On the Collapse of a National Narrative

by

To the surprise of practically no one outside the Establishment Mainstream Media and a handful of social justice race-warriors who live to perpetuate the ‘White Americans Are Teh Most Raaaaacist Evah!’ meme, the Jussie Smallett racial beat-down-and-bleach soaking has been confirmed by local law enforcement as a put-up job, arranged and paid for by the so-called victim … who, whatever his talents as an actor, has absolutely no skill for creating a convincing narrative, never mind coming up with convincing verisimilitude and corroborative detail required of a snow-job like this. That’s because he is an actor, I surmise – not a writer or a skilled political operative. Hiring a pair of body-building Nigerian brothers to do that particular deed … I guess it’s true there are jobs that ordinary Americans just won’t do.

Look, this whole thing smelled from the get-go, smelled like week-old road-kill left to percolate by the side of a highway in Texas in the high summer – which practically every conservative-leaning blog and news provider was helpfully willing to point out. Yet the Establishment Mainstream Media fell on it with cries of happy joy, demonstrating once again – as if there were any need for it – that they are either as gullible a set of loons who ever responded to an email from a total stranger asking them to help transfer money out of an African bank, or political operatives in the pay of a power inimical to our republic and our way of life. In either case – they are in a position which nature and good fortune has not equipped them to fulfill with any grace, let alone a shred of professional competence.

This came on the heels of a long, long, long list of sex or race-hate hoaxes which either proved to be deliberately instigated by the so-called victim, fanned by activists for their own ends at worst, or at best, a random snowflake triggered by an equally random occurrence like a pair of shoelaces accidently dropped on the ground, or a banana peel left in a tree. At this point I would guess that it’s too damn much to ask of the easily-triggered Establishment Mainstream Media that they at least try to be skeptical about this kind of cr*p, since it has happened so often, and at least as recently as a fortnight ago, with the Covington Catholic Cerfuffle.

Frankly, I’m annoyed at the tendency of the racial social justice warriors to declare that some horrific offense has been levied against them, whenever they declare that some conversation has to be had, awareness to be raised, or that some publicity has to be required, like Oprah with her haverings about an encounter in a Swiss boutique about not being shown an uber-expensive handbag by the saleslady, or some actor deciding to pull a kamikaze operation in order to keep his job in a TV series that practically no one given to wearing a MAGA hat on the coldest day of the year at two in the morning had ever watched.

There has to be a penalty attached to announcing and perpetuating a hoax of his kind. A penalty very public, as public as the initial accusation – because with all the fake racial-hate crimes being publicized by the Establishment Mainstream Media, and later walked back – who on earth is going to believe the next for-real no-sh*t victim of a hate crime?

Discuss as you will. Suggestions welcome. Just a blog, and we’re still free citizens in a republic, and free to make fun of stupid racial-social-justice warriors.

47 thoughts on “On the Collapse of a National Narrative”

  1. How is Trump so lucky in his enemies?
    This story has one unbelievable element after another: the weather, the time, the location, the lack of video tape or other witnesses, the noose, the intact sandwich, the delayed report…. If Smollett was a target of opportunity, how would the attackers have known he was gay?

    from the Althouse blog:
    stevew said…
    ” If Jussie Smollett was just going to lie and make up the attack, why did he have to stage anything? Was he trying to get the staged attack on camera somehow, and failed quite spectacularly? Was he attempting to establish some foundation of truth on which to build his lie? I don’t believe him, but I can’t figure out why he would leave his apartment at, what was it, 2am – he didn’t need to do that to make up the attack.”

    Off topic, but can someone explain the bleach, does it have any significance, or was it just on hand?

  2. “How is Trump so lucky in his enemies?”

    Obama’s election tempted them to believe that total victory was very near. Obam’s rhetoric and policies emboldened them to take off their masks, and the mainstream news media’s black propaganda on behalf of Obama led them to think they could do or say anything with impunity.
    Did you see the photo of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff, wearing a t-shirt bearing the photo of a Nazi collaborator who joined the SS?

  3. I am surprised. I was positive this was a drug/sex meetup gone wrong. A staged attack for some as of yet unknown reason is WAAAAY stupider than I would have thought possible.
    The problem isn’t this idiot, the problem is the media. That’s a difficult problem to know how to solve…

  5. I thought someone at sometime suggested that he was being written out of the series; I would think he most certainly will be now but such victimhood might have given him/his manager leverage. What has drawn these hoaxers out (going way way back) is the power that comes when they can leverage the media, the administrators, whatever. He seems to be doubling down.

  6. pst314:
    Did you see the photo of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff, wearing a t-shirt bearing the photo of a Nazi collaborator who joined the SS?

    No. I would appreciate a link. Though the chief of staff could claim it was photo-shopped. I am reminded of the photo of Obama staffers fondling the “breasts” of a Hillary cardboard cut-out.

    While there should be a penalty for such hoaxes, as far as I can tell there have been no penalties to date.Some jail time for that actor, even if only 30 days, would be a start.

    I am very much in favor of negative consequences against the bigwigs that jump on the hoax-wagons. I would like Nancy Pelosi to be questioned every day for a month about her initially calling this a hate crime. She needs to be publicly humiliated for this – repeatedly.

  7. Are we in danger here of giving credence to the evil games of the Far Leftists, and letting them set the terms of the debate?

    A beats up B — that is a crime. Does it matter if A did it because she wanted to rob somebody, or because she was drunk out of her gourd, or because she is simply a nasty piece of work, or because she hated people with B’s lack of melanin or inability to speak Spanish? Whatever her reason (or lack of reason), B got beaten up and A committed a plain & simple crime.

    The whole concept of “hate crimes” is just stupid. If someone does something wrong, that is a crime — and it really does not matter why she did it.

    The dangerous concept of “hate crime” is a typical Far Left camel’s nose under the tent. Leave that cancer to spread, and before long it will be used to make things which are not criminal into crimes. “Hate crimes” will lead to “Thought Crimes”, and eventually to Stalin’s – Mao’s – Pol Pot’s killing fields. End the concept of “hate crimes” now!

  9. I can’t see a Chicago jury convicting him, so probably no civil penalty. We can only hope, realistically, for a financial loss.
    Ya gotta wonder, what would he have done, if innocent suspects came on the radar just by happenstance. He seems too squirrely to stand up and clear them, but even if he did, that wouldn’t stop the mob.

    I would like to commend the CPD Investigative Division for coming through on what seemed like a daunting task, at least initially. OTOH, I suppose they knew more than they ever let on.

  10. I am very much in favor of negative consequences against the bigwigs that jump on the hoax-wagons. I would like Nancy Pelosi to be questioned every day for a month about her initially calling this a hate crime. She needs to be publicly humiliated for this – repeatedly.

    Agreed but it will never happen as long as big media companies are centrally involved in encouraging and promoting these hoaxes.

  11. Meanwhile, outside Chicago on Friday there was a genuine hate crime perpetrated by an evil lunatic motivated, I can only conclude, by the worst hate possible. With all the ridiculous restrictions on law abiding citizens obstructing them from purchasing guns, this crazy idiot somehow slipped through the cracks even though he had a rap sheet longer than a Russian novel. Gosh, I wonder how he got a pass while the rest of us have to jump through hoops?

  13. While there should be a penalty for such hoaxes, as far as I can tell there have been no penalties to date.Some jail time for that actor, even if only 30 days, would be a start.

    Chicago, as some of you know, is in the midst of an election for Mayor and a leading candidate, Preckwinkle is anti-police and another angry black woman.

    she emerged as the council’s prominent defender of affordable housing. Among other issues, she is known for championing the controversial sweetened beverage tax, sponsorship of living wage ordinances, concerns about the costs and benefits of the city’s Olympic bid, and her strong stance against police brutality and excessive force.

    All reliably leftist positions but the CPD has to be worried about her hostility to the police.

    I would like to commend the CPD Investigative Division for coming through on what seemed like a daunting task, at least initially. OTOH, I suppose they knew more than they ever let on.

    Hear, hear bout they had to be walking on eggs,.

  14. ” If someone does something wrong, that is a crime — and it really does not matter why she did it.”

    It almost always matters why the alleged perpetrator of a crime did it. Except for relatively rare strict liability crimes, every crime involves a “mens rea” element. I am not a big fan of hate crime legislation, but an argument against it will have to be more subtle than that. The question of intent, the degree of the crime—these things take us into the realm of “why she did it.”

  15. I’m sure the CPD knew from the beginning it was a hoax, but they were ordered by the top brass to proceed as if it were real and not a third rate plot reject from a Law & Order: SVU episode. As of Thursday police superintendent Eddie Johnson, always behind the curve, was still calling Smollett a victim.

  16. CapitalistRoader “I see a whole lot of hating going on here…”

    Please cite specific examples of deplorable hate that you find here.

  17. Did you see the photo of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff, wearing a t-shirt bearing the photo of a Nazi collaborator who joined the SS?

    I hadn’t ever heard of Subhas Chandra Bose nor the Indian National Army. So there was a guerrilla insurgency in India that was launched out of Japanese occupied Burma? This throws a wrench in the the whole Churchill-Bengal Famine-war crimes fad that has gripped the hipster Left lately.

  18. “Hate Crime” IS “Thought Crime.” By definition.

    The person is punished not for their action, but what is alleged they thought about the action.

    ” Bearing False Witness”.

    It can destroy utterly a completely innocent person, and it should have consequences equivalent. Time and time again we see innocents put through hell, bankrupted, reputations destroyed, prison sentences handed down, and the accusers and their enablers get nothing more than a slap.
    In effect, we are subsidizing it as a course of low risk, high gain action.

  19. I laughed at this fake noose the first time I read the story and was actually quite surprised how many folks lapped it up. It is a testament to how many people either 1) live in some sort of non-real world cocoon or 2) just don’t care about the facts and want to push the narrative.

    By the way, Exasperated, I have been wondering about the bleach myself. Household bleach freezes at 18 degrees F and it was considerably colder that night in Chicago (those are some tough Nigerians!). In numerous blogs it has been mentioned (although it should go without saying) that literally nobody, not even criminals, ventures outside in a polar vortex unless they really, really have to.

    I have been enjoying watching Smollett and his attorneys double, triple and quadruple down on the thing. Like any play, all will be revealed in the end. Hoping I get a good criminal complaint to read out of this, if nothing else.

  20. “Bearing False Witness It can destroy utterly a completely innocent person, and it should have consequences equivalent.”

    As far as my limited understanding goes, traditional ancient Jewish law prescribed as punishment whatever would have been suffered by the person who was falsely testified against.

  21. Anyone who believed that there were two white Trump supporters who a) knew who Jesse Smollett was and b) were waiting around outside in 10 deg. weather (plus wind chill) at midnight to dump bleach on him and throw a rope around his neck was rather credulous.

  22. “Bearing False Witness”….reminds me again of a remark by the Russian attack pilot Anna Egorova.

    After her brother was sent away as an Enemy of the People, she remembered her mother’s prayers….”kneeling before the icons, as she firstly listed all our names, the names of her children, begging God for health and wisdom for us, and then at the end of each prayer repeating: ‘God save them from slander!’ Back then in my childhood, I didn’t understand that word, but now it was exposed before me in all its terrible nakedness”

  25. Stuff like this, too, is just a “local news story”:
    https://nypost.com/2019/02/05/alleged-ms-13-member-charged-with-murder-in-subway-shooting/

    Illegal immigration is actually very, very unpopular among the portion of the Democrat base that’s not wealthy white liberals. That’s why they have to shriek so loudly about how RAAAAAAAACISS the GOP is, to try to keep their voters who recoil in horror from their policies from thinking they have the option to vote for the other side…

  26. I suppose that to me the most infuriating aspect of this all is the violation of the Commandment – thou shall not bear false witness. Because at the bottom of it all – a fake accusation of a hate crime is bearing false witness. Against an amorphous group, not merely an individual. Jussie chose to bear false witness against a whole lot of people, and the Mainstream Establishment Media enthusiastically aided and abetted that action – and that is what angers me the most about all this, and the long, long, long list of other fake hate crimes. To service your own grudges, ambitions, or causes – they lie, deliberately.

  27. “The person is punished not for their action, but what is alleged they thought about the action.”

    A guy sits on the edge of a roof. He reaches for something heavy and drops it over the edge hitting and killing someone. What happened was either an accident, or manslaughter, or second degree murder, or first degree murder—depending on what the guy was thinking. Do you have a problem with that?

  28. There has to be a penalty attached to announcing and perpetuating a hoax of his kind. A penalty very public, as public as the initial accusation

    Accusers, politicians,and press who advertised, promoted, discussed, mentioned said hoax: stripped of citizenship, all property seized, and expulsion from these United States. “Extremism in the defense of Liberty is no vice.”

  29. White Americans Are Teh Most Raaaaacist Evah!

    For the good of America, for the good of everyone, all POC should abandon their property, renounce their citizenship, and immediately flee to the non-racist, non-sexist, non-homophobic homeland of their choice. (I recommend Canada.) All POC immigrantion should be banned for at least until 2276, by which White Americans might be able to become the people all Leftists wish they were.

  31. Has anyone else heard that the CPD found a magazine? I heard this and jumped to the conclusion that it was the one from which letters had been clipped, or why bring it up? If so, it would be damning, but I haven’t heard it mentioned again.

  34. The magazine may be fatal to his attempt to avoid blame for the hoax. Last I heard, his lawyers were telling the CPD that he would not meet with them. If they have the magazine that provided the letters in the first hoax letter, he is toast. The guy obviously never read Sherlock Holmes.

  35. When I was younger, I had tickets to the Chicago Symphony. At some point, the Chicago Symphony started playing symphony written along the lines of dissonance; it sounded like a couple of kids banging on their mother posts and pans in the kitchen. In any event, I asked a young lady to attend the symphony with me. Now, at that time, they played a traditional symphony after the break and the modern symphony (kids banging on pots and pans) before the break. During the break, they young lady asked me what I thought of the modern symphony (kids banging on the pots and pans). I told her I thought it complete crap, it sounded like kids banging on their mother’s pots and pans. She began to berate me for being a philistine (she wasn’t wrong about everything). At which point, a man seated behind us interjected that he was a music professor at Northwestern and agreed with me.

    Think of modern art. Earlier generations produced great art. Modern generations have produced little to nothing of any real worth but we want to think that we have and so we try to convince ourselves that crap is great music. Earlier generations produce Martin Luther King, Jr., who fought real battles. We have Juicy or I am Sparkle Farts, who demand that their childish antics be treated as though they stormed the beaches of Normandy. There really are women of accomplishment such as Jeane Kirkpatrick and then there are women who rode their husbands coattails, such as Hillary or kamala. It really is quite pathetic. In order to think themselves as courageous and accomplished as earlier generations, we elevate childish nonsense to greatness. We do not values excellence and can’t distinguish garbage from excellence.

    Funniest movie line ever, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0970416/characters/nm0000092. ; Kluatuu (Day the earth stood still) is gonna wipe us out for being human, lacking the will to change, until he hears Bach, most Lutheran composer evaaar.

  36. “The person is punished not for their action, but what is alleged they thought about the action.”

    “A guy sits on the edge of a roof. He reaches for something heavy and drops it over the edge hitting and killing someone. What happened was either an accident, or manslaughter, or second degree murder, or first degree murder—depending on what the guy was thinking. Do you have a problem with that?”

    Yes. The second statement presumes that the question is about whether injury was intended or accidental. We have settled that.
    The question I am talking about is who got hurt, and the varying punishment meted out based on the “class” of the victim, along with the instant perversion of intent, where every injury or perceived injury or fabricated injury to some classes is a hate crime, regardless of evidence. And blatantly obvious “hate crimes” committed by members of those same classes against less favored classes, is ignored.

    1-The concrete block struck and killed an old white guy. The assailant received a 1 year sentence for accidentally killing someone.
    2-The block landed on a gay black guy. Instantly the man on the roof was portrayed as a homophobic racist and was convicted and sentenced to 60 years.

    Was the white guy any less dead?
    Was the black guys life more valuable?

    Laws that separate out varying classes of people for different rewards and punishments for the same actions are wrong.
    (Ironically, in the one case I can think of where enhanced penalties based on class would be appropriate, they are instead reduced. That would be in the case of public officials committing crimes, where by doing so they not only commit the crime in question, but betray the public trust as well.)

  37. Smollett threat letter called “enormous mistake”; Purported attack location identified; Federal charges “certain”

    In a conversation on Feb. 8th, before police met with brothers Ola and Abel Osundairo, a leading source within the Smollett attack investigation called the hate crime a “false flag” and said “There is a direct line between (the letter) and (the purported attack).” In the same conversation, the source hinted at what was to come: “This is not a whodunit. It’s a how-many-people-dunit.”

    https://www.cwbchicago.com/2019/02/smollett-threat-letter-called-enormous.html

  39. Thanks, Craig. Smollett is in big trouble that I doubt the political left can divert.

    There was an Alan Ladd movie years ago about postal inspectors. Bad Ass,

  40. I’ve been reminiscing about 1968 and, not to be overly dramatic, I shudder at how reckless Smollett was. I would imagine that if this claim was ginned up enough someone would have been hurt, especially CPD personnel.
    Anyone remember much about the Westside riots on Madison St in 1968. I can’t remember where the shopping district on Madison St was. Wasn’t there a Carsons? We had family in Garfield Park and my only memory is of one of the neighbors marching from the 4200 block of Washington Blvd to Madison St, to get her teenage daughter who worked retail. She carried a flag pole for defense.

  42. As time goes on, I find just a little sympathy for Smollett. Not enough to save him if I was on his jury. I looked him up in IMDB:

    https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0810620/?ref_=fn_al_nm_2

    His first part was when he was about 10, in the 28 years since, he’s accumulated 21 altogether. I counted all of the individual episodes at 132. Allowing a generous week per each, that says that he was employed as an actor about 1 week in 11 (9%). Of course, 75 of those episodes were on Empire in the last 3 years, 17 were for a voice part in a forgotten animated series when he was about 15 and 20 were the year after for a one and done live series. I’ll bet the fees were much more impressive per hour than per year.

    I think he was desperate. Empire is probably near its end. He wanted to stand out from the crowd at every casting call. He’s probably developed habits like eating regularly along with more expensive ones. It must have seemed like a good idea at the time.

    My unalloyed contempt is reserved for all the media and celebrities that jumped on, not just showing infantile levels of credulity, but, the very same bigotry they are so quick to see in others.

    Before the Chicago Police Department suffers any more dislocated shoulders from patting themselves on the back, someone should ask how many of last year’s murders are still unsolved and how many of the files would show even 1% of the effort expended in uncovering this travesty.

    Considering “Me Too”, etc. the question must be asked: Is there something about the TV and movie business that produces sociopaths and predators or are they just attracted, and for some reason, tolerated?

  43. Yes, this was likely a desperate career move – and I, as a reluctant Trump voter (well, I voted for him because the only other alternative was the Dowager Empress of Chappaqua, and I’d be dipped in s**t before I’d vote for HER) resent the h*ll about being slandered as a raaaaacist, just because I am (a) a conservative/libertarian, and (b) live in a red state, and (c) in a racially/politically community which still manages to get on pretty well. Jussie violated a prime commandment — thou shalt not bring false witness against a neighbor — just to save his sorry-ass acting career.
    Hope he has saved his earnings over the last couple of decades. Otherwise, he might be living in a cardboard carton under the interstate, or at least, in some kind of sheltered home for the demented thespian profession.

  44. I have read that Smollet’s income last year was $1.8 million.

    My sympathy apparatus is not in service right now.

    I’m having trouble remembering the last hate crime that was NOT a hoax.

    The CPD is under enormous pressure with the election next Tuesday and the leading candidate, Preckwinkle, an angry black woman who hates cops.

    I thought Johnson did a good job,

    The crime statistics are largely created by the black underclass that will NOT inform.

  45. A little sympathy. Panic is very human, this sort of premeditation is outside my experience and deserves to be discouraged strongly. Notice that as dumb as Smollett’s story was, he was smart enough to know that it go over big with those that were even dumber.

    Sympathy is easier since I wasn’t out on those streets in a red hat and that it ended with a thud instead of a riot.

    As far as his career; he would have better committed murder. He could have depended on warm welcome back to society and a lot of buzz, what with authentic gangster cred. If he has any money left and invests in a good PR firm, He will be a “victim” again by Labor Day.

    CPD may be beyond saving. Giuliani saved New York from becoming Chicago, for a while.

  46. If he had just declined to file a police report, he’d be in the clear. He could have said “Why should I trust the racist cops to solve this horrible attack?” and he’d be an even bigger hero to wide swaths of society.

  47. While, I can see that career leverage may have been a motivator, it’s not unreasonable to speculate that he could have used the video to launch himself to a position of prominence in one of the presidential campaigns against Trump. Imagine video of the attack on continuous loop until 2020. It is only thanks to his stupidity and incompetence that we, Chicago, and perhaps some innocent bystander, have been spared serious consequences. What a reckless POS.

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