Jussie Smollett: prosecutors drop charges against actor accused of fabricating

[Razgovory]

Smollett was briefly given hero status by several SJWs on the left.  I wouldn't extrapolate that to the left at large, but if the "attack" had actually occurred it would have given teh left a cudgel to beat Trump supporters with.

Why would you care?

About what?

About Trump supporters.  Why would you care about Trump supporters?[/size]

[Eddie Teach]

Smollett was briefly given hero status by several SJWs on the left.  I wouldn't extrapolate that to the left at large, but if the "attack" had actually occurred it would have given teh left a cudgel to beat Trump supporters with.

About Trump supporters.  Why would you care about Trump supporters? proper quotes?


Why would you care?

About what?

[derspiess]

Smollett was briefly given hero status by several SJWs on the left.  I wouldn't extrapolate that to the left at large, but if the "attack" had actually occurred it would have given teh left a cudgel to beat Trump supporters with.

Why would you care?

About what?

About Trump supporters.  Why would you care about Trump supporters?[/size]

How does that relate to my post? I was trying to answer the question on how the Smollett fake noose turned out to be a loss for the left.

[Zoupa]

"The left" has nothing to gain or lose from charges being dropped. I don't get your point.

Charges being dropped does not make it a bad week for "the left".

[Eddie Teach]

It's an insignificant case, but it's disingenuous to claim no political component. The left gets mileage from right-wing terror attacks and hate crimes, much like the right benefits from Muslim terror attacks.

[Admiral Yi]

But the relevant question is how much mileage the left would get out of a faked left wing terror/hate/whatever. 

[Razgovory]

Smollett was briefly given hero status by several SJWs on the left.  I wouldn't extrapolate that to the left at large, but if the "attack" had actually occurred it would have given teh left a cudgel to beat Trump supporters with.

Why would you care?

About what?

About Trump supporters.  Why would you care about Trump supporters?

How does that relate to my post? I was trying to answer the question on how the Smollett fake noose turned out to be a loss for the left.

Ugh, I'm really screwing up posts here.  I'm asking why you would give a shit about a cudgel to beat Trump supporters.  You aren't a Trump supporter, you have no dog in this fight.  If someone staged something to be a cudgel to beat Scientologists, or Al Sharpton supporters I wouldn't care one way or another.

[Camerus]

I agree that the underlying crime was victimless and all, but I would have liked to have seen a lying to police charge stick.

I disagree that it was victimless. It was a false accusation that was deleterious to the social fabric of the nation.  Not to mention a waste of police resources.

This has not been a great week for the left.

What does "the left" have to do with this development exactly 

I submit it's something of a minor taint (sorry Tim) to the progressive brand. Here's why.

Jussie Smollett faked a hate crime allegedly perpetrated by cartoonish right-wing thugs. The hoax was staged to riff off of existing political polarization and fears. People understandably condemned the attack at first, but he continued to get signifcant amounts of sympathy from some prominent lefties in the initial days even as certain details came out that made his version of events sound like BS.

Eventually the sheer avalanche of BS convinced almost everyone he was a faker, but he never stopped spewing SJW rhetoric - e.g. he, this immensely privileged and self-serving figure,  will continue to fight for "marginalized people" with whom he appears to be identifying, in spite of his manifest privilege- including the power to get away with crimes scott free! Indeed, in spite of his obvious guilt, the case against him was dropped under mysterious circumstances, possibly due to his lefty connections, including to a former Obama staffer.

Not only does it make claims of MAGA racist attacks less believable in the future, it also makes progressive rhetoric seem slightly more hollow. Lastly it suggests there's a different standard of justice for wealthy famous folks with lefty political connections - a particular problem given the ostensible point of progressivism in the first place.

The net result is, as I said, a minor taint for the left in our current moment.

[garbon]

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/03/27/opinions/jussie-smollett-charges-we-are-the-problem-bailey/index.html

Jussie Smollett isn't the problem. We are

I have a confession. I never much cared about the Jussie Smollett case, even before it became the most confounding story of the year, even if what he initially claimed had been proven true.

That he faced several felony counts before escaping any real legal accountability for possibly faking a hate crime moves me even less. Am I really supposed to be shocked that a celebrity avoided jail time in an American criminal justice system that attorney and civil rights activist Bryan Stevenson rightly says treats you better if you are rich and guilty than poor and innocent?

The real story is less what this bizarre series of confounding events says about Smollett and more about what it says about us.

I hate hate crimes as much as any other thinking person. But hate crimes and the like that involve celebrities who ultimately go unharmed -- the n-word spray-painted on a gate at one of LeBron James' homes, Oprah Winfrey being racially profiled in a chic boutique -- and receive instant support from millions of people have never felt compelling to me. (Smollett, by his own telling, still had the wherewithal to take his recently purchased Subway sandwich home after the alleged attack.)

They don't need our help, but we feel compelled to give it anyway, even as the least powerful among us who face worse indignities daily are left to fend for themselves.

When a black waiter in a Myrtle Beach Southern buffet restaurant came up to me distraught during lunch one day a couple of years ago because a white man a couple of booths over had called him "boy," that stopped me in my tracks. Because he had no recourse. He needed the job and couldn't afford to make a stink. His white colleagues told him to just ignore it, so he just swallowed hard and got back to work. Waitresses all across the country face the same dilemma from men who touch and speak to them in demeaning ways.

I'm more concerned with the disturbing rate of harm that is too frequently visited upon trans women, particularly trans women of color, and the rise of white supremacist acts that led to the slaughter of Jewish and black people during worship and Bible study.

I started caring about the Smollett story because of the reaction to the story, because we've come to view the justice system as just another tool to push political agendas instead of the best way to determine truth and ensure justice. George Zimmerman became a hero among some conservatives when he was found not guilty of the murder of Trayvon Martin -- even though we know Zimmerman began that chain of events that resulted in Martin's death.

Many liberals howled when Paul Manafort was given "only" four years in prison -- even though liberals have been fighting against mass incarceration and unduly long and harsh prison sentences. This past weekend, some conservatives cheered when Attorney General William Barr said the Mueller report showed insufficient evidence that the Donald Trump campaign had conspired with Russia -- even though they had spent several months calling the investigation a witch hunt and hoax and arguing that Robert Mueller and the other investigators couldn't be trusted.

It should not pass notice that many of those declaring President Trump innocent of any wrongdoing because he faces no charges and because of a summary of a report none of them has read aren't willing to do the same for Smollett.

But maybe the least credible actors in this saga are the Chicago police and Mayor Rahm Emanuel, each of whom have expressed outrage that Smollett is no longer in legal peril and that the case has been sealed. Chicago police and Emanuel were among those who made it harder to hold the police officer who killed Laquan McDonald accountable until the forced release of the video documenting that crime led to the officer's conviction.

That doesn't include the Chicago police's history of torturing black men and a judge's decision just weeks ago to declare the officers who made numerous false statements about the McDonald shooting not guilty.

Smollett shouldn't be top of mind, no matter whether he's telling the truth or really staged a phony attack to boost his chances of getting a raise. But he is. That doesn't mean he should be scapegoated for our inability to focus on things far more important. That's our fault, not his.

[derspiess]

Smollett was briefly given hero status by several SJWs on the left.  I wouldn't extrapolate that to the left at large, but if the "attack" had actually occurred it would have given teh left a cudgel to beat Trump supporters with.

Why would you care?

About what?

About Trump supporters.  Why would you care about Trump supporters?

How does that relate to my post? I was trying to answer the question on how the Smollett fake noose turned out to be a loss for the left.

Ugh, I'm really screwing up posts here.  I'm asking why you would give a shit about a cudgel to beat Trump supporters.  You aren't a Trump supporter, you have no dog in this fight.  If someone staged something to be a cudgel to beat Scientologists, or Al Sharpton supporters I wouldn't care one way or another.

I guess that aspect doesn't really bother me that much.  And again, it's irrelevant given the context of my post.

[Razgovory]

I guess that aspect doesn't really bother me that much.  And again, it's irrelevant given the context of my post.

Good.  It doesn't bother me that much either.  In fact, it shouldn't bother anyone.

[Zoupa]

I agree that the underlying crime was victimless and all, but I would have liked to have seen a lying to police charge stick.

I disagree that it was victimless. It was a false accusation that was deleterious to the social fabric of the nation.  Not to mention a waste of police resources.

This has not been a great week for the left.

What does "the left" have to do with this development exactly 

I submit it's something of a minor taint (sorry Tim) to the progressive brand. Here's why.

Jussie Smollett faked a hate crime allegedly perpetrated by cartoonish right-wing thugs. The hoax was staged to riff off of existing political polarization and fears. People understandably condemned the attack at first, but he continued to get signifcant amounts of sympathy from some prominent lefties in the initial days even as certain details came out that made his version of events sound like BS.

Eventually the sheer avalanche of BS convinced almost everyone he was a faker, but he never stopped spewing SJW rhetoric - e.g. he, this immensely privileged and self-serving figure,  will continue to fight for "marginalized people" with whom he appears to be identifying, in spite of his manifest privilege- including the power to get away with crimes scott free! Indeed, in spite of his obvious guilt, the case against him was dropped under mysterious circumstances, possibly due to his lefty connections, including to a former Obama staffer.

Not only does it make claims of MAGA racist attacks less believable in the future, it also makes progressive rhetoric seem slightly more hollow. Lastly it suggests there's a different standard of justice for wealthy famous folks with lefty political connections - a particular problem given the ostensible point of progressivism in the first place.

The net result is, as I said, a minor taint for the left in our current moment.

Let's agree to disagree.

[Camerus]

K.