Abusive relationships were packaged as entertainment: Amy and Joey, Lorena and John Wayne, Clarence and Anita, OJ and Nicole, Pamela and Tommy, and, capping off the decade, Bill and Monica. At the time, the incessant focus on villains and victims seemed tawdry but not dangerous. After all, America’s big battles had allegedly been won. What was wrong with a circus of pain, when the stakes were so low and the protagonists so low-down that sympathy for the players could be an admission of your own struggle, and disdain a form of self-validation?
