp distinction to Jay Leno, who went all in on O.J. jokes on the “Tonight Present.” A examine that tracked his monologues revealed that Leno advised extra punchlines about Simpson than about another movie star, edging out Michael Jackson and Martha Stewart. In a single working bit, he imagined the trial choose, Lance Ito, and the lead prosecutor, Marcia Clark, as members of a Broadway refrain line. In an much more perversely glib parody, Leno recast the homicide trial as a sitcom utilizing the theme tune from “Gilligan’s Island” and portraying Simpson because the lovable title character. Was this sketch turning real-life tragedy into diverting leisure or parodying it? Watching it now makes the distinction appear pointless.

Such jokes paid off. Leno’s viewers grew, and this era turned a turning level in late night time. “The Tonight Present” handed “Late Present” in rankings for the primary time in July 1995, in the midst of the trial.

Whereas Leno joked concerning the Simpson case the identical means he would about another scandal, Macdonald introduced a sharp-edged conviction to his O.J. jokes, a jackhammer perspective that hinged on the blunt insistence that the soccer star did it. Even a premise about Dr. Seuss reissuing books would result in a punchline a few ebook titled “Inexperienced Eggs and Ham and O.J. Is Responsible.” You possibly can hear unease within the crowd throughout a few of these jokes. One among his greatest was booed. He advised it after Simpson received emotional through the trial at seeing bloody images of his ex-wife. The punchline: “It was at that second that he realized he would by no means have the ability to kill her once more.”

The NBC government Don Ohlmeyer, a good friend of Simpson, had Macdonald fired in 1998 in what was broadly considered as payback for O.J. jokes.

Whereas pundits frequently bemoan sensitive sensitivities that supposedly forestall comics from joking about something anymore, frequently making mild of brutal murders for a nationwide viewers would have as soon as been unthinkable. Simply because the O.J. Simpson trial modified how the media coated scandals, so too did it shift the road of what was acceptable to poke enjoyable at on tv.

The driving pressure on this change was an viewers that needed to snicker at grim, unfunny topics. With the decline of gatekeepers on-line, that has turn out to be solely extra apparent. O.J. jokes dominated my social media feeds after his demise. And whereas the concept of “too quickly” just isn’t out of date, it appeared quaintly refreshing when the CNN anchor Jake Tapper ended an interview Thursday with Conan O’Brien by asking if he had any O.J. jokes — and O’Brien replied that he by no means advised jokes about somebody the day they died. Tapper responded, “OK, I’ll hit you up tomorrow.”