The Most Disturbing Part of the Jussie Smollett Story

 

Today President Trump’s son, Donald Jr., tweeted something I was planning on writing on tonight:

It’s not surprising that the story was a hoax, we’ve unfortunately seen enough of those to last a lifetime. It’s not surprising that even a Hollywood celebrity could be so deranged by TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome) that they would perpetrate a crime like Smollett seems to have. But here’s the scary thing: a lot of people who really ought to have known better fell for it.

People who are running for President (Harris, Booker, Sanders), people involved in Congressional intelligence (Schiff, AOC), a number of celebrities who pride themselves on their superior intelligence otherwise. All of these individuals believed the most implausible story every woven. We were told two white men in MAGA hats were wandering around Chicago in the dead of the winter during a polar vortex, attacked Smollett with bleach and a noose (which apparently white people just carry around nowadays in the age of Trump), knew who he was (how else would they know to shout homophobic epithets along with racist ones?), and shouted MAGA Country. In Chicago. Yes, when I think MAGA country, my first thought is the home of Barack Obama and Rahm Emanuel.

But they just… believed it, believed it all.

The truth is, they wanted it to be true. They wanted to be able to have a new tool with which to bludgeon the President and his supporters. That tool was more important than the truth.

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  1. Brian Wyneken Member
    Brian Wyneken
    @BrianWyneken

    If anyone can recall a parallel tale with the political orientations reversed please reply. I’m aware that there have been a few “right wing” hoaxes, but these instances have not (to my recollection) ever generated much interest. This combination of gullibility and hysteria seems to be a fairly consistent feature of leftism.

    • #1
  2. Western Chauvinist Member
    Western Chauvinist
    @WesternChauvinist

    These people are anti-white racists doing everything they can to propagate racial stereotypes, including conspiring to perpetrate hate-crime hoaxes which consume law enforcement resources desperately needed to fight real crime. Prosecute. Throw the book at them. This needs to stop before more innocents are hurt.

    • #2
  3. KyleBauer Coolidge
    KyleBauer
    @KyleBauer

    Professor Wilfred Reilly sums it best – “the demand for bigots in this country far exceeds the supply” which is why we are seeing such a plethora of fake hate crimes.  Being a victim now has more stature than being a hero.  Where do we go from here?

    • #3
  4. Vance Richards Inactive
    Vance Richards
    @VanceRichards

    A prosecutor jumping to conclusions because it fits her preferred political narratives? Someone might want to look at some of the cases she prosecuted.

    • #4
  5. DrewInWisconsin Member
    DrewInWisconsin
    @DrewInWisconsin

    Bethany Mandel: The truth is, they wanted it to be true. They wanted to be able to have a new tool with which to bludgeon the President and his supporters. That tool was more important than the truth.

    I’m reluctant to post this but . . .

    There were an awful lot of people on “our side” who wanted to believe it, too.

    There were an awful lot of people on “our side” who wanted to believe that MAGA-hat wearing teens harassed a “native American elder.” 

    There were an awful lot of people on “our side” who want to believe the worst of anyone who voted for the President.

    Remember Omarosa’s fictitious N-word tape? A lot of people calling themselves “conservatives” — including right here on Ricochet — were convinced it actually existed and declared that anyone who stood by the President was likewise tarnished with the N-word brush.

    And after that fictitious N-word tape turned out to be fictitious? Not a single mea culpa from the “conservatives” who wanted so badly to paint Trump-voters as racists and white nationalists.

    They just moved on to the next invented outrage.

    They say that evangelicals who voted for the President are hypocrites. They say we sold out our values. They call us “anti-intellectual,” and “louts and dunces.” They continue to slander us to this very day for voting for our President.

    All these people need to spend some time in repentance and self-reflection. If they ever do get around to apologizing, I’m not sure I will accept.

     

    • #5
  6. DrewInWisconsin Member
    DrewInWisconsin
    @DrewInWisconsin

    I posted this in a different thread earlier today, but it fits here as well . . .

    Predicted by C.S. Lewis:

    “Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one’s first feeling, ‘Thank God, even they aren’t quite so bad as that,’ or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black. Finally we shall insist on seeing everything — God and our friends and ourselves included — as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred.”

    • #6
  7. Instugator Thatcher
    Instugator
    @Instugator

    It is simply a shame that all those people fell prey to the #NigerianRedneckScam

     

    • #7
  8. Flicker Coolidge
    Flicker
    @Flicker

    The very fact that when the police showed up at his door he still had the noose around his neck made me immediately think it must be a hoax.  I tried to think of any reason he would do this, even as a non-law enforcement guy.  Finger prints?  DNA?  Showing the crime as close to undisturbed as possible?  Naw.

    It was grandstanding, pure and simple.  If I can see that how can not a cop or a DA?  I’ve read the psychology comments and tried to place it all.,  But none of it stands up. And I reject the Saad psychology video about weaponized Mass Munchhausen’s  even more now than at first.  This was not a self-victimization at all.  It was a self-aggrandizing heroism.  He fought off the attackers.  They ran away.  He (Dirty Harry-like) could munch on his undisturbed Subway sub on the way home if he wanted to.  He didn’t take off the noose just as Mark Wahlberg never looks back at an explosion.  It’s all movie stuff.  High drama.

    He’s not the victim, factitious or otherwise.  He’s the hero of the story.

    And he evoked that special silver-screen willing suspension of disbelief.  And everyone knew it.  And the world bowed down and clapped at his scrape with Trump-death.  It’s was just theater, and middling theater.

    Indiana Smollett.

    • #8
  9. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    If you people would just go out and commit the kind of hate crimes that your betters insist you commit, they wouldn’t be forced into faking those hate crimes in order to raise your consciousness!

    • #9
  10. 9thDistrictNeighbor Member
    9thDistrictNeighbor
    @9thDistrictNeighbor

    From today’s column by the Chicago Tribune’s John Kass:

    But two dozen detectives for Smollett just doesn’t seem right. Make no mistake. I’m not blaming the detectives, or the Chicago Police Department.

    They work for a politician. His name is Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who famously announced a few years ago that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste.

    And when Smollett told his amazing story, about being a black gay man attacked by racist Trump supporters on one of the coldest nights of the year, the media was all over it. National politicians were all over it.

    • #10
  11. Bethany Mandel Coolidge
    Bethany Mandel
    @bethanymandel

    9thDistrictNeighbor (View Comment):

    From today’s column by the Chicago Tribune’s John Kass:

    But two dozen detectives for Smollett just doesn’t seem right. Make no mistake. I’m not blaming the detectives, or the Chicago Police Department.

    They work for a politician. His name is Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who famously announced a few years ago that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste.

    And when Smollett told his amazing story, about being a black gay man attacked by racist Trump supporters on one of the coldest nights of the year, the media was all over it. National politicians were all over it.

    I think they devoted these resources because the cops knew better and knew there was something fishy. The funny/sad part is they were offended by Smollett trying to paint Chicago as MAGA country. Had it been a run of the mill assault in already violent Chicago it wouldn’t have registered.

    • #11
  12. RufusRJones Member
    RufusRJones
    @RufusRJones

    Harvey Levin was just on Fox about this. It was really good. He’s always very clear on this type of thing. I don’t know if they will post it. 

    • #12
  13. JamesSalerno Inactive
    JamesSalerno
    @JamesSalerno

    “Hate” crimes are a logical fallacy, but if they have to exist, can we charge Smollett with one?

    Fictitious reports are considered misdemeanors in most states… I think? So if this is a misdemeanor, he certainly did it out of hate for an entire group (whites). And you better believe he was trying to incite violence against said group.

    • #13
  14. Bishop Wash Member
    Bishop Wash
    @BishopWash

    Bethany Mandel: It’s not surprising that even a Hollywood celebrity could be so deranged by TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome) that they would perpetrate a crime like Smollett seems to have.

    I think it was Three Martini Lunch who played Smollett’s interview with someone and the interviewer asked what could have driven the attack. Smollett answered, ‘well my stand on 45 is well known’. Jim Geraghty responded, and I thought the same, ‘I didn’t know who you were before this’.

    • #14
  15. RufusRJones Member
    RufusRJones
    @RufusRJones

     

     

    • #15
  16. Instugator Thatcher
    Instugator
    @Instugator

    You know Trump’s America in 2019 is so bad that a gay black man has to hire fake rednecks to put a line around his neck, beat him a little, and spill some juice upon him just to call attention to all the oppression going on.

    What is wrong with you people.

    • #16
  17. Western Chauvinist Member
    Western Chauvinist
    @WesternChauvinist

    Instugator (View Comment):

    You know Trump’s America in 2019 is so bad that a gay black man has to hire fake rednecks to put a line around his neck, beat him a little, and spill some juice upon him just to call attention to all the oppression going on.

    What is wrong with you people.

    We are in a bad, bad place in our society, and it’s only peripherally about the President. 

    • #17
  18. Vance Richards Inactive
    Vance Richards
    @VanceRichards

    RufusRJones (View Comment):

    Harvey Levin was just on Fox about this. It was really good. He’s always very clear on this type of thing. I don’t know if they will post it.

    For all the gossip type topics they cover, TMZ seems to be more thorough and professional than a lot of the “legitimate” news outlets.

    • #18
  19. RufusRJones Member
    RufusRJones
    @RufusRJones

    Vance Richards (View Comment):

    RufusRJones (View Comment):

    Harvey Levin was just on Fox about this. It was really good. He’s always very clear on this type of thing. I don’t know if they will post it.

    For all the gossip type topics they cover, TMZ seems to be more thorough and professional than a lot of the “legitimate” news outlets.

    Harvey Levin has a mind like a steel trap and he’s a great communicator. He is the best at explaining thorny legal issues or anything complex like that.

    • #19
  20. DrewInWisconsin Member
    DrewInWisconsin
    @DrewInWisconsin

    This is a good read and offers what I think is a great perspective.

    How to Apologize for Believing Jussie Smollett

    Excerpt:

    The thing I want to tackle is the attitude that people have had in responding to this event and the question of who the “real victim” is in all this.

    The most popular idea about “real victims” seems to be this: Other victims of hate crimes will have a harder time being believed because of what Smollett has done. . . .

    But there are already direct victims of Smollett’s hoax. The victims of Smollett’s actions were the people he blamed for it. He made them out to be violent and cruel, a prejudiced group with the capacity and will for violence. He convinced celebrities and politicians to trumpet denunciations. He made the people he hates easier to hate and more worthy of hatred.

    . . .

    No other discussion can take place until we recognize that a group of people has been wronged, just as Smollett intended.

    What is most dispiriting is that no one seems to be able to bring themselves to say this. I’ve seen no one say, “It was my prejudice against Trump supporters that led me to so easily condemn them and they did not deserve that. They were accused of this wrong, but they did nothing wrong here.”

    The reason we don’t see this kind of apology is because the idea of the Trump supporter’s moral bankruptcy is the ideological foundation upon which their self-righteous castle is erected. They cannot admit their prejudice without risking the condemnation of their peers.

    That is why they retreat to lamenting how this case will affect the victims of other hate crimes. Because if they can re-direct the “real victim” status from Smollett to genuine victims, they can hold fast to the prejudice they need in order to maintain their moral clarity. “Trump supporters as a group may not have been responsible for this specific hate crime,” the moral reasoning goes, “but there are actual hate crimes for which they are responsible.”

    . . .

    The falsely accused deserve an apology, not misdirection. The victim of Smollett’s crime was not other hate crime victims, it wasn’t the people he lied to, it was exactly whom he intended to hurt with this lie: Trump supporters.

    Until we can recognize the humanity of a Trump supporter well enough to say that we were wrong, that they did not deserve to be slandered, lied about, and condemned, then we have nothing of moral value to say.

    • #20
  21. Flicker Coolidge
    Flicker
    @Flicker

    Western Chauvinist (View Comment):

    Instugator (View Comment):

    You know Trump’s America in 2019 is so bad that a gay black man has to hire fake rednecks to put a line around his neck, beat him a little, and spill some juice upon him just to call attention to all the oppression going on.

    What is wrong with you people.

    We are in a bad, bad place in our society, and it’s only peripherally about the President.

    Yes.  And I understand he had to get immigrants to do it … because that’s one of the jobs Americans just won’t do.

    • #21
  22. Instugator Thatcher
    Instugator
    @Instugator

    Flicker (View Comment):
    Yes. And I understand he had to get immigrants to do it … because that’s one of the jobs Americans just won’t do.

    I just think it a shame that so many in the Media and the Democratic Party (but I repeat myself) fell for the #NigerianRedneckScam.

    You would think that the same people who fell for the #letmeresetyourpasswordscam would know better.

     

    • #22
  23. Cato Rand Inactive
    Cato Rand
    @CatoRand

    Crains is reporting Jussie was arrested this morning.

    • #23
  24. RyanFalcone Member
    RyanFalcone
    @RyanFalcone

    One aspect being totally unreported is that after the police had gained cooperation from the Nigerians, the police immediately contacted Smollett and told him they had 2 suspects in custody and they asked him if he was certain that he wanted to press charges. He said he was. It was only after Smollett learned that his black buddies were the two in custody that he decided not to.

    Smollett is guilty of being complicit in the attempted lynching of two white men. He was OK with 2 white guys being destroyed by this hoax. 

    • #24
  25. Western Chauvinist Member
    Western Chauvinist
    @WesternChauvinist

    RyanFalcone (View Comment):

    One aspect being totally unreported is that after the police had gained cooperation from the Nigerians, the police immediately contacted Smollett and told him they had 2 suspects in custody and they asked him if he was certain that he wanted to press charges. He said he was. It was only after Smollett learned that his black buddies were the two in custody that he decided not to.

    Smollett is guilty of being complicit in the attempted lynching of two white men. He was OK with 2 white guys being destroyed by this hoax.

    There ya’ go. A real racist. 

    • #25
  26. Instugator Thatcher
    Instugator
    @Instugator

    Did you guys see the part where he paid the Nigerians with a check?

    • #26
  27. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    Instugator (View Comment):

    Did you guys see the part where he paid the Nigerians with a check?

    • #27
  28. Instugator Thatcher
    Instugator
    @Instugator

    I thought everyone knows not to allow Nigerians near your banking information. Things like your account number and bank routing number – both of which appear on your check.

    #NigerianRedneckScam

    • #28
  29. Western Chauvinist Member
    Western Chauvinist
    @WesternChauvinist

    Instugator

    Did you guys see the part where he paid the Nigerians with a check?

    —————

    Yes, but **how much** did he pay them? I hope he got his money’s worth.  LOL

    • #29
  30. Instugator Thatcher
    Instugator
    @Instugator

    Western Chauvinist (View Comment):

    InstugatorDid you guys see the part where he paid the Nigerians with a check? —————Yes, but **how much** did he pay them? I hope he got his money’s worth. LOL

    $3500. 

    Heck I spent that much on my retirement party. (2008)

    Looks like Jussie just did the same.

    • #30
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