Enter the Dancing Itos: 22 bits of pop culture ephemera inspired by the O.J. trial

Broadcast television milked the O.J. Simpson trial for everything it was worth, with incessant news coverage that reportedly outstripped that of the Oklahoma City bombing. The barrage of Simpson-related content made TV movies-of-the-week seem like an obvious extension, given the networks were already in the habit of converting the latest lurid true crime or celebrity fall from grace into tawdry Saturday night filler. But in a rare show of restraint, NBC, CBS, and ABC resisted the temptation to be first out of the gate with a pre-verdict dramatization of the Simpson trial. CBS reportedly fast-tracked a project and was pitted against Fox in a bidding war for leading man Michael Dorn—Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Lieutenant Worf—but ultimately abandoned the project amid concerns such a project would flout basic standards of taste. Only Fox, which was solidifying its reputation as the post-taste television network, went ahead with its film with Bobby Hosea in the lead role. It aired a week after opening statements began. Not to be totally outdone, CBS pressed forward in 2000 with its own miniseries, American Tragedy, which focused on the trial itself and starred Ving Rhames as Johnnie Cochran. [Joshua Alston]

the ninth episode of the sixth season of The Simpsons, was probably in some stage of development before June of 1994, when O.J. Simpson was arrested for the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. But five months was more than enough time for Matt Groening’s team to work several references to the resulting media circus into the episode, in which Homer becomes public enemy number one after being falsely accused of sexually harassing a teenage babysitter. Most blatant of the nods are scenes of a helicopter capturing round-the-clock footage of what Kent Brockman calls “the Simpson estate.” Glimpses of a starring Dennis Franz as an outrageously villainized Homer could also have been inspired by the then-forthcoming The O.J. Simpson Story, whose director adopted the Alan Smithee pseudonym. Mostly, however, “Homer Badman” just offers a hilariously accurate depiction of the kind of shady infotainment “news reporting” and talk-show oversaturation that hit peak absurdity with the O.J. case. Coming from Fox, such satire felt more than a little ironic; the network would hit a new low in O.J. exploitation the following May, when it encouraged viewers to watch its original programming instead of Simpson’s civil trial using a shameless jingle: “Fox is hot hot hot. O.J. is not not not.” [A.A. Dowd]

Kato Kaelin is the poster boy for fame (or infamy) by association, most notorious as the type of freeloader who would crash on your couch and never, ever leave. He happened to be staying at a guesthouse on the Simpson estate the night of the murder. An aspiring actor who had appeared in a few low-budget beach and slasher movies, Kaelin’s trial appearances as a witness brought him more fame than his film roles ever did. He was a witness for the prosecution over four days, and testified that he could not account for Simpson’s whereabouts at the time of the murders. But his sarcastic delivery led Marcia Clark to declare him a “hostile witness.” Kaelin’s inability to come down on either side of the O.J. debate lost him friends on both sides: O.J. Simpson’s son changed the name of the family dog from Kato to Satchmo. After the trial, Kaelin sued a tabloid for libel and won after a headline proclaimed, “Cops think Kato did it!” In 1995, his celebrity snagged him guest-star spots on comedy shows like MadTV and Mr. Show, as well as on Howard Stern’s radio show. His subsequent stand-up act featured the following joke: “Knock, knock.” “Who’s there?” “Kato.” “Kato who?” “Believe me, in six months, that’s my biggest fear.” But that joke turned out to be prophetic, as a 2004 reality show in which Kaelin would do what he was most famous for—crashing at people’s houses—failed to materialize. [Gwen Ihnat]

Mixed in with reprisals of George Bush, Johnny Carson, and “Choppin’ Broccoli,” and riffs on Hugh Grant’s blowjob, Dana Carvey devoted a solid 10 minutes of his 1995 HBO special, Critic’s Choice, to the equally timeless comedy of the O.J. Simpson trial. Carvey wasn’t exactly known for controversy—and saying he believed that Simpson was guilty wasn’t exactly controversial, especially before the verdict was actually rendered. But other than joking about the implausibility of a vast conspiracy against Simpson, which Carvey imagined reaching all the way from Bill Clinton to James Bond, and referring to racist L.A. detective Mark “De-Führer-man,” Carvey mostly stuck safely to his wheelhouse of silly impressions. It’s perhaps the first—and last—time someone ever worked an impersonation of prosecutor Chris Darden into their act. [Sean O’Neal]

Comedian Harry Shearer was already well versed in farces involving people named “Simpson,” so it made a certain sense for Shearer to cover O.J.’s civil trial for Slate, which he did . But he also got into it in a (only slightly) less journalistic way on his long-running public radio program, Le Show, where he’d engage in skits about the Simpson case that riffed loosely on its principals and took them to goofy, mostly imaginary places. Those skits—including bits like “F. Lee Bailey Buys Orange Juice,” The Lance Ito Christmas Special, and “John Tesh And Kaito’s Peter And The Wolf”—were collected on two CD compilations, and , which are probably of interest solely to Shearer completists and people who find references to 20-year-old courtroom minutiae amusing. Meanwhile, , arguably as devoted to him as he is to any other Simpson. [Sean O’Neal]

“O.J. Simpson did it” jokes may have been low-hanging fruit by February 1997, but that didn’t stop Chris Rock from slipping one into the very first sketch of the first episode of his HBO talk show. Set in the future, the bit has Rock sharing memorabilia from his show’s run, including a crack pipe left behind by Marion Barry and an instructional VHS that Simpson stopped by to plug, I Didn’t Kill My Wife! But If I DID, Here’s How I’d Do It. It’s not a particularly inventive joke, but it’s noteworthy for its prescience: Nine years later Simpson stirred outrage by actually publishing a work called If I Did It. Clearly the Simpson trial was on Rock’s mind at the time. He returned to the subject in depth later that episode with the show’s very first guest, Johnnie Cochran. [Evan Rytlewski]

In the fall of 1995, Seinfeld introduced Jackie Chiles (Phil Morris)—a fast-talking, showboating lawyer clearly modeled on O.J. Simpson defense team member Johnnie Cochran—in “The Maestro,” an episode that wound up airing just two days after Simpson’s acquittal. “The Maestro” doesn’t specifically riff on the O.J. case; it actually spoofs the real-life 1994 incident where a woman sued McDonald’s over serving her too-hot coffee, with Chiles taking Kramer’s similar case, then despairing when his client agrees to a free-coffee settlement before any cash enters into the deal. It was the second Chiles episode (“The Caddy,” from January 1996) that made the Cochran/Chiles parallels even more clear by putting Chiles in a courtroom, asking Elaine’s nemesis Sue Ellen Mischke try on a bra, instead of a glove; when it “doesn’t fit” (crucially, over her clothes), she is exonerated from her role in a traffic accident. Unfortunately for Chiles, he’s the prosecution in this case, rather than the defense. The Cochran parody felt unusually affectionate because of a clever runner in the Kramer/Chiles relationship: though Chiles would clearly take any number of ridiculous cases, they were often undermined not by their absurdity or his grandstanding, but by Kramer’s own impulsive bumbling. In “The Caddy,” for example, it’s Kramer who insists that Chiles ask Sue Ellen Mischke to try on the bra. It seems unlikely the Seinfeld team was working out any strong satirical ideas about the Simpson case, but that Kramer/Chiles dynamic nonetheless offers sly commentary on the way even a shamelessly theatrical attorney is at the mercy of an unpredictable or unstable client. It’s also impressive that the tabloid-friendly Simpson case was able to influence the most popular and distinctive sitcoms of its time: Chiles became a fixture on the last three seasons of Seinfeld, boosting the show’s diversity while also calling attention to its general whiteness, given that a Cochran spoof could so easily become the show’s most prominent black character. [Jesse Hassenger]

Wesley Willis found fodder for his inimitable songs in current events (and bands/people he liked), and the lead-off track of his 1995 self-titled album begins with a song about the story dominating the news cycle at the time. “O.J. Simpson murdered Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman,” Willis states in his signature monotone. In typical Willis fashion, the verses state information, and the chorus is just the subject’s name repeated over and over again. But in the third verse, Willis unleashes, saying, “O.J. Simpson was a no good jerk / He’s a fucking asshole / He had no business killing his ex-wife Nicole and her friend Ronald Goldman.” Hard to argue with that. [Kyle Ryan]

From 1994 to 1997, Norm Macdonald ruled the “Weekend Update” desk at Saturday Night Live, where he was called the best anchor since Chevy Chase by no less an authority than Chase himself. In the wake of the December 13, 1997 episode, Macdonald was relieved of his duties by order of NBC executive Don Ohlmeyer. Although Macdonald himself has indicated that his firing was mostly due to Ohlmeyer just not finding him funny in general, as he related during his instantly infamous , rumors immediately began to circulate that Ohlmeyer had finally gotten sick and tired of Macdonald’s incessant jokes about O.J., with whom the executive had been friends for almost 30 years. Ohlmeyer denied that the Simpson-bashing had anything to do with his decision, but given SNL writer Jim Downey has acknowledged that “we did, like three solid years of, like, 60 shows of O.J. jokes in a row,” it’s hard to imagine that there was no correlation. [Will Harris]

In the last half-decade, Lil Wayne, Kendrick Lamar, Young Jeezy and (most notably) Kanye West have referenced elements of the O.J. Simpson trial, either directly (his “isotoners”) or figuratively (references to his murder charges). During and directly after the circus, however, a few musicians took the bait and cited it in their lyrics. In A Tribe Called Quest’s “The Hop,” Phife name-drops trial characters to illustrate his rapping prowess (“I work for mine, you, you’re freeloading like Kato Kaelin” and, “Watch me stab up the track as if my name was O.J. Simpson”), while Tupac Shakur’s “Picture Me Rollin’” is more literal: When he raps, “Free like O.J. all day” on 1996’s “Picture Me Rollin’” he actually is only a few months removed from jail. The varied approach to these lyrical references reinforced the complexity of the trial itself, and the flexible way it could be interpreted. But these lines also kickstarted O.J.’s status as an ideal hip-hop pop cultural reference: In the coming years, he’s considered a figurative hero for beating the charges, and also referenced as a killer. [Annie Zaleski]

It’s hard to imagine the three smartasses in Sicko were playing “The Juice Is Loose” straight, but there’s little indication that this pro-O.J. song from 1995’s Laugh While You Can Monkey Boy is a joke. The fantasy of busting an “obviously innocent” Simpson out of jail begins, “Do you read me / This is headquarters / And soon you’ll be free / We got commandos on the way / so just sit tight, O.J.” After commando-bearing choppers land on the roof of L.A. County jail, they “hand the Juice a gun / Stand back, boys / And watch THE MAN run.” The whole nation got to see a gun-toting Simpson do just that in his white Bronco. [Kyle Ryan]

In the 1998 South Park episode “Chef Aid,” jolly crooner Chef accuses a record company of plagiarizing a song he wrote years ago, and the company responds by O.J.’s star defense attorney, Johnnie Cochran. The evidence favors Chef—he really did write the hit song “Stinky Britches”—but Cochran prevails by dazzling the jury with the “Chewbacca Defense.” For this litigative flourish, Cochran points out that Chewbacca, who is 8 feet tall, lives on Endor with Ewoks, who are 2 feet tall, and this does not make sense. (Chewbacca doesn’t actually live on Endor, but that only enhances the confusion.) Disoriented by Cochran’s absurdities, the jury decides in his client’s favor—although Chef emerges victorious later in the episode when Cochran switches sides and invokes Chewbacca-centric nonsense yet again. Airing three years after the original verdict, South Park’s send-up of Cochran’s closing arguments may not have been the timeliest O.J. satire, but it was among the most enduring. “Chewbacca Defense” has become for arguments that confuse an issue by introducing a slew of red herrings. It’s a cynical tribute to Cochran’s talent for reframing an argument even when the facts seemed to be against him. [John Teti]

There was plenty of pointed commentary about the O.J. Simpson trial, and plenty that was ridiculous as well. This 7-inch single takes a little from both camps, blending psychedelic guitars—courtesy a member of the cult Texas band Pain Teens—and voices from news reports about the case. The A-side devolves into a swampy cover of “Hey Joe,” with details from the murders inserted; the flip features Dan Rather’s rolling commentary of the famous Ford Bronco chase. Each copy of the single is hand-numbered 32/1000, a reference to Juice’s jersey number. [Josh Modell]