Washington. -- Do you spend more than one hour a day following the O.J. Simpson murder trial proceedings on television?
Has your productivity at home or at work slipped as a result of monitoring the trial?
Do you get angry if someone or something interrupts your viewing of the trial?
Do you know the names of all the defense and prosecution attorneys?
Is the Simpson coverage the first story you read in the newspaper?
Do friends and family say that you are too involved in the Simpson-related events?
Do you find yourself thinking or daydreaming about the Simpson case while you are involved in another unrelated activity?
Have you canceled social events, missed meals or lost sleep because of Simpson coverage?
Have you read any books related to the Simpson case?
If you answered "yes" to three or fewer of these questions, Los Angeles psychologist Robert R. Butterworth says you are doing OK. You have not become seriously obsessed with the Simpson case.
But if you answered "yes" to six or more, watch out. You have a serious addiction. Jerk yourself alert. Get past your denial. Admit you have a problem. Sequester yourself. Cut yourself off from trial coverage. Go cold turkey for a week. After that, don't watch more than three hours of the Simpson proceedings a week.
In short, Mr. Butterworth says, "Get a life!"
My sentiments exactly. I don't know how many people would score highly obsessed on the "O.J. test," but proably it would be quite a few. After all, TV would not be showing so much of it were we not so obsessed with it. The O.J. case haunts our national psyche. It intrudes into conversations. It boosts Ford Bronco sales. It sells books by the boxcar. It has even made a new cable TV star of Brian "Kato" Kaelin.
Why? We were not nearly this gripped by Heidi Fleiss, Tonya Harding, Lorena Bobbitt, the Menendez brothers or any of the other billion bizarre cases that have made the front page in recent months.
Mr. Butterworth thinks the Simpson case offers "something for everyone" -- sex, violence, love, rage, wife-beating, wife-cheating, celebrities, beautiful people, Hollywood hangers-on, sports, race, the Los Angeles Police Department, bloody gloves, bloody paws, ice cream -- you name it!
Moreover, the psychologist says, it is not only pretty, but also real. Daytime "reality TV" talk shows have jaded our tastes. It is not enough that we merely hear people discuss their shame. We want to see it unfold before our very eyes. We want our "Court TV." We want something that is not staged, not a wired-up gas tank, not a doctored-up "docudrama," not a bogus dial-a-dysfunctional booked by a producer. We want to see witnesses cry real tears.
"I think this is the next step in our evolution," says Mr. Butterworth. "Maybe televised executions will be next?"
Maybe. I have another theory. I think our national obsession with O.J. is a harbinger of a new American culture, a byproduct of new technology, growing media competition and the $ 1/8 fragmentation of American society.
Technology has brought an explosion of video channels and increasingly fierce competition. This leads to a few excellent programs, but mostly it leads to trash, mindless melodrama and tabloid twaddle.
In the '50s and '60s, families sat down in living rooms to watch the same programs every night, largely because we had only three networks and most homes had only one or two television sets. We watched pretty much the same programs as one another and talked about pretty much the same topics.
Today, work patterns and targeted TV programming ("Monday Night Football" for Dad, Home Shopping Network for Mom, MTV for the kids) have scattered families and communities. I think American society craves something like the Simpson trial and its wall-to-wall coverage as we become more fragmented, less connected to our neighbors or even to our own family members as we used to be. It gives us something in common to get excited about and talk to each other about without provoking fights, the way discussions of religion and politics do.
In that sense, the trial coverage and out national attention to it provide an important service, as long as we don't get carried away with it. "Remember, it's O.J. who is on trial, not you," says Mr. Butterworth.
That's right. But, in a larger sense, maybe we are. Los Angeles is loaded with reporters from around the world who watch us Americans watching the trial as curiously as we watch the trial. We are judged by the company we keep watching.
Clarence Page is a syndicated columnist.