Add to that: He had the full-throated backing of Kamala Harris, our vice tweeter, and of our Tweeter-in-Chief. In Harris’s words: “@JussieSmollett is one of the kindest, most gentle human beings I know. I’m praying for his quick recovery. This was an attempted modern day lynching. No one should have to fear for their life because of their sexuality or color of their skin. We must confront this hate.”
Uncle Joe (or whoever tweets for him) posted this: “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.”
1. The Insatiable American Fascination with Crime, Crooks, Detectives, and Courtroom “Trials of the Century”
Americans — as perhaps all people — are fascinated by crime … and by crooks in general. I know — and so do you — a gazillion people who have no idea what is happening in the world, but they are expert in every detail about the latest serial murderer. Through decades I have been amazed that the same person who does not know that the Berlin Wall just came down and that the Soviet Union has dissolved, does not know the name Lech Walesa or Tony Blair or Angela Merkel or Vladimir Putin, does not know that in only one year’s time America has gone from a net exporter of energy to a situation where the president has to release 50 million barrels of oil from the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve, does not know what is going on at America’s southern border and does not even know the U.S. has a northern border … and yet that same person nevertheless knows everything there possibly can be to know about the Hillside Strangler, the .44 Caliber killer (aka the Son of Sam), Patty Hearst, Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy, Richard Speck, and their sort.
It is quite a thing, the American fascination with crime and criminals. The movies and television reflect the tastes of the average American — literally, the mediocrity. Try a clever new idea in television, like Star Trek for blending science fiction with morality tales or Arrested Development for blending the most clever of puns with quirky story-telling out of Orange County, California, and those shows get canceled almost instantly for lack of viewership. Only massive protest campaigns by fans, or disproportionate recognition for a too-sophisticated-or-clever — and thus unsuccessful — movie or TV show at awards season, ultimately persuades network programmers to give such breakout shows another go. Even Seinfeld needed time. But give us general mediocrity, and it can fly. All the better if you give us crime and criminals.
Such is the allure of crime and crooks that Americans even have come to love picking their “Good” Villains over the “Bad” ones. Thus, Amricans loved the Corleone family, rooted for Don Vito after he was gunned down and hospitalized while picking produce at the open market, applauded as Michael shot the dirty cop in the restaurant, further cheered as Michael, while standing solemnly in church at his son’s baptism, had set in motion for his henchmen to gun down a whole slew of enemies, one by one, in their beds, at courthouse steps, wherever. Same in the sequels.
Also Tony Soprano and all the Scorsese Mafia types played by De Niro and Joe Pesci. Americans may despise De Niro as real-life disgusting Robert De Niro but love the mobsters he plays: young Vito Corleone, Jimmy Conway in Goodfellas, and Paul Vitti in the comical Analyze This pair of films. The U.S. public even have been spellbound by other sickos in De Niro’s acting arsenal like the deranged taxi driver in the eponymous movie who actually inspired another mental case, John Hinckley, to shoot President Reagan.
And Americans likewise are spellbound by the courtroom dramas that stem from crime, featuring favorite real-life crooks and bad guys: O.J. Simpson, Charles Manson, the Unabomber, even the likes of “Teflon Don” John Gotti and school teacher Mary Kay Letourneau. When real life runs out of notorious criminals and show trials for a while, Americans turn to invented new ones to keep entertained in and out of the courtroom.
Although Israel occasionally has had major crime dramas like Manayek and Kvodo (“Your Honor”), the realities of life and society bring more action-related dramas with Arab terror or other intensely political themes like Chatufim (“Prisoners of War”), Tehran, B’nei Aruba (“Hostages”), and Fauda into the home, alongside religious-based stories like Srugim and Shtisel, and programs based on war narratives like Sh’at Neilah (“Valley of Tears”) and “When Heroes Fly.”
2. Jesse Smollett, A Criminal for Our Time: Make America Hate Again
Which all brings the discussion to America’s latest crook of fascination, Jussie Smollett, convicted fraudster and perpetrator of yet another among so many “Systemic Racism” hate-crime hoaxes fueled by dishonesty on the Left and in its media, this one calculated to tear a nation. Coming on the heels of so many such hoaxes, whether false tales of rape (e.g., Duke lacrosse team, University of Virginia fraternity, and Lena Dunham’s lies) or of White racist attacks against Blacks (consider this list of some twenty false “hate crimes” reported during the Trump years or this research on 409 hate-crime hoaxes or this website listing 449 hate-crime hoaxes), Smollett’s narrative aimed to make him more famous and to tear down America.
Few of us ever had heard of Smollett, except for the niche audience of a television show, Empire, that focused on a corporation dealing in hip-hop music. In particular, that program appealed more to Black viewers than to White audiences. Smollett not only was unknown to the greater public but also was said to be furious that he was paid less per episode than were his co-actors. It had been reported that he was earning “only” $20,000 per episode in 2016 as compared to bigger stars who were getting $175,000 per. Two years later, he reportedly was up to $65,000 per episode. At that time, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that the average American was earning in an entire year what Smollett was getting per episode. As his numbers rose towards $125,000 per episode, others acting alongside him rose to $225,000-$250,000 per.
Smollett decided to become more famous. Man cannot live by yolks alone.
In a way, his strategy was brilliant. If you are White and are accused of racism, the Left mainstream media will undertake to destroy you. They will lie at every bend to distort the truth and facts to build a false narrative of racism and hate crime. Exhibit A is Nick Sandmann of Covington, Kentucky. Exhibit B is Kyle Rittenhouse. In such cases, the Left media will fabricate, fake, fib, falsify, foney-baloney everything: the context and background, who initiated, the incredibly sordid background of the guy or guys whose media advocates claim are “Hate Crime Victims,” and what the White guy was doing there in the first place. Every pertinent fact is perverted.
Thus, we are told that Nick smirked contemptuously at a poor Native American when, in fact, young Mr. Sandmann was in Washington to march peacefully for life and maintained equilibrium and respectful silence when a Native American barged up to him like a wild Indian, banging a drum right in his face inches away. It soon emerged that Nathan Phillips (aka “Sky Man”), around whom the Left media rallied as a brave Vietnam veteran, in fact never had been deployed to Vietnam, had gone AWOL three times while in the military reserves, had pleaded guilty to an assault charge, and — contrary to his tweeted claims that he had been honorably discharged from service — in fact was not honorably discharged.
We were told falsely by the Left media that Rittenhouse transported firearms illegally across state lines to murder some Blacks at a George Floyd rally when in fact Rittenhouse had personal roots in Kenosha — just minutes across the Illinois border — where his father and other close relatives live, where he was employed, where his friend had a legal firearm properly stored, and where he ultimately killed two truly disgusting and violent White criminals who each were in the act of imperiling Mr. Rittenhouse’s own life in a riot where the local police completely had lost control of the peace.
But Smollett is Black. He is homosexual. He is Hollywood. So he is protected. In a country where the Left screams “Systemic Racism” night and day, he was a shoo-in for national media approbation. By the time the Left media were finished idolizing him, perhaps Americans in blue states even could start erecting Jussie Smollett statues in city centers to fill in spots left empty by toppling the monuments to Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, and Raoul Wallenberg. Look at what had been done to poor Jesse:
It was a bitterly freezing night in Chicago. Past midnight. Jesse was in the mood for eggs. Too poor at only $20,000 or $65,000 per episode, he could not afford a subscription to Instacart, Grub Hub, Uber Eats, or Door Dash so had to venture forth on Chicago’s famously safe midnight streets, scrambling to search for some satisfying albumin. But instead he was attacked, sez he, by two Trump supporters. Since they were Trump supporters, they were by definition “systemic racists” and race haters.
Like all Trump supporters he imagines — though clearly never has met — he says they were yelling “MAGA! MAGA!” (the initials for “Make America Great Again”) because that is what he says Trump supporters like his fabricated attackers do, much as cats meow, cows moo, and Clintons and Bidens lie.
And that was not all. They further poured bleach on Smollett because, what, he is Black? Then, like all White Trump supporters who venture on bitterly freezing Chicago streets after midnight yelling “MAGA! MAGA!” they just-happened to be carrying a noose with them — just in case they could find a Black to lynch to, what, a telephone pole? Chicago’s Willis Tower (aka the Sears Roebuck Tower)? So there was Jesse, beaten, quasi-lynched, bleached, and scrambled.
And now famous.
3. The Role of Left “Legacy” Media in Propagating Smollett’s Hate Hoax
Hand-off the relay baton to the media: Soon he was appearing on network talk shows, relating his tale of woe. Consider this 15-minute “ABC Exclusive” interview with Robin Roberts. His was the “Story of the Year” about the (annual) “Crime of the Century.” A new example for the Left Media to distort: falsely casting his despicable tale of lye cast on him into a bigger lie, converting his false noose into fake news. (Friendly tip for future woke hate-crime hoaxsters: better chance that today’s Trump backers would be chanting “Let’s Go Brandon!”) Whereas the Left media raced to crush Nick Sandmann and Kyle Rittenhouse, they banded together to inflate and iconize Smollett as a new American hero.
4. And Yet the Truth Broke Through: From Dave Chappelle to a Jury That Nailed It in One Day, Deliberating Only Nine Hours
How did the truth ever break through?
As with the Biden Presidency, months and even years of Left Media deception and protection cover up and distort so much truth until a singular event, a moment, erupts that is so compelling that even the Left media have to crack.
With Biden it was the Afghanistan evacuation. That tragic event burst the entireprotective media bubble and would mark the moment when his positive polling would plummet south forevermore like a Looney Tunes anvil.
In similar fashion, two factors helped burst the Left media’s iconization of Jussie Smollett: one, a Dave Chappelle stand-up sketch, the other that Smollett had the temerity to think an American could pull a scam on Nigerians. This five-minute stand-up sketch by a Black comedian in front of an almost-uniformly Black audience broke important ice. It was so obvious that Smollett was lying through his teeth that even an all-Black audience saw no racism — only the obvious truth that the emperor of Empire was naked. And he had paid the two Nigerians, his confidantes and body guards, to beat him up. Together they had driven around, casing the area. He even had given them the money to buy the noose, proving the eternal truth of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin’s dictum: “The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.”
The story’s many fault lines, along with Jussie, self-immolated. All the conservative media jumped in. My article was among those kindly disseminated by Real Clear Politics. The truth came out.
As the Jussie Smollett trial ended this week, his jury needed practically no time to come back with a verdict of Guilty and “Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire.” We now are left with a few remaining questions and thoughts lingering:
Will some prosecutor somewhere finally charge a perjurer — i.e., a person who intentionally lies under oath in a courtroom — with a crime? They did not do so for Christine Blasey Ford. The time has come.
If you are going to try to pull a fast one on Nigerians, you better be the Nigerian Minister of Finance, the most recently deposed Nigerian Junta Leader, Nigerian Minister of Defense, or Nigerian Minister of Defenestration — and limit your criminal fraud to asking for a social security number, a bank account number, and other stuff like that. Stay away from Hate Crime stories. The whole point of a Nigerian Scam is a racially blind equal-op
portunity crime.
My favorite moment of the trial: The prosecutor, with Smollett on the witness stand, asks him what damages he actually has. He has no marks, no scars, no nothing. He retorts that, uh, he was left with a small scar under one eye, and even the slightest scar destroys his TV and movie career because Hollywood demands perfection in its stars’ appearances . The prosecutor retorts: but here is a photo taken of you during a TV talk show interview you gave after your reported incident, and I don’t see any scar there under your eye. To which Smollett replies: that’s because the excellent make-up artists in Hollywood can expertly cover up such scars, so that no one ever sees them. Think about that.
In a world of make-up, eyelids can be made up. Missed rehearsals can be made up.
And Big Lies about the inherent goodness of the American people and the absence of systemic racism in American society also can be made up. As Walter E. Williams has observed, the best news of all that comes from such hoaxes: If it were not so overwhelmingly, blatantly false that America is beset with systemic race hate, the woke Left would not have to invent so many hate-crime hoaxes for so many years continue to feeding their false narratives.
Rabbi Prof. Dov Fischer is Contributing Editor at The American Spectator, adjunct professor of law at two prominent Southern California law schools, Senior Rabbinic Fellow at the Coalition for Jewish Values, rabbi of Young Israel of Orange County, California, and has held prominent leadership roles in several national rabbinic and other Jewish organizations. He was Chief Articles Editor of UCLA Law Review, clerked for the Hon. Danny J. Boggs in the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and served six years on the Executive Committee of the Rabbinical Council of America. His writings have appeared in The Weekly Standard, National Review, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Jerusalem Post, Israel Hayom, and The Jewish Press. Other writings are collected at www.rabbidov.com
Adapted by the writer for Arutz Sheva from a version of this article that first appeared here in The American Spectator.