Faded Hollywood actor Jussie Smollett went off to prison like a raging madman this week, shouting that he is innocent of staging a now notorious hate crime hoax and declaring that he is “not suicidal.” You have to laugh at his insistence on innocence and I wouldn’t take him at his word on the second assurance. The amazing thing is that he still hasn’t had enough of the grisly Snapchat limelight that has made him into a caricature of himself; the very embodiment of narcissistic hoaxer and liar who recklessly used race relations in an inept attempt to advance his insignificant career
He described the imaginary attack as “something out of Looney Tune adventures…someone that felt massive just coming up to me, not even enough time to think,” he said.
It’s clear he hasn’t done much thinking.
And it’s also clear that his exit from the courtroom was something out of a Looney Tunes cartoon.
But how different is Smollett’s hate crime hoax from President Joe Biden’s outrageous claim that Georgia’s election integrity law is “Jim Crow on steroids?”
Smollett’s crime is well known. He falsely claimed on that on Jan. 29, 2019 he was in downtown Chicago when he was attacked by two men who put a noose around his neck and released an “unknown substance” on him. He said the pair also warned him that he was in MAGA country – an obvious reference to former President Donald Trump’s campaign slogan of Make America Great Again. That added detail should have made the entire account questionable as Chicago is anything but MAGA country and is in fact just another crime-ridden Democratic-controlled city.
Smollett fooled a lot of people, most of them celebrities, but of course then former Vice President and then Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) among them. Biden swallowed the tale without any hesitation and tweeted his grave concern:
“What happened today to @JussieSmollett must never be tolerated in this country. We must stand up and demand that we no longer give this hate safe harbor; that homophobia and racism have no place on our streets or in our hearts. We are with you, Jussie.”
But Biden has perpetuated his own hoax even as he has never addressed being duped by Smollett. Though he is locked into the Ukraine crisis at the moment and can now blame all of his domestic woes on Russia and a foreign war, Biden was quite willing to use the race card to distract America’s attention from the growing inflation, energy shortage and border crisis that he had created. Listen to him suggest how election integrity was no different than demanding segregated washrooms for whites and blacks in the south.
"So I ask every elected official in America, how do you want to be remembered?" Biden asked on Jan. 12, 2022 in a speech about electoral reform from the Atlanta University Center Consortium, on the campus of Clark Atlanta University and Morehouse College. "Do you want to be on the side of Dr. King or George Wallace? Do you want to be on the side of John Lewis or Bull Connor? Do you want to be on the side of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis?"
Incredible, especially given Biden’s racial record over the years, that is, to say the least, complicated.
The House GOP found an article from the Detroit Free Press in May 1987 where Biden reminded southerners that Delaware was a slave state and "culturally part of Dixie" while reminiscing "that former Gov. George Wallace praised him as one of the most outstanding young politicians of America."
Never mind his record. The truth for Biden is whatever proves politically expedient today.
In this, he has a lot in common with Smollett, who is still sticking to his story.
Even as the facts mounted against him, Smollett maintained the fiction against all odds and Chicago’s finest burned up the policing budget investigating Smollett’s sham story.
Cook County Judge James Linn minced no words when he eviscerated the unadulterated selfishness of Smollett in his remarks that preceded his sentencing, telling the has been actor that "you destroyed your life as you knew it.”
"You turned your life upside down by your misconduct and shenanigans," the judge stated.
"There's nothing that any sentencing judge can do to you that would compare to the damage you've already caused yourself."
Linn told Smollett that he came from a family that understood that value of standing for real justice and that faking hate crimes only undermines those values.
"For you to now sit here, convicted of hoaxing hate crimes, racial hate crimes and homophobic hate crimes, the hypocrisy is just astounding," he said.
So just what was Smollett trying to achieve by his self-centered actions, besides a maladroit attempt to advance his diminished career?
"You knew this was a country that was slowing trying to heal past injustices and current injustices and trying to make a better future for each other," he said. "...And it was a hard road...You took some scabs off some healing wounds, and you ripped them apart for one reason - you wanted to make yourself more famous, and for a while it worked."
The judge might have asked President Joe Biden the same question. Because, lacking complete mental acuity or not, Biden knows the damage he is doing to his country with his outrageous racial language and destructive racial imagery. Besides appeasing a radical segment of his party, just what does he hope to achieve?
