Here in Los Angeles, thousands of miles from South Carolina, the obsession with the double-murder saga of the Murdaugh family has seemed slightly ridiculous to me.
Cable TV news channels pumped up interest, treating it as the trial of the century, as if proceedings against Alex Murdaugh, charged with murder in the shooting deaths of his wife, Maggie, and young adult son Paul, could recapture the ratings "magic" of the O.J. Simpson trial.
The Simpson case, which launched a thousand legal pundit careers, was a nation-jarring collision of race, celebrity, privilege and spectacularly over-the-top courtroom theatrics. Because of this — and the insanely slow-speed white Bronco chase that preceded Simpson's arrest in the death of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman — many Americans with absolutely no personal connection to the Simpson case had a deep emotional investment in its outcome.
