Politics & Power Quote by Andrew Cohen

There’s a sly double move in Cohen’s “hopefully”: it’s aspirational on the surface, but edged with exasperation underneath. The first hope flatters the civic ideal that the legal system can still deliver clarity and consequence; the second hope betrays how thoroughly the O.J. Simpson case colonized the public imagination. By pairing “justice” with “forget,” Cohen implies that the Simpson trial didn’t merely distract America - it actively distorted the country’s sense of what justice looks like.

The line works because it frames a media spectacle as a kind of national amnesia trigger. “Get a sense” is tellingly modest, as if the baseline expectation is not enlightenment but basic orientation, a public recalibrating after years of reality-TV courtroom coverage. And “served” is classic American legal shorthand, but it also hints at consumption: justice as something plated, packaged, and watched. That’s the subtextual indictment of the trial-as-entertainment era.

Contextually, Cohen is writing from inside the late-20th-century moment when one case became a cultural operating system: race, celebrity, policing, domestic violence, and cable news all running at once. His intent isn’t to litigate Simpson again; it’s to plead for a different narrative to take root, one where the country can recognize due process without confusing it for drama, and can discuss accountability without the gravitational pull of one endlessly replayed verdict.