Mobsters and O.J.

More cultural memories of the 90s

So this week, we will return to the book, “When the Clock Broke by John Ganz. He uses John Gotti as a symbol of institutional breakdown. Gotti became a household name in the late 1980s and early 1990s, not just for his crimes, but for how long he avoided consequences. He was nicknamed “The Teflon Don” because juries repeatedly failed to convict him despite overwhelming evidence.

Ganz’s core argument is that the early ’90s saw a crisis of authority where institutions like the justice system, the police, and the political establishment were either failing or being perceived as corrupt, ineffectual, or untrustworthy.

Gotti’s eventual 1992 conviction was televised and treated like entertainment, not just justice. From the 90s onward, it was common to create a media spectacle around violence and disorder where events are covered like sporting events, with tabloid frenzy and courtroom drama feeding a public obsessed with personality over substance.

Ganz also tracks how cynical, performative masculinity rose in the early 1990s, from the macho posturing of Ross Perot to the swagger of right-wing media personalities like Gotti, always in expensive suits, projecting dominance, openly thumbing his nose at the system. He embodied a glamorous form of antisocial power that was becoming seductive.

Nihilism was replacing ideology and Americans were becoming increasingly comfortable with figures who acted as if rules didn’t apply to them. Ganz does not cover the O.J. Simpson trial, but it is absolutely in the same cultural and political vein. The O.J. trial was a courtroom turned into mass entertainment. I am sure some of my readers remember it. I surely do. The trial was a live-broadcast drama with characters, plot twists, and cliffhangers.

The O.J. trial replayed many of those tensions as Rodney King. You have the LAPD’s racist history, questions about whether Black defendants could get a fair trial, and deep divisions in public opinion along racial lines. The O.J. trial was Rodney King’s media sequel, set in the same city but now with celebrity and money mixed in. O.J., like Gotti, was a personality first and everything else second.

Ganz’s point about the early ’90s being a shift toward personality-based legitimacy applies. The chase and the trial also feel like a precursor to reality TV politics, where image and personal charisma can override truth. The O.J. verdict is one of the clearest examples of Americans living in separate realities. Most black Americans saw it as justice after centuries of systemic racism. Many white Americans saw it as a miscarriage of justice.

You have the same facts but different worlds. The O.J. trial started in 1994, and the verdict came in 1995, so it’s right at the tail end of this time period. It was the triumph of performance over truth.

Ganz makes the point that both the left and right had moments of anti-state outrage in the early ’90s, but the right institutionalized it, folding it into talk radio, militia culture, and eventually Republican politics.

Earlier, we looked at Ruby Ridge. That incident and later Waco became founding myths in online right-wing and militia spaces. People shared grainy photos, typed manifestos, and conspiracy theories and the very beginnings of the online political subculture that would later explode on social media. Most of life before then was moving through slower, more centralized information channels. There were gate keepers.

At the time, the narrative of Ruby Ridge was shaped almost entirely offline. The story spread through local and national newspapers, TV news broadcasts, AM talk radio, and photocopied newsletters circulated in gun shows, small community meetings, and militia gatherings that still relied on word-of-mouth.

Within a few years, militia lore and anti-government rhetoric would migrate onto early internet bulletin boards, Usenet groups, and email lists. What had once taken months or years to become part of political folklore could now spread in hours. Starting in the mid-90s, those dramas didn’t just play out on television; they became raw material for online communities, where they could be reframed, exaggerated, and kept alive long after the news cycle has moved on.