The Mocker: Jussie Smollett case, elitist response play to victimhood mentality
Well that was a harrowing experience. I was beset with the midnight munchies, and while walking home in the dead of night I was viciously set upon by two white men wearing ski masks and ‘Make Australia Great Again’ baseball caps. “This is Liberal and National Party country” one screamed as they punched me. Pinning me down, they poured Blue Loo toilet detergent over my head and disparaged me with racist and homophobic insults. Obviously they knew one of my favourite actors is Denzel Washington and that I voted ‘Yes’ in the same-sex marriage plebiscite.
A lesser man would have succumbed, but they had greatly underestimated me. My inner-Balboa unleashed itself and, heroically, I sent these bigoted conservative cowards packing. I even managed to do this one-handed while holding my KFC wrap in the other. If you require evidence of this assault, simply observe the slight laceration under my right eye and the rope the attackers tied around my neck, which, come to think of it, I’m still wearing. And while the motive behind this is yet to be confirmed, there is no doubt the hateful ideology of Prime Minister Scott Morrison and his ultra-right colleagues had emboldened my assailants.
There you have it, the Australian version of a ‘hate crime’. It is a nebulous and logically useless term that can be applied to anything from genocide to politely explaining to an indignant minority activist why his, her or zirs claim of suffering structural oppression is nothing but highfalutin flatulence. Its latest “victim” is gay American actor and singer Jussie Smollett, who identifies as “bi-racial” and stars in the TV series Empire. What he claims happened to him I have parodied above, the main differences being the so-called offenders were wearing ‘Making America Great Again’ caps and had shouted “This is MAGA country.”
The temperature at the time of the supposed incident, 2am January 29, was minus 11 degrees Celsius. The only suspect you would expect to see prowling the streets then is Mr Freeze, but this was Chicago, not Gotham City. Smollett, who claims he was talking to his manager at the time of the attack, initially refused to hand his phone to police for forensic examination. Days later he did so, but by then the phone was heavily redacted. Police arrested and later released without charge two African-American brothers, Olabinjo and Abimbola Osundairo.
It turns out — Deirdre Chambers — they were already known to Smollett, one of them being his personal trainer. According to police sources the brothers claimed Smollett had hired them to carry out this charade, the trio even rehearsing using rope purchased days beforehand from the Crafty Beaver hardware store (must — not — respond). Smollett strenuously denies he fabricated this incident, although he has now lawyered up and has declined to speak further with investigators. Today a police spokesman announced the state attorney has approved felony charges against Smollett, including filing a false police report.
.@JussieSmollett to @RobinRoberts on attack: "I will never be the man that this did not happen to. I am forever changed...I do subscribe to the idea that we have the right & responsibility to make something meaningful out of the things that happen to us." https://t.co/3HbyU2SFxe pic.twitter.com/QPeSISqOXf
— Good Morning America (@GMA) February 14, 2019
Asked last week by ABC’s Good Morning America why he was allegedly targeted, Smollett said “I come really, really hard against 45,” he said, referring to the moniker for President Donald Trump. “I come really, really hard against his administration and I don’t hold my tongue,” he added. That takes quite an ego to claim he is the badass of presidential critics. For all we know, Trump, like many of us, had never heard of Smollett before. I can think of only two B-grade actors who were an existential threat to an incumbent president, the first being John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated Abraham Lincoln; and the second Ronald Reagan, who defeated Jimmy Carter. That’s 16, 40 and 39 if you are into edgy vernacular. And Reagan, Mr Smollett, you ain’t.
The circumstances of the allegation were always such as to warrant scepticism. However, the noisy elites, aided by elements of media which have long forgotten the purpose of journalism, accepted Smollett’s account unquestionably in an ugly display of opportunism.
“We have a media that’s saying it’s a debate what has happened to Jussie Smollett is a hate crime,” announced Canadian actress Ellen Page on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, having effortlessly segued from a rant about “environmental racism”. Citing Trump and Vice-President Mike Pence she urged the audience to “connect the dots”.
This is what a hero looks like. â¤ï¸ Take 2 minutes out of your day and watch this clip from @EllenPageâs impassioned speech on anti-LGBTQ policies, racism, and the Trump administration from last nightâs The Late Show With Stephen Colbert: pic.twitter.com/bIAIbPd1fM
— Christopher Turner (@Turnstylin) February 1, 2019
“This is what happens,” she said tearfully. “If you are in a position of power and you hate people and you want to cause suffering to them, you go through the trouble, you spend your career trying to cause suffering.” It got worse. “Kids are going to be abused, and they’re going to kill themselves, and people are going to be beaten on the street,” she wailed. Any minute now, I thought, this babbling woman will quote Luke 21:11: “And there will be great earthquakes, and in various places plagues and famines; and there will be terrors and great signs from heaven.”
In fairness to Page, most sensible people would assume actors and actresses to make political observations befitting an imbecile. You would hope politicians are more resistant to this alarmism, but apparently not. “The attack was not ‘possibly’ homophobic”, tweeted angry newbie Democrat congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. “It was a racist and homophobic attack.”
Democratic socialist star @AOC castigated media for describing the incident as a âpossibleâ hate attack. She was determined that it happened & happens all the time in the US. #JussieSmollett pic.twitter.com/aqw3eU06X6
— Andy Ngo (@MrAndyNgo) February 15, 2019
“Why all of a sudden do we have people unable to study while black, unable to mow a lawn while black, unable to have picnic while black, and being attacked,” said Democrat congresswoman Maxine Waters in reference to Smollett. “‘It’s coming from the president of the United States. He’s dog whistling every day.” This is the same politician who only last June told her supporters at a rally to confront and harass Trump officials, wherever they were. “If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd,” she said. And you push back on them. And you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.” Hypocrisy, much?
One of the few shrewd observations was that of New York Times columnist and author Noah Rothman. “If you are inclined to believe that America — especially in the age of Donald Trump — is plagued by racism and homophobia, none of these extremely fishy details seemed to register,” he wrote. “Indeed, many politicians and journalists seemed to suspend all critical thought in a campaign to indict not just Mr. Smollett’s attackers but the country as a whole.” That is the nature of victimhood demagoguery. Allegations of hate crime are assessed according to their narrative rather than their veracity. To reserve judgment pending the evidence is to condone the actions of the offender, real or otherwise.
It is a disconcerting phenomenon of Western society. Last year at a press conference in Toronto, Khawlah Noman, 11, told her horrified fellow Canadians she had been attacked as she walked to school, the assailant using scissors to cut her hijab. “My heart goes out to [her] following this morning’s cowardly attack,” tweeted Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
My heart goes out to Khawlah Noman following this morningâs cowardly attack on her in Toronto. Canada is an open and welcoming country, and incidents like this cannot be tolerated.
— Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) January 12, 2018
Environment minister Catherine McKenna tweeted the same day “This is appalling, cowardly and has no place in Canada. We stand with you, Khawlah.”
"What youâre doing is very wrong, you should stop doing this. Iâm a kid."
— Catherine McKenna ð¨ð¦ (@cathmckenna) January 12, 2018
An 11yr old girl should never have to experience this! This is appalling, cowardly and has no place in Canada.
We stand with you, Khawlah. This is not who we are as Canadians. https://t.co/A0whKWfcFB
Four days later Toronto police announced the girl’s story had been falsified. It was a lesson that the first reaction of a politician to a so-called hate crime should not be to publicly wring one’s hands. If they really must get involved, they should simply urge the public to assist police. Do not count on Trudeau or McKenna taking heed. Over a year has passed, yet neither of the tweets in question has been deleted or retracted.
The media has not learned the lessons of the Covington Catholic affair last month, where a mob of so-called progressives, many of them academics and journalists, demonised, threatened and slandered a group of innocent white schoolboys for the crime of wearing MAGA hats and the false accusation they harassed a Native American activist. It was not only American journalists who embarrassed themselves with their hasty and ill-informed condemnation. The boys’ conduct, tweeted Sydney Morning Herald columnist Peter FitzSimons angrily, was a case of “sneering punks … disgracing themselves, their school, and their country.”
WHY????
— Peter FitzSimons (@Peter_Fitz) January 21, 2019
To reward sneering punks for disgracing themselves, their school, and their country? https://t.co/2AHqUvQHx5
He might want to reflect on the fact that the smiling student at the centre of that affair, Nick Sandmann, has just initiated a $350m defamation lawsuit against the Washington Post.
As for Smollett, I have a suggestion. Given he is a rhythm and blues singer, perhaps he should reinvent himself as the lead singer of — wait for it — Milli Vanilli! That’s right, the nineties duo and Grammy Award winners who, it was later revealed, had never actually sang any of their hits. Sing along with me, folks; not just for Jussie, but for every grievance monger whose profession has taken a big credibility hit this week. “It’s a tragedy for me to see the dream is over…”