The drama queen’s house of cards has collapsed. According to police, Cook County Prosecutors, and the most credible information made public to date, the black, gay actor known as Jussie Smollett falsely reported the alleged racist, homophobic attack upon his person in late January of this year. Experience has taught me to be skeptical, if not cynical, when I hear or read of such incidents. There were some red flags around Jussie’s complaint. One was that Jussie was (in fact) on the telephone with his manager around 2:00 a.m. as he was walking home from a sandwich shop. It strikes me that 2:00 a.m. is a peculiar hour for an actor to call his manager, as though Jussie wanted an audio witness to the visually unwitnessed incident. The next red flag was the curious absence of corroborating surveillance images in an area well-populated with public and private surveillance cameras. The next red flag was the apparent superficiality of the marks on Jussie’s face as appearing in published photos. White racist thugs would, I think, have been more thorough. The next red flag was the fact that Jussie continued to wear the rope noose around his neck as he entered his apartment building and (by one report) when police arrived to his apartment. The next red flag was Jussie’s refusal to turn over his cell phone to police for even a few hours for them to confirm the telephone call. A forensic search of Jussie’s phone would doubtlessly have shown contact with the Nigerian Osundairo brothers preceding the staged attack and would have led to police contact with them.¹ The next red flag waved when both Jussie and his manager eventually turned over “heavily redacted” phone records. The next and final red flag was that Jussie seemed to be playing not only the “race card” but the entire victim/race/homophobia deck plus an anti-Trump Joker. Yes, I was skeptical. You should have been, too.
I viewed Jussie’s report as reminiscent of the Tawana Brawley/(Rev.) Al Sharpton rape fabrication. Tawana was a New York teen who falsely accused four white men (including police officers and a prosecuting attorney) of raping her in 1987. The activist Al Sharpton butted in and exploited the allegations into a cause celeb that garnered national attention. I have never heard or read of any apology from Mr. Sharpton. He no longer identifies himself routinely as a reverend.
As of this writing Jussie Smollett has been charged with one felony count in Cook County, Illinois. He was right to claim a “hate crime” but wrong to blame it on violent white bigotry. The hate crime was committed by Jussie in damaging the fragile fabric of race relations on a national scale. Jussie should serve time for his offense, even if he eventually admits his guilt with a dramatic, tearful apology.
Jussie’s real sentence will be imposed by us. In return for his pathetic and selfish quest for publicity and relevance Jussie stirred the fires of interracial fear and suspicion. We, as enablers of celebrity, should sentence Jussie Smollett to a life of obscurity garnished with nothing but scorn.
The CLB predicts that the “death threat” letter mailed to Jussie prior to the staged attack will also be linked to Jussie, opening the way for a federal prosecution.
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¹ The view from here is that the (exceptionally fit) Osundairo brothers are technically accomplices of Jussie Smollett but that their level of culpability is low and their value as cooperative witnesses is high. I wish them well.
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