by Phil Erwin
So. Now we know. Jussie Smollett faked his own racist-homophobic “assault.”
(Like we didn’t know it long before the jury stamped him “Guilty”!)
Now comes the stampede of “mainstream journalists” apologizing profusely for their horribly misguided, clearly mistaken take on the “event”, and proclaiming far and wide that they’ll never, ever, ever again be so horribly susceptible to …
Oh, wait. No. That’s not happening. They’re saying they were “Misled!”, they were “Lied to!”, and that “Anybody would have made the same mistake!”
Maybe not.
Maybe more discriminating, thoughtful, careful journalists would have thought this through and concluded: I shouldn’t swallow this tale of woe hook, line and stinker!
Here’s why:
1. It was Chicago. The dead of Winter. 2 am on a freezing night. And Jussie decides to walk to a Subway for a sandwich? Who would do that? (Was there even a Subway within walking distance and still open at 2am?)
2. Smollett claimed his attackers said “This is MAGA country!” Has there ever been anyone, anywhere in the country using the phrase, “This is MAGA country”? Even Trump’s rally crowds of thousands of enthusiastic MAGA supporters don’t say that. But two Black guys…’scuse me, two pale guys come up with that battle cry while trolling for victims carting rope and bleach around in the dead of a Chicago “polar vortex”?
3. Smollett said these two brutes beat him about the face and head. And doused him with bleach. Yet the hospital doc could hardly find anything to fix. Minor scratch on his cheek. Mebbe a bruise or so here and there. (Did Jussie use some serious actor’s fight-scene training to fight his Muscle-Beach attackers off? Did he have any bruising or other defensive wounds on his hands or arms? And was there even any blood at the scene to check for DNA?)
4. Reportedly, Jussie walked himself into the hospital wearing a noose. Kept it with him when the hospital released him, and later donned it again after his agent called the cops to make a hate-crime report. (He wanted the cops to see “the evidence”!) I heard that, and I’m thinking, “What… he’s wearing it like a necktie?!?” That little detail, to me, was the claxon-horn going off, braying “Hoax!” I just can’t see a Black man walking around with a noose pushed up under his collar and dangling like a decoration. Seems to me any self-respecting Black man that actually had this happen to him would immediately yank that horrid thing off and throw it as far away from himself as he could. Or else, whip his attackers with it.
The fact that Jussie didn’t do either tells you the whole story. And “story” is precisely what this actor wanted to tell you.
After all: “Story” is what actors live by.
And yet… The entire phalanx of so-called “Mainstream” Media collectively breathed sighs of sympathy for Jussie and screams of outrage at the MAGA crowd for their presumptive collaboration in such a vile, despicable act as a 2am lynching of a gay Black man!
(In a frozen, tree-deficient cityscape, mind you, with nary an audience in sight. The videos show icy streets and sidewalks, with nothing but toothpick-size tree branches anywhere. No tree from which to dangle the rope, which actually didn’t look long enough to dangle even if there had been a convenient branch. And no one but snow ghosts handy to witness the “outrage.” Jussie thought security cameras would capture the “fight.” A videographer he apparently is not.)
So… What, exactly, was the point?
It was just too obvious that this was a staged hoax. So why was the Lamestream Media so unblinkingly, unrelentingly determined to convince us that it was a real attack?
The question almost answers itself. They didn’t really care about what had actually happened. They only cared about what Jussie said happened. They cared about The Story. The “narrative.” It was a perfect opportunity to convince voters that all Donald Trump supporters were, in their blackest heart of hearts, nothing more than white-hood wearing, cross-burning, Black folks-lynching evil-doers, just trolling for another chance to be true White Supremacists!
And that is what the Lamestream Media – CNN, MSNBC, NBC, CBS, ABC – all call “news.”
That is the sort of “news” that Google and Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and all such “social media” sites consider “acceptable” for posting.
That is what the New York Times considers “All the news fit to print.”
There are two fundamental things that the nation’s citizenry needs to learn from this silly, sad escapade.
First: That most of the oldest “news” organizations no longer serve up “news.” They long ago drifted into the practice of serving up stories – things that they want you to believe are true. Regardless of how true they really are. These outfits are now agents of political propaganda. And they all work for the Democrat Party, in the sense that they work to further the ends of Democrats.
Second: That not all racist hate crimes are perpetrated by White folks. What Smollett did was to perpetrate a racist hoax on the city of Chicago, and – via the compliant, uncritical, Leftist-driven, clickbait-loving Media – on the rest of the nation as well.
Smollett’s actions were an actor’s version of yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theatre. Fox’s Dagan McDowell observed, “Jussie Smollett worked to exploit and inflame racial tensions for personal benefit… He pushed and pedaled a hoax designed to rip a country apart… He threw kerosene on an already-burning fire. So I call him a civil-unrest arsonist!” Pretty good label. In the weeks and months following Smollett’s supposed assault, civil unrest grew in Democrat-run cities across the nation, lives were lost and properties were burned, smashed, destroyed. How much of that may have been triggered or exacerbated by Smollett’s hoax is impossible to assess, but it seems pretty obvious that he does bear some blame.
But so does the Lamestream Media, who were on this story like sand flies on a beached whale. Nor were our political “elites” blameless. To the contrary, Democrat luminaries such as Sen. Cory Booker and VP Kamala Harris trumpeted the judgment that this was a “modern-day lynching,” lending credibility to what was really nothing more than a pitiful, idiotically child-like effort to garner public sympathy and support – things that celebrities crave as a form of professional currency.
In the end, nobody will gain anything from this dreadful episode. But if at least some of the citizenry who depend on the Left-championing Media begin to question the veracity and judgement of those so-called “news” outlets and start to seek their news elsewhere, perhaps they will discover just how thoroughly they’ve been deceived for… oh, say, several decades.
And maybe some of those in a recent poll who said they would never date or be friends with people of the opposite political persuasion might start to wonder if their own approach isn’t juuuusssst a little close-minded.
I’m not holding my breath.
Phil Erwin is an author, IT administrator and registered Independent living in Newbury Park. He would like to support some Democrat ideals, but he has a visceral hatred for Lies and Damn Lies (and is highly suspicious of Statistics.) That pretty much eliminates supporting most Democrats, and a bunch of Republicans to boot.
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