Jussie Smollett wanted a raise, and more job security.
He thought that if he became a symbol for the left to fight bigotry and homophobia, he would have a bigger profile and be worth more. Which might well have been an accurate assessment, but… he went straight from believing it to setting up deceit in order to achieve it.
First he sent a letter to his working offices, a lousy piece of interpretive art purporting to be from a redneck MAGA moron… threatening Jussie, which is to say himself. The letter had 5-year old style misspellings, drawings like a hangman’s noose, just a genuinely awful interpretation of what he thought a believable message from a racist white guy might look like.
Nobody believed it. Many suspected he had sent it himself… as did police a little later on. But instead of scuttling backward from this disaster as quickly as possible so he could just go back to normal, he got mad and doubled down.
He invented the planned fake “attack”, noose around neck, etc, and overworked that plan until it was agonizingly obvious — even to neighborhood dogs — that he was trying to pull off a hoax.
His purpose was to engage the MEDIA, and in that way to make of himself some sort of gentle suffering hero… and celebs did their part, up to and including Kamala Harris. Her 2019 tweet calling his attack a “modern-day lynching” is still up on twitter, as I write this. Harris praised him as being gentle and kind, and said she was praying for his healing from that beating.
Remember, he was not an honest dishonest activist. He did not come to the fakery through a genuine desire to raise awareness of a problem, to try to find solutions. He came to it in order to raise his OWN profile, so he could have more job security and a raise. He was a DISHONEST dishonest activist.
Every GENUINE activist should be FURIOUS at this childish, selfish, unimaginative fool who thought he had the wherewithal to put one over on the public. Going out for a sandwich at 2 am, on foot, when it was below ZERO?
Walking home after a beating, but with a noose still around his neck? Two red-hatted dudes shouting “this is MAGA country!” In the middle of downtown Chicago?
The details invented to give realism to the story made it LUDICROUS instead of realistic. And this one was too easy to unravel. Put out the word for sudden purchasers of red MAGA hats and rope at area stores. Instantly, the Nigerian brothers pop up on store video.
One thing after another, it’s all dimwitted and childish. Like if you gave a third grade class the assignment of coming up with a believable hoax.
Jussie Smollett may be, as Kamala said, gentle and kind. But he is not honest, and he is not smart. And isn’t kindness linked to concern for others above self? There is nothing more obvious in this whole affair than that he did it for himself.
Lied, made false reports, implicated millions of people who were entirely innocent of this. He created a whole criminal conspiracy, including paying others to play their part.
And it was NOT to help the black and gay among us who suffer so greatly from the daily hatred aimed at them by Trump supporters.
No, it was to get himself a new contract, a raise, and perhaps a future in media or politics. It was all about HIM.
And sadly for him, it still is. Sentencing will take a few more days.