I've talked about this before in Comic Ads #28, but I was in my early twenties when the O.J. "chase" happened. I put that word in quotes, because it really was more of a sixty mile police escort back to his home. I thought it was sick. People mobbing the highway and overpasses to cheer O.J. on. The police not ending the chase. I mean, they said it was to avoid a violent end to the matter, but come on- if he wasn't famous, they'd have cut that Bronco off and forced it to stop very early on. It was only going thirty-five miles an hour on the freeway for crying out loud!

And the media was there for the whole thing, making sure that we were too. That's why I called this "Simpson 451"- because it reminded me so much of the filmed-for-entertainment fugitive chases described in Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. Bradbury was still alive at the time- I figured it must have turned his stomach. What he actually had to say about it can be found in a 1996 Playboy interview:

When O.J. Simpson prowled the freeway pursued by cop cars and helicopters, Russell Baker wrote in his New York Times column words to the effect: This is the last act of Fahrenheit 451! I watched the reruns and thought, My God, he's right. In the final pages of my novel, Montag is running ahead of the book burners and sees himself on TV screens in every home, through each window, as he flees. When he eludes the Mechanical Hound, the society he left behind gets frustrated and kills a proxy Montag on television to satisfy the panicked need.

The OJ chase was a media circus. Don't believe me? Check out CNN's June 10, 2014 5 surprising facts about O.J. Simpson's slow-speed chase. The first three facts show just how far we (the viewers) and the media spiraled, over this case (edited for conciseness):

1. The Bronco chase and subsequent "not guilty" verdict are among the most memorable TV moments in the past 50 years.

The Simpson verdict was the third most "universally impactful" televised moment of the last 50 years behind the September 11, 2001, attacks and Hurricane Katrina in 2005...

Simpson's white Bronco chase came in sixth, behind the Challenger space shuttle disaster and the death of Osama bin Laden...

The verdict came down in 1995, and is third, behind two disasters that happened much more recently. The 1994 chase came in sixth behind the 1986 Challenger explosion and the 2011 death of Bin Laden. In the last fifty years of television, these two O.J. Simpson moments came in the top six.

So just to recap- the top six moments in television history go:

1. Terrorist attack disaster
2. Hurricane disaster
3. Simpson verdict
4. Challenger disaster
5. Death of terrorist responsible for #1 on this list
6. Simpson car chase

Does that seem a little fugged up to anyone else?

2. The Bronco chase dominated sports coverage on a day with major sports news.

On June 17, 1994, legendary golfer Arnold Palmer played his last round at the U.S. Open, the World Cup opened in Chicago, the Rangers celebrated winning the Stanley Cup, the Knicks played game five of the NBA finals against the Houston Rockets, and Ken Griffey Jr. tied Babe Ruth for the most home runs hit before June 30.

So let's just get a handle on just two of the sports events the Simpson chase eclipsed that day:

• Arnold "The King" Palmer played his last round in the U.S. Open. Palmer was arguably the first television sports superstar.
• Ken Griffey Jr. tied Babe Ruth for the most home runs hit before June 30. Babe Ruth played from 1914-1935. Griffey played from 1989-2010. So this tying of the record was kind of a big deal. Griffey's home run record still stands as the sixth highest in Major League Baseball history.

But so what? We were watching a white Ford Bronco cruise down the interstate, because "Oo, flashing lights!"

3. Domino's Pizza reported record sales of pizza delivery during the chase.

..."It was a record night at the time. It was dinner time on the West Coast and 9 p.m. on the East. People were fascinated and didn't want to miss it. It was as big as a Super Bowl Sunday up to that point," said Tim McIntyre, vice president of corporate communications for Domino's Pizza.

You read that right: "As big as a Super Bowl Sunday." That's... unbelievable.

I watched the news coverage of this chase, disgusted the entire time by the media circus of it all. Online sources say Simpson surrendered at 8:51pm, which was Pacific time. Being on the East Coast, I was seeing his surrender at 11:51pm. Of course, there was commentary after the arrest- the press milking it. What I remember distinctly was it wrapping up at midnight exactly by my clock, which is why I put the time on this one. I picked up my pen as soon as it was done, and finished this poem forty-five minutes later.

I read this today, and still recall my revulsion over the media hyping this non-event. I refused to watch the trial, but couldn't help getting some of the news highlights. I don't recall any other big media trials before the Simpson case. Other "media event" trials (and later, Court TV) came about after this case, and as a direct result of the ratings for the Simpson case coverage. I think reality TV probably owes a lot to this case too, and frankly, I think that's a travesty.

I hope this cycle of media obsessiveness is something we manage to break, but we aren't really a society that's geared towards taking control of our own lives. Being "free," sure, but that really just means being free to pursue our own entertainment. If we were pursuing goals of any worth, we'd have more writers, artists and musicians; a better education system; and we'd have cured a couple of things like cancer and diabetes, rather than turning the cures away because they're not profitable. We don't care about those things though, because we're busy worrying about the self destruction of a retired football player, the sex life of the President, or the plastic surgery mishaps of pop stars and actors.

All that we're missing is a mechanical hound.