The weekend after a jury found OJ Simpson not guilty of murder, comedian Norm Macdonald opened Weekend Update on “Saturday Night Live” at his desk next to a picture of the defendant. “Well, it’s finally official,” he said. “Murder is legal in the state of California.”
The 1995 trial of Simpson, who died Wednesday at 76, did not dominate and revolutionize the media. It also became an unlikely comedy staple. The details of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald L. Goldman were daily fodder for punchlines on talk shows, sitcoms and stand-up stages. And Macdonald cemented his status as one of the best comedians of his generation thanks to his adherence to what became one of the biggest comedic genres of the 1990s: the OJ joke.
In 1996’s groundbreaking “Bring the Pain,” Chris Rock’s push-button analysis of the dynamics of the OJ Simpson case helped change the course of his career. He claimed that fame is what saved Simpson. “If OJ drove a bus, he wouldn’t even be OJ,” he said. “That would be Orendal, the killer driving the bus.”
The OJ joke was so ubiquitous in the 1990s that not telling it could set you apart. The week after Simpson’s arrest, Howard Stern went on the “Late Show With David Letterman” during the height of the late-night wars and asked the host why he was avoiding the topic. “I’ll tell you my problem with the situation,” Letterman replied. “Double homicides don’t crack me up like they used to.”
Letterman eventually told a few jokes about the trial, including a Top 10 list of things that will get you kicked off the jury (No. 1: “Keep taking care of yourself.” But his focus was on contrast with Jay Leno, who joined OJ’s jokes on the “Tonight Show.” A study tracking his monologues revealed that Leno said more about Simpson than any other celebrity, surpassing Michael Jackson and Martha Stewart .In one run, he imagined the judge, Lance Ito, and the chief prosecutor, Marcia Clark, as members of a Broadway chorus.In an even more twisted parody, Leno recast the murder trial as a sitcom using the theme song from “Gilligan’s Island” and portraying Simpson as the lovable title character, was this sketch turning the real-life tragedy into an entertainment diversion or a parody of it?
Such jokes paid off. Leno’s audience grew and this period became a turning point in late night. “The Tonight Show” surpassed the “Late Show” in ratings for the first time in July 1995, in the middle of the trial.
While Leno joked about the Simpson case the same way he would about any other scandal, Macdonald brought a sharp conviction to his OJ jokes, a fireside perspective that hinged on the blunt insistence that the football star did it. Even a case concerning the reprinting of books by Dr. Seuss would lead to a discussion of a book called “Green Eggs and Ham and OJ Is Guilty.” You can hear concern in the crowd during some of these jokes. One of his best was frowned upon. He said this after Simpson became emotional during the trial when he saw bloody pictures of his ex-wife. The Fist: “It was at that moment that he realized he could never kill her again.”
NBC executive Don Ohlmeyer, a friend of Simpson’s, had fired Macdonald in 1998 in what was widely seen as payback for the OJ jokes.
While pundits regularly bemoan sensitive sensibilities that supposedly prevent comics from joking about anything anymore, it would once have been unthinkable to routinely make light of brutal murders for a national audience. Just as the OJ Simpson trial changed the way the media covered scandals, it also changed the line of what was acceptable to mock on television.
The driving force behind this change was an audience that wanted to laugh at dark, funny subjects. With the fall of the Internet gatekeepers, this has become more apparent. OJ jokes dominated social media after his death. And while the idea of ”too soon” isn’t out of date, it seemed strangely refreshing when CNN anchor Jake Tapper ended an interview Thursday with Conan O’Brien by asking if he had a joke in O’Brien’s paper — and the Brian replied that he never said that. jokes about someone on the day they died. Tapper replied, “Okay, I’ll hit you tomorrow.”
