The Jussie Smollett case is not confusing, it’s not a mystery and it contains no lessons whatsoever about “real” hate crimes.
After Cook County, Ill., prosecutors announced Tuesday that they were dropping all 16 felony charges against the actor over having faked an assault by Trump supporters, some liberals racked their brains for a way to explain what had just happened. They landed on anything but the obvious: The prosecutor’s office is corrupt and Smollett is yet another example of fake oppression functioning as the new “privilege.”
You can’t possibly take serious any other commentary on the sick joke that just took place in Chicago.
Local police are 100 percent certain that they busted Smollett seeking attention and financial reward by hiring two men to pretend to jump him on the street in the middle of the night. Smollett had claimed that the “attack” was perpetrated by two Trump supporters, one of whom he explicitly identified as white, and he said they targeted him specifically because he’s black and gay.
The two men, Abel and Ola Osundairo, are black, they’re brothers and Smollett knew them both. One of them was his fitness coach.
Police also said that Smollett staged the event after a threatening letter that he also sent to himself in December received little attention. The whole operation, they said, was concocted for the purpose of getting a raise from the executives of “Empire,” the Fox show he stars in, plus more fame for his otherwise unremarkable singing career.
A grand jury agreed with the police, slapping Smollett with more than a dozen felony charges that could have earned him decades in prison.
In an instant, all of that went up in smoke, with the prosecutor’s office publicly stating that Smollett’s two days of volunteer service with Rev. Jesse Jackson (that paragon of virtue) and his $10,000 bond was “just” enough.
Smollett’s legal team is now effectively mocking the outcome. On NBC’s “Today,” his lawyer Tina Glandian actually suggested it’s possible that Smollett misidentified the race of one of his attackers because the guy may have been wearing “whiteface” makeup.
“Obviously, you can disguise that,” Gladian said, referring to the black-as-pavement skin tone of the Osundairo brothers. “You can put makeup on… You know, I was looking up the brothers [online] and one of the first videos that showed up, actually, was one of the brothers in white face, doing a joker monologue with white makeup on, so it’s not implausible.” For a laugh, click here to see the photo of Abel in the “white face” that Glandian was referencing.
The state’s attorney’s office is corrupted. A report in the Chicago Sun-Times two weeks ago almost predicted that Smollett’s case would end with this sort of sham.
The report said that Kim Foxx had phone conversations with one of Smollett’s relatives about the investigation into the staged attack. Thereafter, Foxx, for unknown reasons, told the relative that she intended to ask police superintendent Eddie Johnson to turn the investigation over to the FBI.
“OMG this would be a huge victory,” Smollett’s relative replied.
CNN’s Brian Stelter, who can weave an irreducibly complex web of “Trump associates” and “Russia” with his eyes closed, digested all this information only to conclude, “We may never really know what happened.”
No, we know exactly what happened. Smollett used our perverse culture of “privilege” and “victimhood” to fake a hate crime. He thought he could pull it off because he’s black and gay, and he knows that’s how you get ahead today. When he was caught, he got off, still claiming that he was victim of a violent assault, thanks to a corrupt state government prosecutor.
[Related: Rahm Emanuel: Jussie Smollett was let off because he’s an actor]
Sports and culture critic Charles Barkley said Wednesday on CBS’ “The Late Show” there’s a larger point to the Smollett tragedy. “I think that we all lose,” he said. “I think my black friends, my gay black friends, I think they lose because there’s all repercussions when you’re a minority. There’s always a double standard. You have to understand that and accept that. For every black, gay person out there, we lost.”
This is absolute nonsense. Smollett staged the attack precisely because he knew that being black and gay is a winning lottery ticket in 2019 America, if you’re willing to exploit it. That he was caught perpetuating a hoax doesn’t change that fact, as evidenced by every liberal in Hollywood and the media insisting that even if Smollett’s attack was a hoax, there are still real hate crimes just like it (and don’t forget, Trump is a racist).
Don’t fall for the misdirection. There is no confusion and there is no moral about crying wolf in the Smollett case. There is only a corrupt state attorney’s office and a culture of fake “oppression” and “privilege” that allows things like this to happen.
