What did the past 30 years teach us?

Monday marked 30 years to the day the world learned that Kurt Cobain was dead. I was 12 at the time, and too wrapped up in Little League baseball and my upcoming birthday party to be affected by it. I'm sure I had heard "Smells Like Teen Spirit" at some point. I vaguely remember the video playing on MTV, the rock band jumping around angrily shouting while cheerleaders danced.

It would be months later, probably around the time Nirvana's MTV Unplugged album was released when I'd get just a tiny glimpse of why Kurt Cobain's death resonated so much.

Did it matter that it was a suicide? Did it matter that he dealt with immense physical pain? Did it matter that he was caught in the addiction cycle: use, overuse, rehab, recover, use, reuse, etc? All of those thought are important on their own. But Cobain's death at such a young age, a time that many would argue was his "peak", was large for a deeper reason than simply how it happened.

David Fricke, the Music Editor for Rolling Stone at the time of Cobain's death understood that this death was more than just another rock star burning out too early in life. He recalled the shock readers expressed when he compared Cobain to John Lennon. "He was writing very much from the heart and didn't play by the rules. And the thing that I found very disturbing...were people saying "How dare you compare him to John Lennon", and I say look at their life stories, look at their music. If you don't see the connection, then you're not paying attention."

I wasn't a youth riddled with teenage angst. I didn't feel the tremors of a broken home, strained relationships, or melancholy moments of loneliness. But that's not to say I didn't experience days of wanting to connect with something deeper. Something that made sense to me. And sometimes I found that connection in the grunge music of bands like Nirvana, Soundgarden, Stone Temple Pilots, or whatever 93.3 was playing at the moment.

The way I see it, a teenager feeling hopeless will connect with one of two different types of people. They'll connect with one who is full of positivity and radiates hope. Or they'll find a distinct comfort in someone who's just as hopeless as they are. That's what Cobain conveyed. Fricke put it well:

"This is not just some rock star who couldn't handle success and took an easy way out. He really shows there's a generation out there that has to come to grips with their future. In many ways, I think older people and parents really shouldn't look at this as a rock star who couldn't handle it. I say, this is your kids. Think about it."

In the summer of 1994, two months after Cobain’s death, Al Cowlings sped off down a California highway with O.J. Simpson ducking in the backseat. The implications were clear. This guy was a murderer, and the whole world was captivated by it.

Sure, there were some bozos excited to see O.J. fleeing, rooting him on. But Americans knew one thing for sure: he was guilty.

On the first Tuesday of October in 1995, I sat in a freshman classroom with 20 or so of my peers and watched the verdict come down live.

"We find the defendant, Orenthal James Simpson, not guilty..."

The way the juror's voice hitches on the Orenthal does it. Almost as if she can't believe herself they're going to acquit O.J. I'm not sure what my 14-year-old mind expected the reaction to be from my classmates. Subdued shock, I suppose.

I was stunned to see the Black students at my small high school celebrating, high-fiving each other after class, as if O.J. had won a Super Bowl. Not gotten away with double murder.

My confusion then was salted away years later with understanding. The O.J. verdict was, for many Blacks in America, a make-up call for the miscarriage of injustice during the Rodney King trials. Adding to the disastrous decade of the LAPD was Mark Fuhrman, one of the detectives working the murders Simpson was accused of. Fuhrman was on record for racist remarks, comments that surely plagued members of the jury.

This op-ed from the LA Times summarizes it well. "Whatever one thinks about Simpson’s guilt or innocence in the double murder, it’s easy to understand why jurors in the case would have questions — even doubts — about a case investigated by officers whose colleagues had beaten Rodney King and by a detective whose racism was something he bragged about. The LAPD had forfeited its presumption of honesty."

I'll never not believe O.J. Simpson murdered his ex-wife and her boyfriend. But I'm done shaking my head at those who celebrated his acquittal. Because perspective is everything in life. And better to understand those who view things differently than to wag your finger endlessly until no one’s willing to listen to you anymore.

O.J. Simpson died on Thursday after a battle with prostate cancer. He was 76. Much of the conversation around him now uses phrases like “complicated legacy” and “notorious celebrity”. For a stretch of time yesterday after the news broke, the Drudge Report ran the headline CANCER MURDERS OJ. That felt callous when I read it. A spitball of mediocre justice flung into the sun. A final jab at a 90s icon celebrated not at all for the man he was, but for what his victory represented.

There’s a game my daughters play when we’re in the car and I’m flipping the radio channels, ultimately landing on one playing a song I know from the past. In the midst of trying to explain what makes whatever song’s playing such a great song, one of them inevitably asks: “Are they still alive?” As if the music I listen to only exists in time capsules buried by now-dead people.

“Bruce Springsteen?”

”No!”

”Britney Spears?”

”No!”

”Garth Brooks?”

”What? No, girls. Garth Brooks is not dead.”

”Tupac?”

Sigh.

And I realized too often the artists I play have faded away. Their music is still here, but too many of them are not. Tupac. Nirvana. Soundgarden. TLC. Stone Temple Pilots. Aaliyah.

Too many.

We haven’t covered the complexity of OJ Simpson. But I think it’s impossible to construct the enormity of his life, of his trial, and more importantly, the ramifications of his life and his trial. But we’ll try.

At our daughters’ track meet last night, I saw a girl wearing a Nirvana t-shirt. She couldn’t have been older than 12 or 13. I wanted to ask her what her favorite song from the band is. Could she have answered? Or would she have given me a puzzled look?

If I ask my daughters, what would their answer be? If the past 30 years have taught me anything, between the deaths of rock band gods and disgraced football players, it’s this: whatever the question, whatever the circumstance, whatever the tragedy, it’s important to hear the other point of view.

It really is astounding what we learn from each other when we listen.

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