No matter what leftists in the national media say, the Jussie Smollett saga has nothing to do with criminal justice and everything to do with “social justice,” contemporary America’s greatest plague.
In the latest development of this exhausted story, an Illinois appellate court on Wednesday ruled that Smollett be released from his 150-day jail sentence that began last week, while his legal team appeals his conviction.
That same day, Washington Post columnist Paul Butler, who is rumored to have a law degree, wrote that Smollett’s dinky lock-up time was the result of racists persecuting a black man.
“I don’t believe Jussie Smollett but I recognize when a Black man gets railroaded through a justice system that is out to get him,” said Butler, who is also Black with a capital B. “A rich entitled actor is hardly the most sympathetic face of reform. Still, Smollett’s case demonstrates that when powerful elites decide they want a Black man locked up, nothing and nobody — not even the elected prosecutor — will stop them.”
He proceeded to deliver a tortured logic on how punishing Smollett for lying about being the victim of a homophobic and racist hate crime would mean that real victims decline to prosecute their attackers.
“Sending a Black gay man to jail for lying about being attacked will not encourage hate crime victims to come forward,” Butler wrote. “Instead, it sends the message that they, rather than their assailants, are subject to being incarcerated if authorities don’t believe their stories.”
I hope Paul didn’t sprain his back with that obscene reach. And I hope an editor at the Post wasn’t fired for allowing something so stupid to be printed.
The lesson in prosecuting a liar for lying is to abstain from lying, especially with regard to the police. If anyone looks at Smollett and is filled with crippling fear that he might find himself on trial, he should probably think twice about hiring two Nigerians to call him the n-word while hitting him with harmless face taps in the middle of the night.
But the most absurd point in Butler’s piece is his assertion that Smollett’s claim was investigated so thoroughly because he was a “celebrity.” That is the exact opposite of the truth. If only the reality were so harmless.
No— the reason why Smollett’s 2019 allegation that he was violently assaulted on a Chicago street garnered so much attention, thus pressuring police to act with haste, was not because he was a relatively unknown TV actor. It was because his story — and what a story! — aligned perfectly with the insidious narrative the national media had been pushing during the entirety of Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and presidency.
Smollett is a black man. He’s also gay. That makes him, as dictated by the media and our entertainment industry, an unjustly oppressed person. By default. But compounding the issue was Smollett’s claim that his attackers were white males who supported Trump (otherwise known by the Biden administration as “Enemies of the State.”) That a black, gay man was violently assaulted by Trump supporters was all the press needed to make this a national story. It reinforced their narrative that Trump had unleashed a re-inspired mob of white supremacists to terrorize innocent minorities across the country.
Who could associate themselves with a president who does that? You certainly couldn’t vote for him.
Again, this isn’t criminal justice. It’s social justice — the pursuit of power, money, and fame by claiming (usually falsely) to have been oppressed on account of race, gender, or sexual identity.
Smollett was caught in a repulsive lie. A jury convicted him and a judge sentenced him. That’s justice. It’s just not the kind leftists in the corporate media like Paul Butler are looking for.
Smollett didn’t go to jail because he’s black or gay. He got one more out because he is.
