Jusssssie SmmmmollettttttFollow

He was attacked, but not by two white guys wearing maga hats as he claimed. And there's serious question as to the seriousness of the "attack", given he suffered no injuries and seemed to be hamming up the whole "OMG! They put a noose on my neck, cause they were like lynching me or something". A noose he wore around his neck while going to, not the police initially, but to his work. Um.. I don't know about you, but if I was black and attacked by two white racists, who put a noose around my neck and roughed me up, I'm pretty sure the absolute first thing I'd do it Take the freaking noose off.

The whole thing smelled of false victim claiming from the get go.



Sure. Not 100% settled. But it's a pretty good bet that when you lie about the nature of an attack, claiming it was two people of X description, when the actual attack was by two people of Y description (and for whom the racial narrative doesn't work), and then it's discovered you paid the two attackers? I mean, I suppose he could have paid them for something else, but then why the faked attack?

I guess we could theorize that he was involved in some other nefarious business with these guys. Drugs, whatever. And then things went south and they roughed him up or something. But at the end of the day, he's being accused of lying to police. He lied to the police about the attack. Whether the attack itself was entirely faked, or was done for a different reason and by different people than he described, he still lied to police.



Sure. Again, it could theoretically have been an actual attack by them, presumably for reason other than they were maga wearing Trump supporters who just hate black gay men. Or the whole thing could have been a faked attack just to gain sympathy from the public and push the blame on the oft repeated but equally often faked "angry white male maga hat wearing violence" angle.

Again though, either way, he still lied to police, and falsified sworn statements he made. As a result, he caused a massive public outrage, which in turn put pressure on the police and the mayor to "Do something about this horrible racial hatred!", which in turn resulted in a huge waste of police resources being used. Police resources that are already stretched to the breaking point in that city.

We can't know how many victims didn't get justice for actual crimes committed against them because the detectives who might otherwise have been working their cases were pulled off to handle this one high profile one. Those are the victims of Smollett's selfishness.



Either way, he lied.



I get a kick out of people who claim to be enlightened on the issue of race and identity continually judging things based on people's race and identity. It's not about his skin color to those calling for him to be charged, and outraged that the DA just dropped the charges in such an odd manner. It's 100% about those things for those defending him right now. If he was white celebrity who had falsely claimed that two black men wearing Obama hats had attacked him, and it turned out that wasn't true, I would be just as insistent that the book be thrown at him, and just as outraged at the dropping of the charges in this manner. And I'm assuming all the folks currently defending him and the actions of the DA would have been as well.

So why is it different if he's black? Well, for them anyway. But not for me. One "side" is judging based on skin color. One is not. And it's not oriented the way the standard narrative keeps claiming.

Who's "we"?

I find it really strange that people care about celebrity news so much. I don't care about Brad Pitt's latest baby or Angelina Jolie's latest drug addiction. I now know Smollet is a (former?) Empire actor who faked some sort of crime to prop up his failing career and that's far more than I wanted to know.

**** celebrity gossip.

That's the kind of talk that leads to people faking hate crimes.

can I pretend you are calling gbaji a tool?

It's relevant in that his celebrity was one of the things that brought the story national attention. It's a good bet that if he'd not been a celebrity, there would not have been the national attention, and would not have been the enormous pressure placed on the Chicago police to basically drop other cases to investigate his. So definitely relevant in terms of impact on police. But not so in terms of the general issue of hate crimes and hate crime hoaxes.



I'm not sure why you think that's strange. Since Trump was elected, the trope of "white maga hat wearing person assaulted me for being <gay/female/black/hispanic/whatever> has risen significantly, and it's pretty shocking how consistently these stories, especially the most shocking or brazen, turn out to be hoaxes. This article does a decent job examining the issue (briefly, but it at least looks at it). It's not like USA Today is a bastion of conservative thought, so take what you will from it.

The point is that this becomes a sort of feed back effect. So many people make these false claims, and we see them in the news all the time, that despite so many of them turning out to be false (I can't actually think of one that received national media attention that *wasn't* false), it still forms an opinion in people's minds that this sort of thing must be happening. And even if this specific one was a hoax, there must be others, so it's ok. We're just "raising awareness" of the issue. Except that the trope itself leads to people assuming it must be happening. Which in turn leads to people thinking "I know! I'll do some violent or damaging thing and blame it on bigoted Trump supporters. Cause everyone will believe that!". Except that, while the media and public might, the police do get that so many of these are over the top and almost certainly hoaxes. As the article points out, how many bigoted Trump supporters just happen to be roaming around the Chicago streets, carrying a bottle of bleach and a rope, and who would recognize a cast member from Empire?

In hindsight, it looks pretty ridiculous right off the bat. But so many people bought it precisely because of the false narrative. It's the same reason people bought the whole Covington school kinds thing. Well, that kids wearing a MAGA hat, and the narrator of the new story is telling me that he was the one instigating some kind of violence or hate, so despite the fact that the video didn't show him doing anything at all, or saying anything hateful, and in fact showed another man getting right in his face and banging a drum, I'll believe the narrative, because we all know that MAGA hat wearing people are hateful people, so even though I don't actually see any act of hate going on, I'll accept that it did. Maybe it was off camera or something. Maybe.

Here's another article with a list (not complete by any means) of such fake hate crime hoaxes. Want to know what stands out:





















(this one at least the victim didn't falsely make the claim, various civil rights folks did. Loudly.

But it was an African-American, David Smith III, who had thrown bricks through the doors.


Surely, you can see the pattern here. I hope. That's a whole lot of people who fall into one of the standard liberal identity groups that the Left claims to help and insists are harmed by conservative ideals (and especially by Trump).

What's amazing about this is that there is no hesitancy when someone on the right says something that might even remotely be judged to be some sort of dog whistle, on the grounds that it might encourage someone to do something violent or illegal in response. Yet this same sort of dog whistle goes on all the time on the Left. They outright claim that folks wearing maga hats are haters. And then they stand by and pretend not to be at fault when folks wearing maga hats are assaulted or falsely accused of crimes.

How much evidence do you need of this? The hate is not going from right to left, it's going from left to right. It is conservatives who are attacked on the streets, and on school campuses, and sometimes just walking down the street, for the supposed "hate crime" of wearing a hat and expressing their first amendment rights. But when you have folks like Alysa Milano declaring the maga hat to be equivalent to a klan hood, what do you expect? Why are we surprised that assaults on conservative have increased, while false claims of attacks *by* conservatives has done the same. And all the while, the media does everything it can to stoke that false narrative.

But, minor crime - evidence mostly based on hearsay, pain in the *** to prosecute and litigate and easier to make a deal - so one was made. The kind of thing that goes on all the time with middle-class privilege in this country.

Again though, for many of us, it's not that Smollet didn't get jail time, or whatever. It's not that he got a deferment or "alternative prosecution" or whatever the DA is claiming. It's not uncommon for first time offenders to get a warning and a fine but to not have an actual charge on their record. And it doesn't just happen for folks with privilege. It happens all the time. No. The real problem here is how she did it. Normally, in order to get that kind of "first time offense drop", you have to go into court, admit what you did, publicly state that it was wrong and you understand that, and you promise not to do something like this again. Then the court drops the charges. But Smollet was not required to do this. And you've got to wonder why. It's almost like the primary objective of the (very politically connected) DA was to protect the false "maga hat wearers are violent haters" narrative. By doing what she did she allowed Smollet to go running to the media and proclaim that he did nothing wrong, he didn't lie, and everything was the truth. And we have nothing but a sealed and erased set of legal documents to say otherwise.

That's the ugliest part of this. That wasn't done to protect Smollet, or expedite anything. It was done for pure political purposes. It was done by someone who very well understands the political value of the narrative, and doesn't want it to be publicly eroded by such a high profile hoax in the lead up to the next election. She understands that the best chance the Democrats have of winning the White House is not by their own agenda or political positions, but by demonizing Trump and anyone who supports him. They want people to be afraid to be associated with Trump. They want anyone who might consider voting for Trump to worry that they might be lumped in with "those people" (basket of deplorables anyone?. That's what this is about. If you can't win on ideas and policies, win by making people fear and hate the other side.

But then Mayor Rahm screams out his elitism by publicly claiming it was a whitewash of justice - this is the click bait that got me.

When Rahm Emmanuel and folks on the Right are in agreement on something, maybe you ought to take notice. Just a thought.

Edited, Apr 1st 2019 5:34pm by gbaji

Which is precisely why the DA did what she did. To give the media an excuse to just forget about it. A long drawn out court battle would have kept it in the public's mind. Again, it was not about Smollet, but about protecting the false narrative.

We'll see what happens with the whole $130k lawsuit against Smollet, and the potential investigation into Foxx's actions (she apparently claimed she recused herself, but didn't actually legally do so). But yeah, I'm sure every effort will be made to sweep this under the rug.



For various definitions of "real news" of course.