I will say one thing in defense of Senators Harris and Booker: a justifiable instinct among black people generally is to immediately side with the alleged black victim. I speak from substantial experience. It doesn't mean the opposite, that black people immediately blame a white person, in that area people of color are quite level headed and discerning, more so than whites - in my experience. But there is a tendency to come to a defense of a fellow African-American, sometimes without knowing the facts.
The point is, given our black citizens' experience going back 150 years and more, and to the present day, who can blame them?
The same absolutely cannot be said about white liberals. They will believe every nonsense about white prejudice, even if black people laugh at it or are suspicious.
Fictional stories like Mr. Smollett's are partly but meaningfully enabled by the liberal white community. And yet again, just like before, black people end up victims.
4:22 pm Tue
52
Here's the real question: how many hoaxes have there been compared to legitimate acts of harassment and/or violence. My guess is that hoaxes are quite rare and legitimate racism is very common. Thus, politicians who reacted to this story actually got it right when they condemned the apparent attack. It's not their job to be investigative journalists on every single claim. Sometimes that level of scrutiny is needed, but sometimes what's needed is a rapid and unequivocal affirmation that racism needs to be stopped. And since hoaxes aren't really a legitimate problem when compared with real racism, no we don't actually have to acknowledge them in any substantial way.
We absolutely need calm and well reasoned leadership from anti-racist politicians. But I hardly think that means asking them to adopt a general attitude of suspicion towards reports of racism.
149
@Tom Ryan You can't "get it right" by condemning something that never actually happened. Being across the basic facts of whether an event actually occurred or not is not 'being an investigative journalist'; it's simply living in the real world. This kind of jumping-the-gun hurts the reputations and credibility of the journalists and politicians involved, and thereby ultimately hurts the fight against racism. What SHOULD happen is Smollett should be publicly rebuked by anyone who previously supported him, both for lying and for inciting racial conflict. Somehow I don't think that will happen. People seem more interested in defending their 'team' than they are in actually combatting the categorisation of people by skin colour, as you've just shown by your refusal to say that the politicians and journalists mentioned in this piece were WRONG.
26
@Tom Ryan - I disagree. I think the real question is how did two men recognize this man's color and sexual orientation on a dark night when it was 30 below zero, on a night where every normal human had every square inch of skin covered as they rushed to their destinations? The story makes absolutely no sense. I immediately doubted it from day one, and I'm a Democrat.
49
Hate-crime hoaxes don’t matter? You do realize that a) these incidents - of which there have been many - only give ammunition to Trump voters and b) it means that victims of actual hate crimes are less likely to be believed.
Oh, and what about the countless hours both the FBI and the CPD spent on this fake “crime”?
Smollett is a criminal. He’s a con-artist and a race-baiter. He belongs in jail.
Watching liberals twist themselves into knots trying to justify Smollett’s fraud (or pretend it’s no big deal) two weeks after tripping over themselves to breathlessly exclaim how his “attack” was symptomatic of Trump’s America has been beyond depressing.
25
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice . . . and you know the rest. How many times now have liberal politicians and the liberal press been fooled? If we lived in a shame culture they would have been silenced, but we live in what they see as a guilt culture where the guilty deserve instant punishment. That line of thinking about instant is, to over simplify, what led to actual lynchings. It is a slippery slope on which these influencers are dancing all to gleefully.
9
I don't have an opinion on this, because I am not privy to all the facts. But I have to say that the Chicago Police Department's record is not good.
4
Look before you leap. Two wrongs don't make a right. The wisdom of these saying has been drowned out by instant content. The article worries me, as it implies that it is the victims who are the criminals. In some of these cases, that would seem to be true. Statistically, however, these supposedly staged incidents are rare, and real violence against "the other" is prevalent. So I am leery of the tone of this op-ed, as it whitewashes numerous real incidents with a minority of fabricated ones.
4
I am hope (but doubtful) that politicians will learn a lesson from this and restrain themselves from tweeting. Not everything deserves an immediate response. As Mr. Roth suggests, contrived examples of bigotry demean the actual acts. Just as superficial and knee-jerk statements on twitter minimize the impact when our political leaders have something important to say.
5
If Noah Rothman had real moral courage he would have included in his piece the many documented false rape charges that, after public outrage, have been subsequently disproven. It is one thing for him to take on white liberals (a group he makes his money chiding) for being overly credulous about every account of hate crimes against blacks; but it would take real guts for him to affirm that "women should not be immediately believed". The prime example of such a public lynching is Al Franken; Rothman does not take that one on.
Just as striking is his assertion that hate crimes against Jews are never falsely reported. Just a few years ago the entire American Jewish community was alarmed by a spate of threatening e-mails which, it turned out were sent by a mentally distrubed Israeli teen.
Of course there are some instances of false allegation made by members of vulnerable groups against members of groups deemed to be oppressive. But what Rothman is doing here is to cherry-pick an incident to make the point that his political enemies (liberals) are too willing to credit the claims of black folk
11
.
Two themes come to mind as this fake victim story unravels, one political the other personal:
1-at the political level, the left needs the public to believe this is a racist country so they can address and correct the problem. If there is no problem they will manufacture one.
2- if Jesse is acting alone he is desperate to extend his 15 minutes of fame and is willing to damage American social fabric and community trust.
One other thing. A patriarchal response is: why didn't you defend yourself? Why did you let yourself be a victim?
A matriarchal response is to empathize with your victimhood and condemn the "perpetrators" and their kind; to lament the state of our culture and society.
Which response is more accurate? More factual? More mature or wiser?
#longlivethepatriarchy
7
Worse still, he (and the fools who follow- of which, sadly, there are many) is now trying to frame it as "I did this because of a lack of response to racist letter sent to Empire." More hubris. A villain? Nay... A hero! (in his own, and sadly, yes, other's minds). HE WAS JUST TRYING TO HELP US ALL. Never mind that his actions could have resulted in murder or worse, more racial misunderstanding, more strife. Shame! He should be punished primarily for the crime but secondarily for the lack of contrition evidenced in this latest "spin."
4
Wonder how Al Sharpton responded. Tawana Brawley revisited.
11
Twana Brawley ring a bell. Cory, Kamala, Bernie are the new Al Sharpton's of our time. Lives were ruined by that hoax and no one went to jail.
Like it or not the "Franchise" is the new normal. Blame it on whomever you want but this is what happens when you shout fire in a crowded movie theater, innocent people suffer.
So do we want leaders that react and then wait for the facts?
Any, and I mean any normal person could see right from the beginning that this story might have some hair on it. But did anyone wait to shout fire? No they did not.
16
To put the U.S. hate crime problem in perspective, in 2017 there were 17,285 murders and 7,175 hate crime incidents. Americans are far more likely to be murder victims than hate crime victims.
Of the 6,370 known hate crimes offenders, 50.7 percent were white (including Hispanics), and 21.3 percent were black (including Hispanics). Census data show that whites make up 76.6 percent of the populations while blacks make up 13.4 percent of the population. Blacks were the only racial or ethic group that committed a disproportionately high number of hate crimes.
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045217
https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2017/resource-pages/hate-crime-summary.pdf
10
The last election is under the shadow or Russian meddling but the real threat to elections is meddling right here in the United States and election meddling is what these people are doing.
1
What Smollett did was disgraceful and hurt his cause.
14
This past summer I had a visitor from New Zealand, and she imagined that in American people of color and white people couldn't pass each other in the street without fighting like mongooses and cobras.
I had to explain that it's not that way at all. It's people in our politics, media and culture - people apparently like Jussie Smollett who want - literally want - this to be true, so they can imagine that we're still fighting some noble struggle against Jim Crow ala' 1930s Alabama. All the self-ennobling drama with virtually none of the personal costs.
Looks indeed as if Smollett's story is falling apart. Will we have the clarity to see this hoax as an act of hatred itself? It is an attempt to whip up racial hatred and resentment.
28
Let's have a little historical context here, Mr. Rothman: gays and blacks and other minorities didn't just all of a sudden decide to feel persecuted without good reason--they have been persecuted and oppressed for centuries in America. Smollett is making this story up, I'll bet, but it's not like he doesn't have plenty of precedent in reality for the creation of his fantasy. The irony is that the very exceptional nature of his story (he fabricated a crime, he imagined that he was wronged, etc...) will be taken by conservatives as proof of a trend.
4
Fair point about the rush to judgment. But just as this was an alleged hate crime, this is also an alleged hoax so now Mr. Rothman is rushing to judgment.
I understand that a Chicago-based MAGA attack sounds strange. Still, it was not unreasonable to me that Chicago-based haters might track down and attack a Chicago-based TV star that triggered them. For the actor himself to create a hoax like this seems much more bizarre. Also, if these men were even the attackers, is it possible a third party paid them?
Super strange. I'll just wait for the verdict.
3
I don't know if the whole fake incident genre, in which typically white people are smeared, started then, but I do recall very well the infamous and exemplary case of Tawana Brawley, as I had a house in the area. Al Sharpton participated, and although he somehow became cleansed, others lost their law licenses, etc. The accused white cops' lives were of course ruined.
The one thread that seems to run through all these cases is that there is always something that does not add up, something odd, something strange, something unlikely to have happened, and usually it's apparent immediately. At that point we are not sure that nothing happened, but we are on notice that things are not likely to be what they seem.
Of course, if you are programmed to believe anything when a minority makes an accusation against a white person, who of course are, by definition and by virtue of being white, always guilty, no absurdity will seem untrue and no absurdity will go undefended.
But eventually, probably in 100% of cases, the truth comes out.
One property of truth is that it's easy to remember.
Lies are hard to remember. The best lie is one that's very close to the truth, except for a small but decisive detail. Rope, bleach, MAGA, 2 am, a 2 am Subway visit, and bitter cold, all are too many elements to justify and keep straight. Plus people should remember there are cameras everywhere.
Usually the liars are not very smart. That's why they get caught.
13
If this turns out to be a hoax, then all three of them should be locked up for a while!
8
FROM THE ARTICLE: Perhaps most damningly, the kind of scrutiny and anger reserved for incidents of racial hatred seem limited to episodes that confirm what social justice activists believe should constitute American bigotry. There have been no similar national paroxysms amid a sharp uptick in violence targeting New York City’s Jewish population.
I don't know about the news media in general, but I have never noticed the Times being slow to point out instances or reports of anti-semitism -- ever.
2
We watched the media fawn over this case as well as the Covington kids fiasco. It is time for journalism to take a moment and do some serious self reflection. The media have a narrative they need to keep up and are willing to jump on a story before all the details are out. It has bit them now on multiple occasions and is a primary reason the faith in media is lower than congresses approval rating. You folk at the media really need to check your biases and try to do some real journalism again.
24
Trump Desperately Needs Wind Change--Police are Obliging....
Fake hate crimes should be aggressively prosecuted. Just like real hate crimes -- and they are in fact crimes -- they stoke racial hatred and mistrust. We need fewer divides in this nation regardless of whether they are caused by bigots or people pretending to be the victims of bigots.
10
Trump Derangement Syndrome is real.
16
“Due process” needs to be the new “make America great again.” Just make sure investigations are painstaking and complete and both accuser and accused are treated with dignity. Why is that so hard?
3
“In literature, Rebbe, certain things are true though they didn’t happen, while others are not, even if they did.” —Elie Wiesel
33
@Ed
"What is truth?" asked Pontius Pilate ... he was the only sane one in the room ...
6
@Ed
Where there is peace, there is no truth; where there is truth, there is no peace.
5
This country has along history of the press (and public) condemning the accused without learning the facts. Remember the Duke Lacrosse team? Remember Richard Jewel the security guard HERO that was accused? The press and Americans need to take a breather until the FACTS are finalized. This immediate judgement is only getting worse with multimedia.
9
Does anyone remember the chants of "Lock her up!" during a recent national election? Remember the grinning candidate? Remember that the two previous holders of that position had also had personal computer servers? Ah, but they were members of the same party as those approving of the chants. That chap grinning at those chants won the election and is still in office. He also had a string of falsehoods about 9/11 and many other situations. I submit that some of us are willing to admit we were wrong, others are not.
2
Yes. Mr. Rothman found some egregious incidents of fake attacks. In a country of 300 million, I'm sure there would be some dishonest attention seekers. But the real attacks continue. A Muslim man was recently murdered in Indianapolis by someone shouting anti-Muslim slogans in a road rage incident. One need only do a "google" search for "anti Muslim violence USA" to see just a smattering.
It seemed reasonable at the time to believe Smollett and since he claimed that the attackers shouted racist/homophobic statements, it was reasonable (NOT an 'indulgence of biases") for people to take him at his word. It wasn't equivalent to a lynch mob because no specific person was falsely accused.
That is quite different from someone clinging to beliefs in the face of solid evidence.
If it turns out that there is solid evidence and then, those who believed him still will not face the facts, that is the time for criticism.
2
@Because a million died The fact that is pertinent here is that we should hold off on making proclamations until we know the facts. We need to stop the process of damaging people’s reputations before we know what the truth is.
5
@Because a million died
Fact: It was not reasonable at the time to believe Smollett ... it was reasonable to suspend judgment but view his report with some suspicion.
4
I tip my hat to Chicago PD for excellent police work. In the face of a backlash they plodded through the case to reveal Smollett as a liar.
17
Everything about this case is disturbing and very, very sad. Yes, there are hoaxes that happen and these can rattle our sense of security in a way. I stand against racism and now I feel a confused kind of anger. The idea that a gay, African American can set up a phony, ugly and despicable act like this is nauseating. The fact is that these acts of hatred occur and now reporting them may get harder. Something like this happen can to an innocent person. Will they be believed and get the support they need, or will they be doubted? . If Jussie Smollett is found to be a liar he needs to answer for his acts in a court of law. One lesson is that we need to withhold judgement until more facts are known, but we really need to believe victims of any violent crime. This case makes that harder. Where do we go from here?
6
I guess Jussie Smollett joins Tawana Brawley in the annals of false allegations of racist attacks. The next time someone claims he or she is the victim of a racist or homophobic attack, will we just roll our eyes and say "just another Jussie Smollett"? I guess Jussie accomplished his goal of getting more attention for himself, at the risk of a serious disservice to his community and victims of real attacks.
14
"Fishy Details"?-Maybe in hindsight-but upfront-not really. What's appalling is that "law enforcement sources"(Name Them) told CNN that investigators(Specific?) now believed that Mr. Smollet paid two acquaintances to stage the attack.
Really? Where's the video? It's also stated they rehearsed with Mr. Smollet? This is beyond reckless accusation. Prove it. And if you can prove with video what else are authorities watching that isn't exposed as Smollet. That is Racist............
@TWShe Said Nothing about this made any sense from the jump. So yes "fishy details." And it's not an accusation when a statement is taken from a witness. It's a witness statement.
4
This a mental health issue plain and simple. The guy needs help for attention seeking actions.
4
I was puzzled by the Smollett's face during his post-'attack' interviews. We've seen how people beaten by powerful thugs look like: swollen lips, broken noses and jaws, bloody eye sockets, etc...
6
The article was pointless and dangerous. Listing a handful of false hate crimes only makes it easier to discount the thousands of hate crimes in our recent history. It also leads people to discount the claims of the #metoo movement, which has (finally) opened up the can of worms that is sexual harrassment and abuse in the workplace. I live in the South where neo-confederates have been emboldend by president trump's rhetoric of hate to celebrate their Civil War "heritage" and to protest the removal of statues which celebrate their fight for slavery. Hate crimes have increased since Trump was elected, and now is not the time to focus on a few misguided false claims. Related, according to the SPLC, Snce 2014, the number of hate groups has increased 20 percent.
1
Mr Rothman makes a good point when he writes:
"...There have been no similar national paroxysms amid a sharp uptick in violence targeting New York City’s Jewish population.."
Smollett is black, gay, and Jewish. While his hoax has met with massive, uncritical support by the first two groups, endlessly echoing charges of "racism", "homophobia", even "lynching", the third one has been notably silent. Has the charge of "antisemitism" gone out of fashion? Or is the sensitivity to hoax accusations higher among the third group?
4
Racism in America is passé. It is kept alive at the "progressive" (viz., socialist-lite) fringes by remnant members of the anti-discrimination industry, who long for the good ole days when millions of $$$ could be raised by invoking racism as the underlying cause of serious problems in America, most of which were real, some not so much. The real ones have mostly been cured, primarily by the profit motive, which makes it more profitable not to discriminate. Civil rights laws may have helped, but in many cases they actually slowed the process of beating discrimination peacefully rather than with the government's billy club.
The glee of right wingers and ordinary Americans at the embarrassed red faces of leftistst and media talking heads is evidence that racism is passé. Poor Jussie! He has unwittingly driven a stake through a nascent revival of the racism industry among so-called "progressive" pols brought about by Donald Trump's ignorant remarks and stupid tweets.
Those Dems who played the racist card at the outset of their campaigns to unseat Trump may now wish they had chosen a less incendiary platform to run on. Several of the Dems who sought to gain by playing the race card by racing to embrace Jussie's outlandish story are now regretting their unseemly haste. Kamala Harris never looked so befuddled as when she was confronted by the media with her stupid tweet in support of Jussie's discredited story. Her faux pas may have doomed her dream of replacing Trump.
10
This is a horrible suggestion that we should meet victims of hate crimes with suspicion. It's also terrible that Rothman writes this article as though it's a given that the attack was hoax, we do not know that yet. Please consider how much cops tent to support trump and why they have a vested interest in botching the investigation.
3
@maria5553 Nobody is suggesting we meet victims of hate crimes with suspicion. The suggestion is that when a story, any story, sounds not only unlikely but in fact improbably... THAT we should meet with suspicion.
5
Between hate crimes and daily micro-aggressions rapidly rising in Trumpland, why does the author presume that bias against NYC's Jewish population does not outrage citizens of color, the LGBTQ community, women, the disabled, senior citizens, liberals, conservatives, transgender, Muslims, atheists, Protestants, Catholics, immigrants, etc.? Is this the author's own "rush to judgment" as well?
2
I live in Chicago and work mere blocks from where this incident supposedly happened. Since the first reporting of it, it smacked of fakery to me. First of all, Chicago is not even remotely "MAGA country." Chicago is so liberal that gay couples walk around holding hands (which makes me very happy--I'm glad it's safe to do that where I live). Second, it was so brutally cold the night this happened that even the most bored Midwestern Republican with time on his hateful hands would have been indoors. Third, any angry hick bent on mayhem that lived outside the city wouldn't even have known where to park his pickup here. These types don't just wander into Chicago. Fourth, Mr. Smollett refused to hand over his phone to help the police with a timeline of the supposed crimes; if it had happened to me, I wouldn't be able to give my phone to the cops fast enough. Fifth, said cell phone, when finally turned over to police, had large parts of its call log deleted. Sixth, that tiny smudge on his face is supposed to be proof of a "brutal beating"? Say what? I could go on, but this Mr. Smollett's story is pure fabrication, and the guy needs psychiatric help. I didn't believe a word from the beginning.
14
This just reveals that we need to stop demonizing AND idealizing people just because of their race, sexual orientation, or political affiliation.
I'm a gay guy who grew up in the foster care system, but it has become almost impossible for an independent thinker such as myself to pose any questions related to race, gender, sexual orientation if it doesn't completely comply with party line as determined by media outlets, twitter warriors, or grandstanding public figures.
14
Please do not forget to mention Covington and the Catholic kids. As Arthur Schlesinger wrote, anti-Catholicism is the last bastion of acceptable prejudice in America. If it is anti-Catholic it is ok. Hmm. What was it about the dogma running deep inside some judge, another being quizzed about the Knights of Columbus, and then there was that Kavanaugh thing.
11
@Thomas Smithson
Enough with the “anti-Catholic” nonsense. U.S. Catholics are not discriminated against, oppressed, or otherwise inconvenienced. Criticism is not oppression, especially when it is well deserved. I say this as a practicing Catholic of many decades. If you are referring to objections to Amy Coney Barrett, I once belonged to the People of Praise, of which she is a member, and it is definitely a cult. You may be okay with a member of a cult on the Supreme Court, but I am not. That is not “anti-Catholic bias”, it is simple good sense.
2
Whatever Mr. Smollett's intentions were, the real tragedy here is that Chicago police officers have had to diligently spend tiime investigating this criminal act while African Americans are gunned down on the streets of Chicago every single day. Yet politicians and newspapers don't seem to want to deal or expose that crisis enough and deliberate on finding real solutions to a hugely impactful problem. I guess minority-on-minority crime is just not "sexy" enough to recieve adequate coverage...like this trivial story.
10
I never watched "Empire" just as I never watched Rosanne Barr. I don't follow either one and never heard of this actor until this incident.
I do know that there was quite a bit of outrage and that Roseanne was fired from her show and all other contracts immediately cut-off.
The same should happen her with Mr. Smollett (although it appears that he should also be criminally prosecuted). All recording contracts and any acting contracts that he has should be immediately cut off. The politicians and the media should apologize for blindly supporting his false claims.
In general, they should stop the false outrage, it hurts the credibility of all that display it. I am hopeful that there will be a day when people will simply consider themselves Americans and respect each other regardless of race, gender, religion, etc.
I, for one, will cheer the day when politicians, the media, the social organizers and everyday Americans go back to putting our Country first instead of putting shallow, often hysterical micro-identity issues first. I believe it is this mentality that is dividing our country, not any one party or politician.
18
I think the anxiety of persecution this op/ed piece evokes is overstated. Laughably so. This crops up a lot when discussing (read: DISMISSING) social policy and movements. With MeToo, we immediately turn to the fate of wrongly accused men. We know that 1 in 5 women in this country will be raped in their lifetimes, and that the majority of sexual assaults (63%, Rennison 2002) are never even reported. Yet, news coverage is dominated by anecdotes of falsely accused men, which while distressing, is a far less prevalent phenomenon (studies cite a range between 2-8% of assault allegations to be "unfounded"). It's the same thing when we discuss affirmative action. We fixate over the white student who might be losing a spot at a university, taking the systemic racism black students still encounter somewhat for granted.
My point is, coverage like this usually relies on anecdotal accounts, and isn't commensurate with long term trends demonstrating the presence of entrenched inequalities. Let's not kid ourselves... racial and sexual minorities in this country don't have to stage or fabricate acts of violence against themselves to prove they are persecuted. We know they are persecuted! Using episodes like the Smollet case or the tragic death of Jazmine Barnes to discredit the realities of violence and inequality for racial and sexual minorities... is problematic at best. At worst it's plain racist.
Let's not be laggards in our larger quest for justice and call it patience.
5
@Thomas
How about ZERO patience with those who are found to make false accusations and serious repercussions for doing so. Does that fit with your "larger quest for justice"?
10
@Thomas Actually, according to the FBI, black on white assaults and murders outnumber white on black assaults and murders.
3
@Pono
If it is determined Jussie Smollet did make false allegations, then I hope he is held accountable. Episodes like this don't constitute the norm though, and should not be used to obscure the very real persecution racial and sexual minorities face in this country.
2
Remember "It's Guiliani time"? It sounded maximally nasty, and Abner Louima recanted five months later.
Last year a girl reported that a vicious attacker twice ripped off her hijab on the way to school in Toronto. As with the New York case, the story was all over TV news and front pages for a few days. Then she, too, recanted.
I seem to notice that when someone alleges an attack in the form of a cruel, brazen, clear, shocking and dramatic statement of contempt and control, there's a good chance it will be found to be false. It's the brazenness and shocking drama, or melodrama, that most gives it away.
I also think it's inexperienced and weak-minded people who both make such claims and believe them readily.
15
There was a similar case of false accusations back in my home town a few years ago where a star player on the women's basketball team accused assailants of a homophobic based attack and physical abuse. All made up. It is sad because it sets back the cause of civil rights and raises suspicion about legitimate reports of such crimes.
10
Kudos to the New York Times for publishing this politically-incorrect essay. I hope they continue to spotlight and follow up on this fiasco. Many other print and cable mainstream media outlets are predictably dropping this incident like a hot potato. The initial reactions of several star politcians and entertainers confirm that politically correct ideology--with its fixation on race and gender and its running critique of American society (and especially Trump voters) as deeply bigoted -still has a powerful grip on this nation.
16
Surely there are enough crimes inspired by bigotry that no one need invent them. Inventing such crimes seems a symptom of some sort of mental disturbance, which, in itself, is a sad thing.
2
Maybe it's time Americans as a whole, take a step back and do some soul searching? Both the left and the right have fostered an atmosphere of by hook or by crook to push their agendas, all the while decrying the extremist underpinnings of the other. Perhaps both are equally to blame on their lax self governing and haphazard methodology of achieving their end goal at any cost. The irony of the whole thing is that we have been at war in the middle east for almost 20 years now (this time around), justifying the whole quagmire with the constant mantra of "elimination of the extremist terrorists!" As I said, soul searching time anyone?
2
What are the figures for robberies, assaults, murders and other violent crimes, sorted by races of victims and perpetrators?
4
Actually it "happens" that the democrats and Marxist Left have been terrorizing our society into submission in order to get their way with false accusations of hate crime murders (Zimmerman/Martin case) and sexual assaults (admitted to be false sex assault accusations at Harvard and other colleges), and of course thousands have had their reputations ruined because they were branded as anti Semitic for daring to disagree with the Zionist position on an
issue or a Jewish person about virtually anything. And at level in society where common people live, we have been subjected to a work place Inquisition where particularly white males have been under a constant threat of being accused of some kind of usually vague crime of daring to disagree with, or not submitting to the bullying of some egomaniac women (usually from a privileged background) or a minority person for decades..
14
The paradigm shift to post racial America was demonstrated clearly by the election twice of a man who identified as black to be our executive leader in our highest office. His reign was competent, dignified and not without missteps. The pinnacle of a historical arc towards progress. The law and ethic of nation now stands firm.
Yet the cry’s of perceived racial victimization continued unabated, sometimes justifiable, but mostly displaying the scars of history and infamy. Inability to confront trauma, incandescent poverty and personal failure still burns some citizens.
Memory is deep.
1
This article would have been better and more helpful had it emphasized that most reports of crime, especially hate crimes and those of sexual assault, are valid and should not be discounted as hoaxes. There are some hoaxes, a fact that should be remembered as we evaluate alleged crimes. However, the danger I see in many comments is that they will now view the exception of hoaxes as the rule, to the detriment and injury of real crime victims.
5
This country has always had to struggle, sometimes successfully, sometimes not, with a whole host of basic challenges that our health and duty as a citizenry require that we attend to. At this point, anyone who thinks these factors are best handled (or can even marginally addressed) by either celebrities or any sort of mass media is simply postponing any chance we have for national healing. We have binged on fantasy and fallacy for the better part of a century now, and we simply are not going to be able to drink ourselves sober.
1
Hoaxes involving feigned racial attacks should be treated as serious racial hate crimes and punished accordingly.
Racial attack hoaxes add a dimension not present in an actual racial hate crime. In the latter, there's usually one direct victim. (That's one too many, of course.) In the former, all of society is a direct victim, as racial polarization intensifies and fear of other people increases.
If this is a hoax, this guy should serve a year or more in prison.
Moreover, the way Senators Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders, and Corey Booker credulously swallowed this dubious tale, rushing to judgment at the outset, calls into question their fitness for the presidency. Harris and Booker are lightweights anyway and not much should be expected of them, but Sanders's quick reaction is disappointing.
14
Then one evening as the sun was setting behind the forest and the shadows where creeping out over the pasture, a wolf really did spring from out of the underbrush and fall upon the sheep!
8
If he faked it then he lied to all of us and he should and will be punished one way or another. His career will most certainly be over. But everybody quoted here who came to his defense was correct "given the facts that they had." The only person we should assume is lying is Don Trump. Mostly everybody else outside of his immediate circle should be given the benefit of the doubt.
Nobody should be penalized for coming out against violence perpetrated in the name of hate. I could easily have written an entire article about the silly things said on the opposite side of the aisle.
This is just another typical conservative "we're so picked on even though we're really nice people" lame arguments. If you want people to really believe that you're nice you should have your president take his rallies off TV.
2
Thousands of real hate crimes happen every year, but sure, let's devote all of our attention to the handful of fake ones.
3
I recall the CNN commentary after the full details came out of the incident with the young man and the elder native American in front of the Lincoln Memorial. They preached that the news media should use caution before reporting such events. The pot calling the kettle black.
7
"Rush to judgment" is just a nice way of saying "mob mentality". An instantaneous emotional reaction to a horrible, alleged crime triggers calls for action that, in the past, led to lynchings. Hesitation in joining the mob, such as a call to wait until the facts are known, is condemned. After the truth is known, none of those who led the mob will even think of apologizing, just as in the case of so many lynchings in the past. The rabble-rousers will just wait for the next opportunity to claim that they are the true representatives of justice.
10
The immediate fevered reaction of Democrats like Harris and Booker to the Smollett story show that they too unfortunately lack the sober judgement a lot of us desperately want to see returned to the oval office. The sad collateral damage of this sorry episode is that it only helps Trump's re-election chances. Trump is eminently beatable but the Democrat's tendency to shoot themselves in the foot at every opportunity (abolishing air travel in ten years anyone? the government paying for your gender studies degree?) is a gift to Trump that they insist on giving and giving.
9
Thank you New York Times for publishing this much needed piece. Please take note of the comments here. Readers want more of this, much more. Readers also want the reporting to follow the principles espoused here.
21
My husband and I were skeptical from the beginning. It just had a ring of untruth to it, but we waited before we voiced our thoughts, even to each other. The story sounded fishy (MAGA hats in Chicago, he still had the rope on, etc) but mostly, when the photo of the 2 possible perpetrators appeared, you could tell by the dress and demeanor that these were not white guys with any kind of hat similar to MAGA hats on their heads. And lastly, Jussie is just plain a bad actor....when he spoke publicly, it was clear he was lying. Glad the truth is slowly coming out. Sad that he will probably be arrested soon and charged with a crime.
15
Racism is bad. Faking racism even worse. Booker, Harris and Sanders immediately jumped on the lynching bandwagon. But all of a sudden when the police announce it was all a hoax all these candidates go radio silent. Are they ignoring the truth and playing to their base...like someone else we know?
18
I'm a gay black male in a relationship with a white male and we immediately thought something about this attack didn't add up when we heard what happened.
13
This morning, I saw a report that the Chicago PD had issued a statement saying that reports that it was a hoax are not confirmed. http://www.fox35orlando.com/entertainment/chicago-pd-denies-investigation-into-whether-empire-star-s-alleged-attack-was-staged
Perhaps the author should do as he counsels and wait for the facts before he decides what it all means.
1
@Heather
The report you linked was published on February 14th. That's two days before detectives shifted their investigation.
6
You know, just once I'd like a writer to look at a case like this and say, "You know, I'd really rather wait a few months or years before writing a piece on this topic." Or, if asked to write a piece by a newspaper, say, "You know, I'd really rather wait a few months or years before writing a piece on this topic."
Then we wouldn't have quite so many rushes to judgment.
1
I am a bit shocked that you would comment on this case before anything truly conclusive is found; both sides are denying. In this way you contribute to the problem you describe.
1
This: "This case is an object lesson in what happens when people in positions of political and cultural authority abandon critical thinking and pressure those who don’t abandon their circumspection under pain of being smeared as bigots."
I am reminded of another, recent incident - although much less serious - where overeager social media called out Katy Perry's shoes for displaying blackface and only showed the black shoe in the line. People jumped to the usual outrage without doing the work to learn that this particular shoe was made in 7-8 colors besides black and her/her design team's intention was not to glamorize blackface, but just make a fun shoe that had an abstract looking face.
She unequivocally apologizing right away and pulled all of those shoes from sale because that's what she probably felt pressured to do. Heaven forbid she had attempted to defend herself. The internet would have cancelled her career and the media would've jumped on the bandwagon.
To be clear actual, intended blackface is WRONG. And I consider myself a liberal, feminist, and Democrat, but the pendulum has swung too far. People are addicted to being outraged. It has got to stop and we have to focus our energies on something more productive that will make a tangible difference.
12
I noted at the time when NBC first reported this story that at least on their networks there was an expression of reservation
and skepticism about what happened; I wondered how things would play out. Noah Rothman, the conservative media personality, lectures on the opinion page of the NY Times.
That is a bad outcome.
4
@howard williams Why is the publication of differing viewpoints a "bad outcome"?
2
“Noah Rothman (@noahcrothman) is the associate editor of Commentary magazine and the author of “Unjust: Social Justice and the Unmaking of America.”
Hmm...yes, I see.
I had no idea who Jussie Smollett was until this incident, and I have not followed it. However, it appears Smollett has not been arrested or charged in any crimes such as obstruction of justice or falsely reporting a crime. But there is remarkable degree of lack of self-awareness and hypocrisy in those who condemn “rush to judgment” against white offenders are very quick to condemn Smollett.
6
I'm among those who detected a distinctly piscine odour in Smollett's story from the get-go. In retrospect, I'm surprised not that the 'hate crime' is almost certainly a fraud, but that it's so transparent and clumsy a scheme. Seems to me the cops were overly cautious in their credulity, because Smollett had not one but two social justice cards to play, black and LGBTQ.
I'm old enough to remember Tawana Brawley and the Duke Lacrosse Team. Not to mention the Indian drummer and the kid in the MAGA hat. (And to have read 'To Kill a Mockingbird'; would the 'Me Too' movement have invoked 'believe the victims!' on behalf of the accuser in that novel? Or, in the hierarchy of victimization, does 'black' trump 'woman'?)
Self-styled victim advocates ask, 'why would s/he lie?' But in a culture that rewards victimhood, assesses self-worth in terms of 'likes' and YouTube views, posits celebrity as the ultimate good, promotes jumping on bandwagons, and embraces slogans as a substitute for thought -- my glory, with so much incentive to lie, why wouldn't he?
Very young children think objects cease to exist when they aren't looking at them. Adults seem to think the same of their very selves. Weep not for Jussie Smollett; in his line of work, no publicity is bad publicity, and the reports all spell his name correctly. I do, though, feel sorry for legitimate victims who will face that much greater skepticism when they come forward.
18
Certainly some people overlooked a few of the details that seems odd from the start, I know they struck me as strange but I kept an open mind while it was investigated. Being a journalist that's what I try to do, wait until more facts comes in. But in this age of immediate reporting few including the media outlets remember to do this.
Setting aside some bias that we all inevitably have though, the reason that so many people believed this attack is that it was not only possible, it was very probable given the atmosphere of hate we live in and that our President adds to every day.
Sadly, whatever twisted reason Smollett had for making up this story, he only made things worse for all of those truly being targeted in this country for their race, sexual orientation, religion, or nationality. Hate crimes are on the rise and his stunt will only serve to empower those who commit them and those who try to deny that these acts of hate actually happen.
3
Let this be a lesson in Due Process. Specifically, the way media attention and public hysteria conspire to undermine it. This case is mirrored by many Me-Too allegations which ruin lives and careers without benefit of trial.
20
A decent column until the author suggests (with no supporting data) that hate crimes are on the rise in the Trump era. There is simply no evidence for that. The anti-defamation league report that was published in April of 2017 shows an actual decline in actual physical attacks against Jews and the pattern of reported hate crimes peak early in 2017 and have declined to lower than 2016 levels by the end of 2017. Many of the acts labeled as hate crimes during the peak in 2017 were the work of a single individual --an Israeli national -- who called in threats to Jewish community centers.
There has also been an increase in the number of police agencies that are reporting hate crimes which would naturally lead to an increase in the number of reported hate crimes.
Further, as most people understand, hate crimes rely on self-report. An individual's sensitivity to hate crimes may vary depending on the overall political climate. If it is believed that radical groups are out to get a particular group, then members of that group may increase their sensitivity to and observation of hate crimes.
It is important not to rush to get on the bandwagon when events like Smollett's occur, or like Covington. It's also important not to accept as true data that supports your belief system, unless that data has been thoroughly examined and is based on strong research.
12
A number of members of both the black and LGBT community have come out to say that if this was a hoax, it plays right into the hands of the far right, who will use it to discredit all claims of racism and anti-gay hatred in America, while scoring political points on behalf of extremists ghouls like Trump.
Rothman proves their fears were very well founded.
A disgraceful (though entirely predictable) opinion from our friends at Commentary.
4
Interesting how the Right gets blamed, somehow, every time the
Left fouls up... “De Debil made me do it!” It’s all part of the media-contolled
narrative and the master plan to confuse Americans away from their own
common sense and to supplant it with hysteria, innuendo, false claims,
“guilty until proven innocent,” and other traditionally un-American
means practiced so commonly now by the Left. The Left is using
the man in the White House as an excuse to move the country farther to the Left
and further into socialist doctrine than is warranted, needed, or is safe
for democracy. There is no such thing as a Democratic Socialist, people,
and the moniker is as absurd as North Korea being officially called the
Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. For the love of God, wake up and question.
9
@VoiceofAmerica
"Rothman proves their fears were very well founded. "
The fears that the society will find social justice warriors use racist tropes and hoaxes to mobilize and score political points? Booker, Harris and Pelosi were certainly happy to use the Smollet incident for political gain.
6
My wife is a therapist, and I am a lawyer, and we have often had reason to discuss (in general, of course) whether victims "should be believed." After several such discussions, I have concluded that there is no single right answer that is independent of context. When a criminal complaint is being pursued, we have a time-honored tradition of presuming the innocence of the accused. Criminal sanctions are serious and procedural safeguards are necessary. But the same standard should not apply to social work and therapy practice, where it is not the function of the practitioner to allocate responsibility and dole out punishment. There the heuristic of belief acknowledges the pain that either resulted from the assault or prompted its invention or exaggeration, and the alliance between the practitioner and the client/victim is more likely to unfold truth over time than an investigatory mode. But it is difficult to maintain sensitivity for context when politics is totalizing and media reactions are immediate.
8
This is such a shame, when so many real victims are not believed. He is such a talented actor and I loved this program from day 1, but now I have lost all respect for him and can no longer bring myself to support “Empire”. There was absolutely no reason to justify what he did. What he’s really done is put real victims in a more precarious position, having to prove their victimization beyond a shadow of a doubt. He should be made to pay dearly for what he did, and Fox should remove this program from its lineup. He should be severely fined and spend time in jail, just as though he was the victimizer - which in reality, he is.
11
I just can't understand the thought process it takes to orchestrate a hoax hate crime like this. Requires a demented mind - imagine deciding that you want to make yourself the victim of a fake crime in the first place, and then planning out and executing the details. What do you think would come of it? Do you really think that the truth will never come out? How desperate for attention do you have to be?! It really boggles the mind. Sad, really.
13
@Nick "Narcissistic personality disorder includes symptoms such as poor self identity, inability to appreciate others, entitlement, lack of authenticity, need for control, intolerance of the views/opinions of others, emotional detachment, grandiosity, lack of awareness or concern regarding the impact of their behavior, minimal emotional reciprocity, and a desperate need for the approval and positive attention of others."
2
@Nick that is part of the reason I still believe him until it is proven otherwise, it is not as this article and the many liberal bashing commenters here proven that this was a hoax.
You know, the really sad part of this story is that Smollett was simply channeling our so-called president: make up anything you like, feed it to your gullible and reverent base, and you'll very likely get away with it.
Such are the times we live in...
5
@Seth Hall I despise Trump. But when I read your comment, I rolled my eyes: I just *knew* somehow, someone would find some way to blame it on Trump, because isn't Trump the root of all evil?
Untrue allegations are as old as Homo sapiens. They are not limited to any political party, race, sex or gender or orientation or ethnicity. What about Charles Stuart, Rob Marshall, Susan Smith? All middle-class whites who fabricated tales of black assailants to cover their own conspiracy in the murder of inconvenient family members. Marshall hired a hit man to kill his wife; Stuart and Smith did the deed themselves. I well remember Smith sobbing on TV, begging for help in finding the armed black man who'd stolen her car with her two young sons in it. She later confessed to pushing the car into a lake with the children in it, drowning them, because the man she was seeing didn't want children. Marshall had a mistress. Stuart wanted to collect on life insurance.
In literature, you can find fake claims as far back as Shakespeare, the Greeks, the Bible. The literary cases likewise warn against unconditional credulity. Perhaps Ronald Reagan (who I didn't admire or support) had the best advice (quoting, of all things, a Russian proverb!): Trust, but verify.
12
@ACW
Please don't misinterpret my comment as trying to make Trump a scapegoat; rather, my intention was to draw attention to how far off the rails even we have gone, "we" including even the President of the United States, in terms of intentionally misleading the credulous, the ill-informed, etc.
Unfortunately, the reality is that lots of people will in fact take their lead from our Liar and Misogynist in Chief making the national problem of misplaced blame only worse.
While there are certainly many people doing despicable things (Marshal, Smith, Stuart, McConnell, Nunes, Bezos, Spitzer, the list is endless), it is especially troubling to many of us when arguably one of the most powerful figures in the public view, both engages in and champions such bad, uncivilized, and immoral behavior.
2
@Seth Hall Point taken. However, I'm a little too young to remember first-hand the days of Tailgunner Joe McCarthy, whose equally baseless and reckless allegations of Commies in high places destroyed careers and lives. (That there might actually have been some Communist sympathisers in government doesn't justify his fabrications, any more than the fact that there are real hate crimes justifies or mitigates Smollett's apparent fraud.) This is not the first time 'we' have gone off the rails, nor even the first 'liar and misogynist' in the White House.
It's tempting to long for the good old days of honest American decency, honesty, and level-headedness; but more likely 'things ain't what they used to be -- they never were'. Trump may be simply the most blatant, and most recent, expression of our basest tendencies. He has a knack for bringing out the worst in almost everyone; it is his main, if not his sole, talent.
1
Thanks for actually reporting real news
13
There is nothing untoward about thinking about these cases critically, on a case-by-case basis when they reach public light.
As the author rightly notes, nearly nothing in Smollett's version of events seemed to make sense. Racist, #MAGA idiots patrolling the streets of downtown Chicago amidst one of the coldest weather events in history there? The notion that someone would leave their apartment for a Subway sandwich at such an hour during such a weather event in the first place?
To the author's point, the danger that this story exposes is that thinking critically about such events from the off is now enough to have oneself be labeled racist or bigoted. This is an indeed an indictment of the American character which has been rushing to treat other human beings as *opponents* in some grand ideological war, which is a phenomena that started well before Trump came down his own escalator in 2015 to announce his run for the GOP nomination.
I share the concern with the author that this entire Smollett episode shines light on the symptoms of this larger problem society has been unable to cope with for well over a decade.
12
The real story is how the media gave this overwhelming coverage. Same with the Houston drive by shooting, until it was revealed the shooter was black.
Where's the follow-up on the assassination of 2 Muslims in Queens? Media dropped that story like a hissing puff adder when the perp turned out to be Hispanic.
Ditto for the beating death in Guttenberg NJ.
23
From the outset, this story seemed implausible. On a bitterly cold very early morning, a young and famous celebrity wants a (cold) sandwich from a local eatery. He ventures forth, alone, to return to his point of departure with a rope around his neck. No security cameras show his presence, the situation or his return.
If this has been concocted for who knows what reason, it does not diminish the violence and frequency of ever present hate crimes in the USA.
Sadly, if it is proven to have been staged, it besmirches the pain and trauma of those who have suffered such violence, and will sink this young man's promising career.
Que la lumière soit faite.
5
The rush to judgment through the indulging of biases is not limited to people in positions of political and cultural authority. Recall the December 2018 shooting of the 7-year old African American girl Jazmine Barnes in Houston, where there was a rush to judgment by local residents against the white driver of a car that happened to be in the vicinity but who, as it turns out, had nothing to do with the shooting, (later determined to have been committed by a young African-American man).
Look before you leap (to conclusions) is sound advice for anyone who is prepared to issue an opinion about something of which they have no personal knowledge. (That goes for us commenters as well)
502
@Chip
I believe Tony is mistaken. Two black men were arrested in connection with the shooting. Just google the shooting.
7
Why does it seem that all publicized incidents of racial, ethnic or lifestyle prejudice seems to come from the right and to victimize the left? And when so many of these incidents are discovered to be hoaxes, the absence of regret for defaming innocent alleged perpetrators is noteworthy.
The fact is that so much of the media and the liberal wing of the Democratic Party are chomping at the bit to blame any incident of prejudice on Trump & his followers, or on groups that may support conservative issues. A case in point is the vituperation cast upon the innocent members of the Louisville Catholic High School that happened to be on the Washington Mall in support of pro-life policies. These conservative Catholic boys were demonized unfairly by the media and pro-choice leftists for simply being there. No apology has been forthcoming for the damage done to that school.
It appears that the political tribalism of America has reached a point where allegations of bias are presumed true so long as they are committed by members of the conservative groups in America. We need to wait & see before rushing to judgment when the national media selects these racial & sexual incidents for our judgment out of thousands of newsworthy incidents that occur in this country every day.
14
@JAM Absurd. The statistics are there for anyone to read. The exponential rise in hate crimes directly attributable to Trump is a fact. Indeed, his entire presidency can justly be described as a hate crime, as his thousands of victims along the border—many of them, children—will attest.
3
@VoiceofAmerica There may be a rise in hate crimes, but it's mostly against whites, not against African Americans.
Go back and review the NYT’s breathless reporting on the “assault”. It would be nice if they returned to old-fashioned journalism and performed some background analysis before accepting the accuser’s story. And we wonder why Trump screams “fake news”...
19
I think he deserves at least 6 months/1 year incarcerated to think about this. This was so premeditated of a fraud that it's borderline criminal psychotic behavior. Would he have succeeded if he could have killed someone in a fake self defense hoax?? He is definitely a criminal.
6
The fact that one person, for whatever reason, has apparently filed a false police report, should not reflect on the entire nation. If this is a false flag exercise, it does tremendous harm to the real victims of hate crime.
Jussie should be charged and jailed if this proves to be a charade. The Chicago police have plenty to do without chasing false hate crimes.
3
Of the many sad outcomes of hoaxes like this is the potential that we will start thinking that even real attacks are "boy who called wolf" creations and ignore them. Like fake news, we now also have to deal with fake victims. The world we live in is becoming fantasy fiction.
2
Mr. Rothman is critical of people for accepting reports of hate crimes that meet their preconceived expectations. Sadly, with 7106 hate crime incidents reported by the FBI in 2017 (the most recent year available) those preconceived expectations are not far off the mark.
We're all Bayesians at heart, and when the priors are meaningful it makes sense that we use them.
3
Being progressive does not make you virtuous. The left is precisely as allergic to facts, stats, and due process as the right, even as they crow about right wing stupidity, hostility to climate science, etc. Different facts, same partisan blindness. The left has really jumped the shark over the last two ridiculous years of Trump and #MeToo.
14
If you want to see a fictional rush to judgement, I suggest you watch the superb movie, The Guilty.
2
There’s no reason to invent hate crimes by racist right-wingers and Trump followers when we tragically already have Pittsburgh, Charlottesville, Charleston, Tallahassee and god knows what the next one will be. White supremacists and other far-right extremists have killed far more people since Sept. 11, 2001, than any other category of domestic extremist.
3
I posted early on that people should pump the brakes a bit on this one, as it didn't seem to pass the smell test when scrutinized, and I was shouted down on boards as being, "not progressive, but regressive".
I'm old enough to have lived thru the Tawana Brawley charade, and then lived thru the following years to observe the damage that one false charge laid bare. Al Sharpton still can't fully remove the stench.
What this sociopath was thinking...into today's hyper-inflated celebrity world, you can't just be an gay actor on a hit network show, you have to be a gay icon who's not-gonna-take-it.
Every actual attack to come will be dismissed as fake news and point to that "Empire liar". He has to have been a totally absorbed little punk to not see the damage he has done, and will continue to do long after he has been fired and forgotten.
13
Lock Mr Smollett away for a long time.
4
Don't we have enough real racists without conjuring up 'fake' racists?
7
I'm old enough to remember the media frenzy created by Al Sharpton holding rallies to decry racism based on the allegations of a teenaged Tawana Brawley that she was raped by a white lawyer. All false.Horrible hoax. Now he is demanding for justice for those involved in this racially divisive hoax. How ironic. It seems that only those with no knowledge of even recent history think we have arrived at a new low, which of course, involves Trump. Think again.
12
It's no surprise that so many people so vocally believe any accusation they hear; our society is descending further each day into a bestial barbarism, where everyone seems to want to utterly annihilate someone, anyone - and are constantly ready to pounce upon the vaguest accusation in order to vent their rage. No one seems to be interested in rehabilitation, or in any positive, helpful reaction to problematic behavior.
4
Taking accusations seriously: yes.
Believing without evidence: no.
15
So much of our political dialogue is about peddling outrage. We learn something terrible the other side has done and we grab our pitchforks and storm the gates.
This article is really just a redressing of this script. Justin Smollett wanted us to be outraged at Trump supporters ( I have serious doubts about his story). Noah Rothman wants us to be outraged at liberal politicians who went along. And the show goes on.
5
Incidents like this, the Tawana Brawley case, the Duke lacrosse players, and the bizarrely incredulous stories of sexual assault against Brett Kavanaugh (and I'm not referring to Christine Blasey-Ford) make it doubly difficult for real victims to receive justice. When there is clear evidence of false claims of assault, the burden of proof (already high since in the US there is a presumption of innocence) becomes even higher.
9
@J. Waddell I'm glad you brought up Kavanaugh, because that one raises so many issues. Do I believe Ford? I believe Ford believes her story, but that's not the same as it being true. However, when people pointed out the fuzzy areas and potential holes in her story, her advocates upped the ante. Now we went beyond a drunken assault to multiple assailants and victims, to accounts in which apparently frat boys were lined up to take turns in a debauch that rivalled the Rome of Caligula. Ford's 'supporters' undermined her claims -- which, at this juncture, were unprovable -- and did her, and the cause of assault victims, more harm than good.
Just follow any comment thread that deteriorates into a flame war to see how someone who becomes overly emotionally invested, and who experiences any criticism, doubt or questioning as unendurable humiliation, blusters, hunkers down, digs in, doubles down and escalates. They perhaps hadn't entered into the war with intent to exaggerate or fabricate in support of their arguments, but they spiral out of control and retreat into hyperbole, stereotypes, outright abuse. I've seen it happen even on the moderated NYT comment threads supposedly inhabited by mature intellectual types (and been a target more than once).
Thomas Jefferson advised, 'when angry, count to ten before you speak. If very angry, count to one hundred'. I add: Use that hundred to marshal evidence and logic, and put your brain in charge rather than your heart, gut or spleen.
1
The song and dance by the brothers involved reminds one of when a woman says rape, the rapist alleges the sex was consensual. Yes, sometimes the sex is consensual but I'm guessing that the majority of time, its rape. Assuming Jessie made this up, the brothers and Jessie need to be prosecuted.
I don’t think we should be at all surprised by the rush to judgment in our current climate. Everyone is on edge. A synagogue full of worshippers was attacked for no reason, we are seeing an increase in hate crime everywhere. The administration is encouraging violence and xenophobia, saying that Muslims should not be allowed in the country. We are seeing more white supremacists coming out in the open with no shame. We are seeing dedicated and brave people banned from serving their country in the military. On and on.
Should we be surprised by an anxious population reaction?
3
I think we underestimated Trump’s “brilliance” when he said that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it. When someone says something so blatantly authoritarian and gets elected everyone who voted for him admired him for that. They continue to do so. Frankly, that is what they chiefly admire. “He ain’t scared of nobody “ People who think they can get down and dirty with that man, will not come away unscathed just as he has poisoned every life he has personally touched. They will also lose. We continue to do so with self-righteous vitriol to make us feel better about old ideas that are more clearly different than Trump than from the past. That way we are defined by Trump. A smorgasbord of wishes will not succeed. The Democratic Party needs to be more inclusive. That is what will differentiate ourselves from Republicans.
1
Maybe it was just me but when it was stated that he made his way back to his residence with the noose still hanging around his neck I found the story to be suspect.
The first thing I would have done after an attack would have been to remove the noose.
8
While lecturing people not to indulge their biases, Roth an puts his own right-wing bias on full display. Multiple cherry-picked examples from the Left but only one mention drawn from the Right, and that followed by another partisan attack on the Left. The standard Republican propaganda tactic of their Commentariat is to pretend they are giving equal scrutiny to both sides while doing nothing of the sort. There are dozens of sins of bias to be seen among right-wingers every day. Tens of millions of Republicans have suspended not just their disbelief when Fox, or any other right-wing propaganda outlet, tells them Obama, Hillary, Pelosi, or fill-in-the-blank with the name of any Democrat, committed a crime, but also any willingness to accept the results of any investigation when it clears them (Benghazi, anyone?). Yet, somehow, Rothman can only find it within himself to criticize the Left. That is pure, unadulterated, unexamined bias.
3
In 2016, the NYT ran a glowing portrait of Smollett & his sister under the headline, "The Smollett Family Business: Acting and Activism" that revealed this:
"The Smolletts have also been outspoken politically and, since their school years, devoted to causes like H.I.V./AIDS prevention and ending apartheid" (which the NYT didn't note ended when these kids were nine & 12). "They were raised in the orbit of the Black Panthers and, lately, have lent their voices to the Black Lives Matter movement. Their trajectory, from child stars to successful adults, is born of their family and its history of activism...
"... Jussie and Jurnee still count their mother, Janet Smollett, as their only acting coach... “My mom was in the movement with Bobby Seale and Huey Newton, and one of her first mentors was Julian Bond,” Mr. Smollett said of the Black Panther founders and the civil rights leader. “To this day, Angela Davis is one of her dearest friends...”
Maybe growing up in a family where "downtime was just another chance for performance" & activism was closely tied to attention-seeking, name-dropping & grandiosity wasn't such a good idea after all.
In one of his music videos - filmed in Soweto, it announces at the start - Jussie makes himself out to be Nelson Mandela.
And as I write this, his Twitter bio still says, sans irony, "I am simply here to help save the world."
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/13/arts/television/the-smollett-family-business-acting-and-activism.html
11
This case is highly unusual in that we're actually still talking about it, even after the "victim" has been shown to be a liar. After stoking fear over alleged hate incidents, the media always buries the story when it's revealed to be a hoax, and it inevitably disappears down the collective memory hole. Remember these?
https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1097020092791934976
4
When I first heard of this, I had a tendency to believe it. Racism has raised it ugly head in the Era of Trump. White people all over the world are running scared that they are outnumbered and will soon disappear in the masses of brown people. This has changed their politics, and the borders of their countries. Nationalism has created new walls where walls have not existed before. Suspicion of motives, political and otherwise are rampant in all our media, on the right, and on the left. This skepticism is central to the subject of the veracity of Jussie Smollett's account of the events that transpired. I soon became disturbed when it came out that he was not allowing the police to check his call logs. Red flags popped up. His live comments on television about his refusal to be transparent about his phone sunk his story for me. He should spend some time in jail for this. What he has done, is to me, worse than if he had been a mugger racist low life. He has done much damage to people who actually ARE assaulted.
2
If it is true that this is a hoax, he should be condemned and prosecuted...so that we can get back to applying the same standards to the so-called POTUS.
Most of the comments here are missing the point.
Yes, hoaxes are terrible.
But more importantly, there *has been* a huge increase in anti-Semitic attacks, but the knee-jerk reaction is to blame Trump and his supporters. Very often, that is not who the perpetrators are.
In today's NY Times is an article about attacks on Jews in Crown Heights over the last few months, including this past weekend. Lets face it - there are very few alt-right residents or visitors to Crown Heights.
Where are the progressive protests against these attacks ?
Where are the late night hosts, and Robin Roberts ?
Sadly, there aren't any protests.
It's just not fashionable to condemn attacks on Jews, particularly when the assailants are on the left.
(Congresswoman Omar, now that you have supposedly been educated in the evils of anti-Semitism, where is your voice ?)
11
@G Another NY paper published video clips of the attacks you cite, and the attackers were young men of color. That's why there has been so little outcry, very little reporting and no objections from the left. And no one on the left cared one bit about the MURDER of Kyle Yorlets in Nashville a few weeks ago, for the same reason.
1
Dave Chappelle said it succinctly last night...
"why would anyone be walking around Chicago at 2 a.m. with a noose and why Smollett had kept the noose around his neck while he waited for police to arrive. It hurts the credibility of real victims of anti-gay and racist violence."
10
Correction: Noah Rothman, the author of “Unjust: Social Justice and the Unmaking of America," an author apparently so fiercely opposed to the social justice movement he thinks it contributes to the "unmaking" of America and praised by right-wing pundits and politicians, wastes no time in exhorting liberals for having the audacity to believe Jussie Smollett and cites one example after another of evil hoaxes by liberals, even speculating that if this crime had been committed against an Orthodox Jew, no one would care. Rothman couldn't even wait for the final result of the investigation into Smollett's story to condemn us. Well, when news of the next hate crime against a Black person or any other person, Orthodox Jew or Muslim, breaks, I will have the exact same reaction: I will believe the victim first, in spite of any eyebrow-raising details, because I have no reason NOT TO believe a purported victim. There is no lesson to be learned from believing a hoax, only from perpetrating it. Mr. Rothmann would rather we react like Donald Jr., who is turning this into a rallying cry of "Fake Liberals!," as if it were incumbent upon us Liberals to condemn all news stories of hate crimes as "fake!" from now on. A right-wing author, who had this opinion piece ready to go before the official story is even in on Smollett and who wags the finger at Liberals who believe self-described victims of hate crimes has as much of an agenda as a hoaxer.
The press, particular, should take bias crimes and police shootings into context, for we are a very big country. For every such incident, tens of millions of Americans get up, go to work, do the job together, and go home peaceably every day. For every bad cop, there are tens of thousands of good ones out there protecting the public, and doing what they can to ensure those tens of millions are able to do their jobs in a lawful society. To try to make judgments on our country because of the relatively tiny number of bad apples in the barrel is ridiculous.
101
@David Godinez
True, but, when leading public figures, politicians, etc. encourage attacks of one sort or another, these can trigger those "few" bigoted extremists. So a critique of the situation must go beyond simply mentioning the immediate attacker. And for every bad cop, there are not "tens of thousands" of good ones. Look at the statistics. And add to those statistics those other police officers who are guilty of being accessories by observing their "code of silence."
4
@Because a million died
But those bigoted few come in many stripes. Remember the Dallas police ambush by Micah Johnson who was inspired by the BLM movement to attack the police. This despite the fact that the Washington Post's tracking of police shootings showed about 1000 last year with the majority of those shot and killed by the police being white men and only 4% of victims being unarmed.
And even if we said all 1000 victims were unarmed blacks, it would still be a very low cause of mortality for African Americans. In short, even when the case in particular is based on fact not fiction, the media tends to inflame the issue and cause people to treat it as epidemic rather than an unfortunate one-off situation.
6
No comments yet, I’ll jump in. When the news about this “attack” first appeared, the Husband and I looked at one another and rolled our eyes. This is exactly the tale told by a not overly bright ten year old, when trying to shift blame and deny. Not plausible. Then, detail after detail strained credibility, defied coincidence AND Weather, and became laughingly bizarre.
This escapade was, and is, a cry for help. I’m not a psychiatrist, but it’s apparent that the author of this little morality/racism Farce needs professional help. Extreme attention seeking behavior, with incompetence in execution. With great damage to the cause of seeking justice for REAL Victims.
He should be made to pay full restitution for all Police ( i.e. taxpayer ) costs. As for his TV show, that’s up to the advertising agencies and customers.
But this show, was just another cheap, tacky, sleazy “ reality TV “ stunt. Enough. Please.
708
@Tony
I tried to keep it simple, but apparently not enough.
46
@Tony They're not wrong. I'll call it really messed up and he should talk to someone about this. How's that?
5
@Phyliss Dalmatian
Why not just list the details after details to clarify your point?
2
I first heard about the allegations of Jussie Smollett when two professors at George Mason University posted about them.
The professors were dismayed.
As is my custom I waited before reaching judgment.
In our society we tend to believe the worst about those with whom we disagree.
We also review less than critically the allegations of those whose views mirror our own.
When sensational allegations are made, a prudent person should step back without responding and see how the situation evolves.
There is no need to rush to judgment.
Just ask the Duke lacrosse team a few years ago.
Ditto for the phantom fraternity brother accused by "Jackie" at UVa. a few years ago.
5
I think to accuse any politician of writing a tweet, with the exception of #45*, is fraught with danger. Perhaps all politicians should initial the tweets they write so we'll know if they or their staffs actually wrote the tweet.
As to Mr. Smollett, I need more information to make an informed decision.
1
The world is filled with fools who immediately believe what they hear, see and/or read.
I don't know how to react to people who have little to no interest in investigating the facts. Stupid, idiotic, something else?
Remember this... all are innocent until convicted. Even with a conviction you don't know with certainty.
My suggestion? Unless you personally witnessed what took place it is probably best to keep one's mouth shut. It is ultra clear you actually know nothing about any given incident you yourself did not witness. Maybe the media is correct, maybe it isn't. At the end of the day almost no one knows any of the facts except those involved.
2
The hypervictimization movement has run out of bogeymen so it has to invent them.
14
We absolutely should believe in and trust the victims of racist and sexist attacks. And we should kick anyone to the curb who would abuse this trust.
3
@Bradley Bleck
Our legal system is based on a number of basic beliefs.
One is that an accused person is innocent until proven guilty. In order to be a juror on any criminal trial you have to honestly answer questions that ask if you have formed an opinion about the case or have any reasons why you cannot be a fair and impartial juror.
If your standard is adopted and every accuser should be believed, then no one accused of a crime would get a fair trial. Accusers of all types of crimes make mistakes about who committed crimes and they also can lie about facts of crimes that did occur and sometimes, which is well documented, they falsely claim to be a victim.
Alleged victims should receive a fair and complete investigation of an alleged crime. If the police find evidence of a crime, then the state can charge an accused person and a trial can determine, to the extent possible, what happened. That is the best way to obtain the truth about any crime and it protects the true victims and ensures accused persons are also treated fairly and that the truth is not kicked to the curb.
2
@Bradley Bleck
Even when there is no evidence of an actual attack?
1
@Jack I'm not a juror. I'm a human being who understands systemic racism and misogyny have wreaked havoc in too many lives. I'm giving the benefit of the doubt in this instance to Smollett. It's looking more and more that he is crying and has cried wolf, and so be it, for him. But by and large, I'm giving historic victims the benefit of the doubt, just as the police do when investigating a crime. They trust that the victim (more often real though quite likely fake in this instance) is telling the truth. So do I. Following your logic, we couldn't have people arrested because they are innocent until proven guilty.
I was perusing the NYT site and I could not find any mention of Kamala Harris' reply "what tweet" when she was asked to respond to her (also Corey Booker) "modern day lynching" tweet.
8
Two words:
Tawana Brawley.
How little changes over thirty years.
17
There is a long list of people who, for whatever reason, have fabricated claims of racist attacks. Among them, Heidi Jones (ABC News), Morton Downey Jr., Tawana Brawley, Crystal Magnum (Duke Rape case) and now perhaps, Jussie Smollett --- have all fanned the fires of racism and hatred with their fake claims.
Why?
I suppose no one really knows, but like the boy who cried wolf, the fakers do a disservice to every real victim.
That's the real tragedy.
13
Maybe at this point it would be a good idea for everyone in the country to chuck their team jerseys and judge people simply based on whether or not they behave like jerks.
10
Well written article. I felt like there was something off about the whole story from the beginning. Not necessarily that Smollett was lying but that there was more to the story. I still feel like there is more to this than we are privy to at this point, and once again, instead of patiently waiting to get more info, pretty much everyone has jumped to one conclusion or another based upon speculation. I’m disgusted by watching and reading the news, viewing social media and listening to radio broadcasts which seem to be pervasive with over zealous people using instances such as this to gather attention to themselves and their own platforms. I am a first amendment advocate but these over zealous speakers are causing more harm than good to this country by encouraging this reckless discourse. I would place higher value on an individual’s opinion if it was presented in a well reasoned, tempered manner, based upon actual facts. Which has not yet been seen. I would be even more impressed if one used their status in the public eye to actually DO something positive in this moment whilst waiting for the facts to be established.
Ahhh, but who am I kidding? This is sadly wishful thinking in a day and age where people are so engrossed in sensationalism fueled by social media and news media that they have forgotten how to THINK independently. And that has a frightening and dangerous implication for the future of the US.
4
I especially am stunned by Senator Harris’s initial response. She was the Attorney General for the state of California! Doesn’t that position require the office holder to reserve judgement through to a final investigation and any legal proceedings required? But his is where we are in America now. Sigh...
17
"The real tragedy in all of this is that hate crimes are, in fact, on the rise in the Trump era, particularly against Jews and Muslims. "
What are you basing this statement on? Where are your facts. You throw this out like it is something everybody should take at face valley.
I expect more from the Times.
7
@Scott
Who needs facts when a reckless allegation can suffice?
Just wondering.
4
Funny that the author wants to look at this incident in a bubble. How have the last 300 years of “criminal justice” in this country evolved? It appears that after letting the investigation play out justice will be served in this case which should be a conviction for this idiot if he indeed lied to police and staged his “attack” as it appears he did. Black people, families and communities have literally been tortured and terrorized hundreds if not thousands of times based on false accusations over the past 100 years and more so the faux outrage rings hollow.
2
Racists, sexists, homophobes and MAGA identifiers depend on others to normalize them. Even when there are 100 million of them and only one reckless, selfish Jussie Smollett.
2
Thank you for this. I'm actually sort of amazed this was allowed to be printed in the NYT even though it is surely needed here. As I'll be amazed to see my comment printed here.......
The episodes noted in this article aren't of course just popping up in the past few years. Back in the late 1980's there was Tawana Brawley and her accusations against the white men she claimed abducted and harmed her. That got lots of press and PR even as the accusations strained credulity. But again, for those looking to believe that our country teems with those willing to harm blacks and/or Muslims, it was too tempting to catch a ride on the bandwagon. And for those whose desire to gain PR and sympathy as a "victim" of hate, we're all too ready to provide and encourage victimhood.
As noted though, we often ignore those actual victims of hate who aren't on our "list" of sympathetic victims such as religious Jews. There have been many documented occurrences just in the past year alone of violent hate crimes against Orthodox Jews, many caught on camera or witnessed by others yet the silence is deafening. Why are so many quick to believe and take offense about the accusations that a black, gay or Muslim was attacked yet shrug off attacks on Jews?
10
Smollett's stupidity (and that of the press) probably adds 1% to Trump's 2020 popular vote.
9
@Roy P More like 5% and it helps support his attack on Fake News.
3
This is a side effect/offshoot of the social warrior class; absolutely convinced that all their infinite causes are just and in line with the order of all things pure and wholesome all their actions are justified no matter how topsy turvy they may be.
If this idiot is found guilty of this, he is going to jail for a while.
"Man, much more than baboon or wolf, is an animal formed for conflict; his life seems meaningless to him without it."
John N. Gray
5
The Chicago detectives had this story measured from the beginning. Two pro Trump white guys attacking a black guy on a dark Chicago street at 2AM? Even a junior detective would question that scenario. Jussie Smollett is a black man, an openly gay man and a stupid man.
9
"Start by listening" is not the same as "start by believing."
It's a completely different mindset. We must do the former, not the latter.
11
It’s kind of like Trump acting like the minuscule number of violent crimes by undocumented immigrants is indicative that undocumented immigrants are a violent class of barbarians.
4
Several friends have commented to me that they are saddened that Smollett’s story isn’t true. I have no idea what to think of this. Only that if Smollett is indeed lying, he’s a psychopath. There’s no amount of black, gay or liberal pride that would ever keep me on his team.
7
This works well for trump. And might've worked well for Smollett, if he had better public relations people. We have no honor. As horrible as racism is, it's very popular as a topic. The people who grab the most attention usually deserve the least attention and vice versa. It is the pain of excess. Painful to contemplate too much but essentially empty. We don't hear much about Obama's birth in Kenya any more but with the right kind of pr we could excise ourselves over this again. Whoopee!
1
“It feels like if I had said it was a Muslim or a Mexican or someone black, I feel like the doubters would have supported me a lot much more,” he told ABC News. “And that says a lot about the place where we are as a country right now.”
Interesting claim by Mr. Smollett. He stated that the attacker was a Trump supporting racist (implication that attackers were white). Does this reveal racist bigotry on the part of Mr. Smollett and of his unquestioning supporters? Mr. Rothman refers to this event revealing 'biases' on the part of Mr. Smollett's backers. Perhaps the "biases" is simply run of the mill bigotry.
8
Moderation in all things. Four words of wisdom from my mother that we could all take to heart.
Measure your words.
Words matter.
Reserve judgement. And sometimes be reserved.
In this crazy world of instant everything, maybe it’s time to step back, pause, and think before speaking or doing. What a crazy, old-fashioned idea!
4
I overwhelmingly vote Democratic, even more so in recent years since the Party of Trump has gone off the rails. But at the end of the day, the tribal knee-jerk politics of both the left and the right cause me to view myself much more as an Independent than a Democrat. I refuse to participate in identity politics and in partisan tribal groupthink, and when I hear a story like Mr. Smollett's I am immediately suspicious of the numerous red flags. I wish more Americans were objectively critical of the political party they tend to support on election day.
11
People who fake or lie about attacks or crimes are not being cynical. Whether their name is Smollet or Trump, the concoction is generated to help themselves, playing upon existing prejudices, not creating them. And then there is the lack of outrage when anti-Semitic or anti-Muslim events occur. Could it be that there is a feeling that these groups deserve it? Until Americans are willing to have an open discussion about prejudice or at least admit it exists, we are continually going to be shocked, shocked by our own acts.
2
Agree and that prejudice exists in ourselves, and that like hunger and anxiety, are necessary for survival.
Maybe the victim franchise economy will take a pause for reflection. Maybe. Doubtful. But just maybe this cynical ploy demonstrates that there are outrages in the world that deserve attention. And then there are those starved for attention who simply generate outrage. We have become awfully good at the latter, including needing a wall.
4
In our age of cameras everywhere it is hard to believe that a hotel would not have cameras inside and outside its premises. On a very frigid night it is hard to believe that anyone would be out trolling for someone to harass and abuse. His story didn't ring true right from start. The attack event had too details (maga hats, noose, "bleach", n word, ft word...). That Chicago would devote 12 detectives to investigate a possible hate crime is pretty astounding. Do they allocate so many officers to all crimes??? Believe that this was a fabricated event. He needs to come clean, tell the truth and get counselling and treatment.
8
@ibivi "Treatment"?
Prison time would be more helpful and deter future hoaxers.
3
Thankfully, I have somehow missed this cauldron of outrage almost entirely. Till today.
At least I missed the initial "Rush to Judgement" stage that
is so prevalent nowadays thanks to the Internet and the rolling juggernaut of "Social Justice" on social media.
1
@Jonathan I agree with your post wholeheartedly, except I have one minor quibble: The 'attackers' wore plain red hats that night, not MAGA hats. They knew full well that if they walked around Chicago after dark with MAGA hats on, their physical safety would not be guaranteed.
Ironic, isn't it?
8
The beauty of “hate crimes” as a category is a liberals dream. Does there have to be actual violence inflicted? Does there have to be significant property damage? If a black person rapes and murders a white person is that a hate crime? If a church has a card board BLM sign spray painted over... is that a hate crime?
7
All so true and tragic that some, and possibly Smollett, make such false claims. I am reminded of the rush to judgement of Richard Jewell at the Olympics in 1996. Media, law enforcement and politicians all thought him guilty of planting that bomb. That said...In addition to the rise or openness of legitimate episodes of bigotry and discrimination, are we seeing a rise of false claims and hoaxes as a result of the nonstop false claims and hoaxes that come from this Administration?
1
Surprised the NYT would publish an article like this. Kudo's.
13
@Dan Green I was expecting something completely different.
3
@Dan Green Can you believe it. FINALLY.
3
This article is blaming politicians and the public for not immediately suspecting that Smollett made up something this horrific? How jaded are we all supposed to be?
If Smollett staged this, then he deserves to be punished. But don't blame people for their good faith efforts to condemn hate crimes, and for not thinking, "wow, maybe this victim is really a horrific, jaw-dropping liar."
15
@Ann Possibly, just possibly it's better not to rush to judgement.
6
@Ann The "crime" was minutes old and everyone on the left was weeping and blaming Trump's America, not waiting for an ounce of evidence. The media and politicians were elbowing each other to be the first to show the most outrage. Not one of them have apologized or even backpedal.
12
It wouldn’t have been excessively jaded to recognize that the story made absolutely no logical sense.
5
I can't believe anyone heard this story and didn't question it, it was way off from the beginning. But, more interesting to me is the fact that Mr. Rothman names all these false attacks when there are so many more real ones. I see him on television doing the same thing. He is oozing with bro-type, privileged arrogance.
11
But, do we know for sure that the brothers are telling the truth? Doesn't just about everyone guilty of a crime make up a story to convince police of their innocence? Why is the brothers' story any more reliable than Smollett's? Maybe I've missed some news that describes why Smollett is now doubted, but just because two brothers who have been arrested tell a tale to police that they were set up doesn't make it true. Jails are full of people who will tell you they are the real victims.
You can believe who you want but the brothers’ story makes a lot more sense. And give the police a little credit for not just taking their word for it and sending them on their way. That’s why it’s called an investigation.
8
@Ms. Pea The story as initially reported was fishy, but the more one reads about it, the fishier it gets (personally, I think it's obvious Smollett planned this). For example, the two brothers who were arrested are black men from Nigeria who know and have worked with Smollett . . . but not only are they racist Trumpeters, Smollett didn't recognize them as they carried out an elaborate attack that caused no serious injuries.
5
@Ms. Pea Just think about him getting his footlong home unscathed.
4
A fake hate crime, is actually a real hate crime in reverse and should be prosecuted as such. Also, the jump to judgment by Senators Booker and Harris disqualifies them from higher office in my opinion!
24
@Dean Foot
But what does this imply about President Trump and most of his cabinet and newest Supreme Court nominee? I don't see the difference except they managed to gain office before such behavior was clear? Oh no! We knew about them as well! Dear me what happened?
2
Words of advice to Trump and Smollett: the police and FBI have more resources than you do and will use them. There are lots of smart people that will investigate until the truth is uncovered. When it is revealed, it will not set you free.
9
@James
The FBI has many more sources, but look who's been running the FBI for the past decade.
One reason I still believe Mr. Smollett may be telling the truth is because of motive, or reason. When authorities are trying to solve a crime one of the most important elements of the case is motive. Why? Why was the crime committed? Did the suspect have a motive? I see no motive for Smollett to stage this crime. What did he have to gain? This is what I believe may have happened. The two Nigerian brothers did attack Smollett but he didn't orchestrate it. If the authorities can show evidence Smollett paid the brothers I will believe it was staged. Until then, no. I do believe the brothers and Smollett probably had a relationship that probably went bad. I saw a video of one of the brothers appearing to be chastising Smollett for not responding to his attempts to keep in touch with him. He ended the video by saying he loved Smollett. Was this an affair gone wrong? Did the brothers try to get back at Smollett for spurning them and tried to make the attack appear homophobia? I wouldn't trust those two guys any farther than I can throw them and it's not hard to believe they would tell the police what they wanted to hear to clear themselves. At this point I admit I don't know what happened and will wait until I see some evidence the whole thing was staged. For Smollett's sake I certainly hope not.
3
@John Valentine What did he have to gain? How about the fact that I suspect I am not the only person who had never heard of this low end actor until now? Who was it who said "There's no such thing as bad publicity"?
8
@John Valentine
his motive could had been for attention. As well as the fact that he thought he was about to be fired from his job. Mental illness here we come..
4
@John Valentine - this is simple my friend. You must be extremely modest & unattached of ego (which I respect and strive to achieve personally). The "motive" you're searching for is simple. ATTENTION. For those who are desperate to fuel their ego, what better fuel than sets of ears & ears -----> this was done for attention. He might have even used the "hate-crime horror story" as political propaganda should he have decided to enter politics. He would have been a "hate-crime survivor". Delusional, sick tactic. He should be prosecuted.
4
Memo to Tweeters and others who jump into the fray as soon as an evolving sensational story hits the news cycle: the solution is simple. Preface your remarks with the two magic words, "If true..."
5
This is actually dangerous. Too many see it as a get out jail free card to popularize conspiracy theories that dovetail with their personal biases.
1
@Tim Kulhanek: Thanks for your insight. Food for thought, to be sure!
The insatiable desire of those who care little for due process , but will carry a flag of outrage wherever they go, comfortable in their Twitter handles as the the purveyors of justice simply give fuel to troubled people with self esteem issues. A pox on social media and the false authority it gives multitudes of people with little to no expertise in the subjects they opine about.
8
Unfortunately there are always people who capitalize on divisive social issues by making false claims. Tawana Brawley, Susan Smith, the Rolling Stone fraternity rape story, all give opponents of social change an excuse to dismiss actual victims. The bad behavior of victims killed by clearly unreasonable police force makes it easy to dismiss the Black Lives Matter movement. The harshly puritanical eviction of Al Franken from the Senate makes it easy to dismiss the #MeToo movement. Caesar's wife must be above suspicion. The Jussie Smollett attack may well turn out to be a false narrative, thus injuring the causes of those who seek equality for people of color and LGBTQ people. Mr. Rothman rightly concludes that such cases taint social justice movements, and embolden racists, homophobes, xenophobes, and sexists. Suffice it to say that this column is a clear, if subtle, indicator of where Mr. Rothman's sympathies lie. But, he is nothing if not polite.
7
I happy to see this on the NYT main page for once after the last few weeks. I was beginning to think that what was initially a "front page" story for the online version of The Times would get pushed deeper and deeper into the CSS.
4
Talk about a manufactured crisis! A fake hate crime and the dems are out in force with legislation. But all the problems of illegal immigration, including gangs, murders and drugs, and they can't be bothered, calling that 'manufactured'. Disgusting.
19
Never trust a third rate actor. He just wants the attention. Even bad attention boosts his publicity and gives him a career of sorts. This is true for Jussie Smollett as well.
10
@Chip - "Third-rate actor" is a little harsh, he's more like a second-rate actor. He was on an actual TV show with moderate popularity, after all. But he did file a false police report, and he is going to jail.
6
I say his interview on TV........I knew right away he was lying. It was obvious.....I'm sure others who saw it could tell he was not sincere!!! Yet, I kept my mouth shut! I waited for more facts and further investigation. Imagine that........Now I trust my instincts and will continue to form judgments....yet I will keep my mouth shut until there is proof! Imagine that!
14
I grew up in Superior, Wisconsin. In late 1960's or very early 1970's (not sure), many Jewish-owned businesses in that city received letters threatening them, and mentioning arson. As it turned out, the writer was caught, and determined to be a mentally ill young Jewish man. The court ordered him to get therapy, but who knows if he did.
4
In the end, this is simply another in a very tiring, annoyingly long line of “the devil made me do it” excuses. No thinking person could ever believe or employ ridiculous blame for one’s own hatred, one’s own vile insults and slurs, on the mere existence of snother person. Yet that’s what the left has sunk into, and it shows no sign of rising from the muck.
6
Well written. Thanks.
5
The outrage machine on the “left” —and I include the Twitter universe as well as left-leaning politicians in this group— is becoming almost as as repugnant as those they claim to “resist” on the right. We saw this with the Covington kids and the rush to socially exile them, which was all based on one (incomplete and misleading) video posted on Twitter. Now with Smollet everyone on the left jumped the gun again, ready to believe his story (despite the logical fallacies) and condemn more white males wearing MAGA hats who, in their view, must surely represent evil incarnate. Oddly, though, when one of their own is credibly accused of criminal sexual assault in Richmond (Justin Fairfax), the outrage machine goes quiet and spews out a few tepid calls for resignation and maybe a suggestion for a non-public investigation. Count me out of this vision for America. Maybe we do need an independent to run for President, after all.
16
Social justice issues are important, and they are volatile, hot topic, emotionally reactive issues. Folks seems unable to get out of their own way sometimes offering opinions.
All of which raises the question of the emotional/psychological maturity of candidates for public office, especially national office! Unquestionably we have an infant in the White House. However obnoxious that is, I have no interest myself in exchanging one political party’s children for another’s!
It would be helpful for us all, as we contemplate 2020 choices, to see a few mature news articles and extended analyses of the several candidates for national office. The adults in the room always appreciate there are a few others present, especially those who aspire to the presidency!
Two Republican infants in my lifetime are quite enough!
2
I think one barometer of where we're at as a country involves a hypothetical alternative outcome of this incident (if it indeed turns out to have been staged):
Imagine that two completely innocent perpetrators had been arrested and actually gone to jail for the "attack", convicted of a hate crime? Would Smollett's conscious have permitted him to sleep at night knowing that innocent people were in prison because of him, or, would that have been a victory, as Trump supporters are all guilty by association, deserving of their fate the moment they cast their votes?
Impossible to know, but if the latter, it indicates that the morality of the "culture war" or whatever you want to call it has disintegrated to a place where individuals are dehumanized by their political choices in a country where we are supposedly free to enjoy a plurality of viewpoints.
5
Both this column and many of the comments here are pretty reductionist. This is a complicated thing to unpack - and made far more so by the fact that hate crimes are in fact real and on the rise under the Trump admin - and that the hate crime "playing field" - so to speak - has obviously never been a particularly level one. If the attack is confirmed to have been cultivated - that is really damaging news and a terrible reflection on the judgement of those who orchestrated it. But to take the claims of victims seriously at the outset - even when they may be dubious - is the principled thing to do.
3
Racism and homophobia still are here. One or ten false stories doesn’t make it less so. But it certainly is fueling the fires of doubt now. I feel bad for true victims who will never report anything for fear of it being dismissed or over-reported. I will saw I am very disappointed with Kamala Harris’s response. This will not age well for her in the primaries.
7
@Janice Badger Nelson
Have you seen her response to a question regarding her "modern day lynching" tweet? Her response "What tweet?"
2
It appears that most of the people who read your essay got the take-home message that most hate crimes are hoaxes. Apparently that is what you intended. After all you spent 13 paragraphs of a 17 paragraph essay describing such false allegations. Reluctantly, in paragraph 16, you finally admit that hate crimes against Jews and Muslims (particularly — you don’t bother to mention other targeted groups) have increased, so we should be especially careful about assuming that alleged hate crimes are proven hate crimes. Agreed. But we should also be especially careful to not overemphasize the great minority of false allegations vs. actual hate crimes, as you did in this article.
5
@Ken Cramer--I don't have much faith that people will all suddenly start believing accusations of hate crimes. They'd rather doubt the accusers, or demand a burden of proof that can never be reached. I served on a jury once and the judge asked the prospective jurors if any believed a person was guilty just because he was arrested. Several hands went up and they were excused. But, it brought home to me that our justice system is pretty much a figment. Most Americans think that minorities and women lie constantly and are just attempting to either get revenge on white men or get money. That's the reality and it's no wonder so many crimes go unreported.
3
For about 10 years, I examined and analyzed complaints made against members of a certain profession. Then, in 2003, I started doing it for money, working as an expert witness, typically retained by attorneys for lawsuits they are working for both plaintiffs and defendants.
The most important lesson I learned in this analysis business is to withhold judgement until I see evidence that substantiates the complaint, the "smoking gun" if you will.
Rothman writes, "...there was no chastened soul-searching when the deceptions were exposed." In my opinion, people who rush to judgement are either ignorant, stupid, or liars.
In this sordid matter, it seems that Smollet is the liar. I wonder where on this spectrum Rothman would place those politicians and pundits who beat the drums, blaming Trump or society -- that's you and me -- for the alleged attack.
8
Perhaps the media has some culpability in it's effort to "get the news out, first (ca-ching!)" instead of taking the time to ascertain the "truth" before it's reported.
11
@LivingWithInterest I've always thought the worst thing to happen to the media was 24-hour cable news. The networks need to fill 24 hours, so they grab onto any story and blow it up in order to fill air time. There are bound to be many non-stories in the mix. Besides the actual reporting of the (non)news, you then have multiple analysts on a panel who "analyze" the "news." What a waste of time. I'd rather read a book.
1
Here is a lesson my Dad delivered when I was young and only now beginning to appreciate:
“Believe nothing of what you hear and only half of what you read”.
(Well apparently he was just passing on advice from Edgar Allen Poe).
One way to put this into action is to be generally sceptical. if one ever has a microphone shoved into one’s face (or impulsively launches the NYT comments app in a pique of outrage) one may want to preface any opinion with a Boolean like “If this is true then...
Thanks Dad, for the advice and telling me what a Boolean is!
4
I don't know who this guy is or why he's famous but he should go to jail for making up a false story like this. Shame on him.
17
I have to say that personally I thought this episode was highly suspicious from the beginning. Journalists and politicians were sucked into this story without doing their own due diligence, or waiting for the investigation to conclude, or at the very least legitimize Mr. Smollett's claims. By staging these kinds of events or making the types of claims noted in the article, the people responsible are not helping the causes they seek to highlight. Instead, they make it more difficult for those with real or credible complaints to be believed. Politicians and journalists and those who dislike Trump (me being one of them) need to make sure that we do not jump to conclusions without proof. It is pointed out daily that Mr. Trump exaggerates and lies about just about everything he brings forth. By not conducting the kind of due diligence needed regarding incidents like this, it just gives Mr. Trump and his supporters more ammunition for their "fake news" claims. If Mr. Smollett indeed set this up, he is completely irresponsible, and should bear whatever penalties are appropriate. People who immediately jumped on this as an example of racist and homophobic behavior should also use this as a cautionary tale. Mr. Smollett also undercuts our desire to believe victims if indeed this situation did not occur as he reported, and again, that is very damaging to those who have truly suffered harm.
6
In the first month of the year we have had 3 incidents of outrage
and condemnation over events that were initially blamed on whites
but turned out to be perpetrated by blacks: the murder of Jazmine
Barnes, the Lincoln Memorial incident with the Catholic teens,
Native activists, and black Hebrews. And now this. Each time pretty
much every elected official with the Democratic Party chimed in. So
did celebrities. Howard Deen said that the Catholic school the teens
went to should be shut by the authorities. Some celebrities said the
teens should be punched. In all three cases these were incidents no
different that what happens constantly in this country. But the media
and activists were thrilled to get a chance to bash whites.
My congresswoman, Pramila Jayapal condemned the Catholic teens. Two
years ago she stood several feet away while two young black women
screamed in Bernie Sanders face and refused his offer to shake hands.
Jayapal wrote a Huffington Post piece which condemned those who
objected to the anti-Semetic incident directed towards an elder.
I can not bring myself to vote Democrat anymore. The Dems run themselves ragged to get the black vote while treating less important Demographics with distain. They treat black cop killers, Hispanic gang members in this country illegally, and Islamic terrorists with more respect
than white, Jewish or Asian Americans.
10
How difficult was this mystery to solve. African American actor is assaulted by 2 African men, both known to the victim. Racial and anti gay slurs fly through the winter night. Victim blames Trump supporters bc MAGA phrases by assailants.
Uh-duh. And we are condemned by CNN for being skeptical. What a lame pretense. The actor fails this screenwriting exercise. Well, he assumed all of us were not those sharp knives in the drawer. How pathetic!
8
Those who read this article have the pleasure of being acquainted with "journalism," the practice of reporting things that happen, getting to the bottom of them, and then tying together events that might reveal a trend. A true journalist will engage in this practice even if it goes against the newspaper's or the reporter's political bias.
You won't find journalism on Fox News, or The Daily Caller, or Breitbart, or the Drudge Report or any of the usual right-wing blogs. You'll find such clarity and self-correction at the New York Times, and a few other news organizations - all of the Centrist or Center-left.
The right-wing in this country does not engage in journalism. It engages in propaganda.
3
Trump is a big boy and deserves all the scorn he gets for saying terrible things, as does his cadre of infantile children (I'm talking to you, Don Jr.). However, Mr. Smollett's attack was not directed at Trump but Trump supporters. MAGA hats and MAGA Country! were code words for white racist conservatives, if you believe the many who called MAGA hats akin to KKK hoods. Thank goodness those shadowy figures weren't innocent people harangued and dragged through the mud because of Mr. Smollett's victimhood fantasy.
This play-by-numbers and too-tidy attack was nothing more than a way to inflame political and social unrest against conservatives in the meanest way possible. Shame on those who not only spread the stereotype, but who wished absolutely horrible things on 40 percent of the country (not just two random MAGA voters) for doing nothing more than voting for someone they don't like.
7
The amplified rhetoric of these writers who condemned the Jussie attack before knowing the facts is a result of catering to their polarised audiences and wanting to enable them to nod their heads in self-righteous agreement: "I couldn't have said that better myself. This publication gets me."
If this attack is a hoax, Jussie will have to be called what he is: a fraud and a deceiver and agent provocateur. In other words, a real life troll.
5
Surely both sides jest...
(at least) 3 tells from the onset:
1. The growing rift between thought leaders at Fox Entertainment and Fox News – and please spare any nuance of who owns whom these days...Won’t look good in print, no matter how you phrase it
2. Fox News’s episodic documentary on the Tawana Brawley case...Again, details of precisely when and why it was first produced are secondary...Word of it started just showing up, a couple of months ago
3. The NYT circumspection on the whole situation...Don’t know whether it was their spidey-sense or insider-insight – but I know it when I see it
A while back, watched the Tawana Brawley case unfold in real time and up close...
Since, been focusing less on who’s lying – and more on why...
The way justice grinds in the US – this’ll be more self-immolation than hoax, by the time those gears done gnashing...
And self-immolation on a public street – or in a public park – generally hard to fake...
Self-immolation of 150 Tibetan monks during the past ten years speaks to the nature of their oppression – and oppressors...
So when on April 14 last year, David Buckel – by all accounts a wholly decent person – lit himself on fire in Prospect Park, I wondered...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/28/nyregion/david-buckel-fire-prospect-park-fossil-fuels.html
Go read everyone’s favorite comment – speaks more to the pain of those left behind...
Less to that of the one on fire...
To say I even begin to feel your pain – I’d be lying...
Not that much different than the rush to slander the Covington High School teen with the MAGA hat at the Lincoln Memorial.
8
Sadly, Trump 2020
5
Who is Jussie Smollett?
2
Well said!
However -All of this hysteria is being amped up by the reality of having a psychopathic liar -lifelong truth denier and grifter dissembler spewing racist lying venom from the oval office 24/7.
The last thing this divided country needed was a leader who cares for nothing but his own ego.
Including his delusional -amped up legions of bias addicted followers. (who are just fodder for his corruption and malfeascance)
AND faux news -as his private propaganda machine -just fans the fires of confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance among them all.
1
Every one of these hoaxes and false claims, whether about racism or antisemitism or Islamophobia or whatnot (and Rothman just scrapes the tip of the iceberg, from bomb threats to nooses on campuses to drawn swastikas) undermines the real pain and trauma of actual victimizations and hate crimes. Thanks to Jussie Smollett, Emma Sulkowicz, and Michael Kadar, among others, for making it look like America is cauldron of hate and misogyny, using up law enforcement resources, and generally tearing apart the precious fabric of our country. Also, for enabling plenty of bigots to say, "See? Told ya so!"
6
Jussie Smollett needs to have his head examined literally. Anyone who makes a false accusation as he did needs psychological help. If he is not severely punished for these lies, this will not stop. The next person who commits such a crime may cause serious damage against a wrongfully accused person.
Just think of all the police who had to investigate this craziness. The resources could have been put to better use going after the real criminals who terrorize blacks on a daily basis. Throw the book at Smollett and give him lots of jail time. He deserves it.
6
Where is the press follow up on the perpetrators of these fraudulent cases?
Why aren’t there stories about the Muslim woman in Queens who made up a hate crime ( and was charged by NYPD) about what she was sentenced to for her crime?
Rev. sharpton turned his false charges into a more high profile career?
10
The writer admits "we do not yet know the full truth of what happened on that night in January", so I'm not sure why we are all taking the [notoriously corrupt] Chicago PD's word for it either. Seems like people are as ready to write this off as a "SJW" farce as they were to believe Smollet's story.
Is there racial bigotry in this country? Yes. But it is not common as the left would have you believe.
5
Intersectionality is like vodka. A shot is okay and can get a party going. But drink a whole bottle and that's poison.
If you don't get that, here are two examples of intersectional talking points that exist on either side of the supposed spectrum (it seems more like a circle to me)
1. Immigrants are bad because there may be a murderer among them.
2. Men are trash because there may be a misogynist among them.
3
In today’s world, everything must be scaled for effect. So the stereotypical conflation, what you call ‘intersectionalism’ is too attractive not to overuse.
3
A bit hypocritical don’t you think. Yes this story is obscene and outrageous. But, the author is suggesting that some groups of people make false claims and other groups of people ... those who really are victims with a recent uptick in hate crimes... do not. Really??? This is dangerous reporting and highly biased. Look at the examples that you cite. Or rather the examples that you forgot to cite.
1
Those that cry “wolf” Endanger the true victims
3
Do false accusations and hoaxes apply to the metoo crowd or are they an exception who can do and say no wrong? News flash. Women lie too sometimes.
1
Mr. Smollett as a central detail in his fake hate crime stated that President Trump supporters, who happen to be mostly white, attacked him because he was a black gay man.
The implication is dead clear that all, Trump voting, fly over state living, gun toting fellow citizens are racists homophobes.
And just in case anybody missed this subtlety in his fevered plot he had to put a rope around his neck implying uppity people are once again being hunted and lynched.
I am exactly the person targeted by his lie, a lie magnified over and over and over by serious candidates for president, congressional members, serious journalists, religious leaders, and, hold on to your MAGA caps, celebrities.
I would like to defend my character which he tried to destroy.
Not once in my life, for any reason you can name, have I wanted to beat up, burn, shoot, stab, hang, spit on, beat, call names and when I was a leasing agent deny a person a place to live based on race, religion, ethnicity, or sexual orientation.
I even went out on a limb one time and rented an apartment to a black man who committed multiple armed robberies and did 20 plus years in prison. Why? Because the man dripped atonement. Fair enough in my world.
That civil rights stuff from 1965 matters and it means something even to a MAGA cap wearing American.
Mr. Smollett, please atone for this smear you put on me. No apology needed.
I will even let you keep the rope in case you want to hang yourself again in the future.
8
Ah yes. Noah Rothman at his smug, fingerwagging best. Let's let the facts fully unfold and let law enforcement do their job. Then he can be charged accordingly and you can wag away.
1
Ok, Noah. How many politicians, priests, athletes, presidents, bankers, and police officers did you overlook before you decided to start championing "credibility"?
"There are a few bad apples in every bunch" is the mantra of America to overlook systemic abuses...for our beloved ones. However the author gleefully sharpens his knife to launch a one-sided attack on people who speak up about racism.
We get it. You do not believe in racism, or perhaps you only believe in "real racism" of which you can never seem to cite a case. The real issue here is a writer who has become extremely vigilant about sharing his non-existent experience with anti-black racism.
America being asked to judge an experience to which they cannot relate is a disaster waiting to happen, ahem...Iraq.
My own personal experience on this matter runs deeper. I've realized that the MSM (including NYT and WaPo) all share an ideology and bias I no longer share. Can I put a label on it? Nope. But it's there. The irony is that I saw it during Bernie's primary campaign and the comment section of the NYT pointed that bias out. Well, just one angle of it...
Here's the thing: I no longer trust MSM to so much as try to bring me unbiased/objective reporting. Crimes such as Smollett's have happened before. Many times. And yet the MSM jumps directly to pearl clutching. And, as those Kentucky school kids accosted at the Lincoln Memorial, Smollett will fade quickly.
As Trump is no more than a startling symptom of a rotted political system, so Smollett the perfect example of the rot in what is now global info-tainment.
I cancelled my subscription to the NYT in 2016 after having been a subscriber for 4 decades b/c of this quality drop. My decision was proven valid by Ms. Weiss' display of woeful ignorance of the English language on Joe Rogan. And she's a NYT editor...
Mr. Rothman wrote an excellent article; I admire his willingness to shovel sand against the tide.
Now that I've done my cathartic drivel, let me find something else to read that's worthwhile. NYT or TMZ? Not much of a difference overall...
10
Jussie Smollett is either the world's dumbest Trump-hater or one of the craftiest, most self-sacrificial, brilliantly counter-intuitive Trump supporters to ever purchase a Subway sandwich.
6
The left is so desperate to find racism everywhere that it leaps on any suspect story, no matter how unlikely. With so few genuine incidents today, the NYT, WaPo, Slate, the Atlantic, etc. daily dredge up ancient horror stories from slavery and Jim Crow to whip up racial resentment and foster white guilt.
Every time some drunken kid uses a naughty word, it makes national headlines for weeks, all to make this country seem irredeemably racist. To someone old enough to remember when racism meant lynching, microaggressions and imagined insults are pretty thin beer.
The modern left is far more divisive today that the right ever was. Tribalism is destroying us and progressives are responsible.
6
The whole episode smelled fishy from the beginning. He's just shown himself to be little better than his imaginary attackers, shown how quickly some of our 2020 Democratic contenders will join in a public media lynching, and committed career suicide into the bargain. Break a leg.
4
Hoax crimes happen frequently and have been reported for years -- Tawana Brawley, the allegation by a woman in Boston several years ago that she had been attacked by a black man, credible anti-Semitic threats against American Jews that turned out to have been made by a young Israeli Jew. The list is endless. The motivations are complex; not always political by any means.
3
I take issue that to believe Jussie Smollet requires the suspension of disbelief.
Over the past few years, haven't we learned a hard lesson that we should believe victims when they come forward?
Shouldn't we, right now, suspend our judgment of what did or did not happen until more facts come to light?
Surely, after several years of #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo we have at least learned that we should listen and wait. Let's practice that skill right now.
57
@Kristin - nice idea to suspend judgment. perhaps we should have done that from the start.
29
@Kristin Why should we, "Susped our judgement of what did or did not happen until more facts come to light"? What "facts" do you seek?
As more facts about this do come to light what is more than likely to happen is that Jussie Smollett will be the one being prosecuted.
Your urging of temperance after the fact that this has been proven to be a hoax at best, would lead me to believe you didn't show such temperance when the story broke.
30
@Kristin
Kamala Harris said:
“I think the facts are still unfolding and I’m very concerned” about the initial allegation by Mr. Smollett. She said “there should be an investigation” and declined to comment further until it was complete.
If only she had that prescience before she painted this hoax as an indicator of the inherent racism and Evilness of Trump supporters.
22
"And few entertain the possibility that the attention these allegations generate has created an incentive structure for prospective hoaxers."
IF this is a hoax, then three people were involved: Smollett and the two brothers who possibly were paid to do this.
None of them would be off the hook for doing something designed to inflame an already inflamed citizenry. Young or gay or ambitious actors or not, they owe all of us an apology and a pledge to work for social justice AND understanding.
So do our political candidates.
5
Experts agree that the proportion of genuine hate crime attacks or sexual aggression claims far outweigh the hoaxes. That being fully acknowledged, that does not justify the common trope nowadays that not immediately accepting the accusations victimizes the victim twice. Such rationally spurious attitudes mean ultimately that the truth of a matter is of secondary importance. I believe that also makes such dictates fundamentally amoral.
4
The litany of "but you're ignoring the overwhelming number of REAL hate crimes" ignores the point.
Of course there are more real hate crimes than faked ones, but the latter are far more damaging to society. Faked crimes cynically exploit and mock our compassionate and decent impulses, and once the truth is discovered those virtues are undermined profoundly. All those candlelight vigils, sympathetic interviews, rallies look like a sucker's shame, and our hearts harden a little more. Believing the victim on principle is just as logically unsound as blaming the victim. Try entertaining both ideas at once. Neither reject or accept them. Then, look for evidence.
7
He doesn't deserve to work again in the movie/tv industry.
10
In bitterly cold weather, Mr. Smollett would probably have been wearing a hat and scarf, covering him up, and making him less identifiable.
He is hardly a superstar to begin with.
Let's hope he doesn't become one. If he is guilty, and it certainly seems so, he deserves to be punished. For his own selfish reasons, he has compromised righteous concern about genuine crimes. He is in a privileged position, and probably earns a considerable salary. He should be ashamed of himself.
15
@Matt Olson Agreed. And your "hardly a superstar" is on the mark. I had never heard of him until now. Well, maybe this was just a publicity stunt.
4
In short this piece is premature and just adds to the problem. Why don't we all wait until the facts are known?
4
Thank you so much, Mr. Rothmann.
And thank you to the NYT for running the piece.
Let’s think for ourselves as opposed to making quick, thoughtless and ill-informed ideological judgments before all the details are out!
7
@KD - perhaps that idea should have been employed from the beginning.
3
The Republicans went around the bend in the early '00s with Bush's decision to attack Iraq, the pandering to the religious right, the attack on science with many Republicans weasel-wording on evolution, and so on.
They have of course stayed around the bend with Trump, who is the worst of them by far.
But now the Democrats have also gone around the bend with identity politics, the new psycho-left members of Congress, the demonization of the straight white male, and so on
And to think just a little over 2 years ago the Democrats were not insane.
What's a moderate to do?
8
Point taken. And, assuming that your point is truly that we should all suspend judgment until the facts are in, that point would be made more accurately and responsibly by pointing out the long history of "imaginary black criminals" reported by white "victims" perpetuating racist stereotypes to cover up either self-inflicted harm or their own crimes. A quick Google search turned up Susan Smith. Bonnie Anne Sweeten. Charles Stuart. The McCain volunteer who carved a (backwards) B on her own face and blamed an Obama supporter... It's a long list that doesn't even scratch the surface of the much longer list of innocent (REAL) people of color accused, falsely imprisoned, and executed for actual crimes committed by people they barely resemble.
My point is, if you're truly worried about "embolden(ing...)" those who are inclined to dismiss prejudice in America as a manufactured crisis," don't provide them ammunition by selectively choosing examples that ignore history, sweep aside important context, and support only part of the story.
7
This reminds me of the 1987 Tawana Brawley case, where Brawleay, who was a teenager at the time, accused four white men of raping her (later amending that to saying they "sexually assaulted" her. Almost instantaneously, the case became a media sensation, with Al Sharpton the ringleader. A grand jury ended up concluding there had been no sexual assault and Brawley probably made up the story. Meanwhile, several people's lives were destroyed.
That people tend to respond according to their racial "identity" is no surprise. We live in an age where racial identity is the sum of existence. Meanwhile, what surprises me is that for all the ways in which the Smollett case is about race, it's really mostly about the absurdities of mass culture.
11
@Emile Has Al Sharpton ever apologized for his disgraceful role in the Brawley case? I don't think so. Hope I'm wrong.
1
@jutland
No. He hasn't. He stayed tha Trump never apologized for his actions on the Central Park "wilding" incident, so neither will he.
For someone who despises Trump, he sure looks to him for instruction.
So Mr. Smollett's possibly-perfect crime is attributable to the "racial animus Mr. Trump unleashed" leading to the supposed "rise of hate crimes . . . in the Trump era"? It's hard to fathom why anyone might justify Mr. Smollett's behavior because of Trump. Should every fake "victim" have a Trump defense? Would you accept the argument that XYZ was okay to make fake charges because Trump offended XYZ? This is a quote on national television from Mr. Smollett: "I come really, really hard against 45." Mr. Smollett's own rationale of going after the president not only suggests the "little" crime of filing a false police report. It suggests treason.
3
Has there been an accounting - or for that matter an audit - of the hate crimes that have been reportedly increasing in Europe and America and especially targeting Jews and Muslims? We can read that this or that organization or agency has reported such increases, but with little or no specificity about what types of acts have been counted. An armed assault is not the same as a spray-painted swastika; a defaced poster is not the same as a beating; an anonymous letter isn't a bombing. Mr. Rothman criticizes the rush to judgment over incidents involving gay and/or African-Americans and tut-tuts about lesser attention paid to incidents involving Muslims or Jews. But without better reporting one has to wonder about the very insistence that "hate crimes" are increasing.
1
@Martin Daly
A recent report detailed the types of anti-Semitic incidents against Jews in Europe:
https://fra.europa.eu/en/publication/2018/2nd-survey-discrimination-hate-crime-against-jews
And as someone who closely follows this issue, I know about a number of horrific crimes, including gruesome murders, committed against Jews in France. Plus Jews are often attacked in the streets, including children.
In the US, attacks against Muslims and Jews are documented by the FBI, the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center.
If Smollett's claim proves to be unfounded, perhaps it would be instructive to recall another criminal hoax, perpetrated more than thirty years ago, that also had a significant racial dimension--the Tawana Brawley case. Here, the media, including the New York Times as well as other local outlets, methodically investigated the circumstances surrounding the incident and came to the same conclusion a grand jury eventually would: that Brawley fabricated the story of a vicious racial attack. Let's hope both law enforcement and dedicated investigative journalists also get to the bottom of the disturbing Smollett case--and that we have the patience to wait while the process takes it course.
139
@jv727 It reminded me on the other hand, other more recent case, when a young woman in 2008 claimed that she had been attacked by an Obama supporter who carved the letter B into her cheek with a penknife. Her story didn't hold up very long, because for one thing the B was written on her cheek with a Sharpie and for another it was backwards as though she'd drawn it on her face while looking in a mirror. Yes people have always been willing to lie for attention or for a political cause and that happens on both sides. Let's just remember the wise words of Sherlock Holmes that it is a capital error to theorize before all the facts are in.
15
@jv727 Brawley's family has maintained that the allegations were true.
2
@jv727 Yes, but if I remember the Brawley case correctly (and with Wikipedia to help refresh my memory), the supposed assault was not intended to reach the media. Evidently Ms. Brawley had skipped school and stayed out past curfew, and feared her stepfather would beat her, as he had before. She and her mother cooked up the 'assault' to explain her absence, and didn't intend to involve the police. Unfortunately, someone else found her before they could stage the 'discovery' of her supposedly abused body, and once the media circus got rolling and the justice system got involved, there was no way they could back out. (At last report, they maintain the assault story was true - but how could they retract it now?) By contrast, Smollett deliberately sought attention.
9
Maybe America has become a T.V. show we know who the host is.
4
How quick we are to judge with righteous indignity and scream for a public hanging.
How many foolish hashtags we have made viral through our emotional immaturity.
How addicted we are to pointing out the other in hopes of feeling less small.
4
"A 1989 Boston area murder that generated national headlines. Stuart falsely alleged that his pregnant wife was shot and killed by an African-American assailant. Stuart's brother confessed to police that Stuart himself killed them to collect life insurance, and Stuart subsequently died by suicide."
Most people believed Stuart. Seems our country can use race to twist minds in a direction that is more to their own thinking.
Sometimes it's good policy to wait until all the evidence is in.
This column really does seem weirdly scoped to the last two years. If we are going to look at more recent politically charged history, consider the Ashley Todd mugging hoax (the McCain volunteer with the backwards "B" she said was carved by an Obama-supporting robber).
Strange things will happen in a country our size, I suppose. Perhaps the media amplifies strange things into phenomena beyond their local size?
We have to confront this ignorance.
1
When I hear about a hate crime or some other crime having been alleged, I listen to the details...as they unfold. This story was full of red flags from the jump. The story did not ring true and seemed a poor attempt at screenwriting. However, some pundits quickly hopped on the bandwagon and swallowed this ridiculous story without filtering it.
This actor is basking in the attention given this story. Really sad tale. Except now that his complicity has been revealed, the attention suddenly shifts.
I still feel true empathy for TRUE victims. This jerk isn’t a victim of anything except his own limited intelligence.
3
I still wonder if this wasn't really a cry for help.
@Dantethebaker - he is crying out for help with his career. it's called publicity.
4
Why so many hoaxes? Pretty simple: the demand for racist acts exceeds the supply.
9
Brilliant comment.
This is not a matter of whether or not there was a racist, homophobic attack on on a gay Black man.
This particular incident needs to be investigated to the hilt and every aspect of this saga needs to come out.
It DOES NOT have anything to do with anyone else besides those involved.
Please stop using it as a signal for the right or the left. As it looks right about now, this story - which was difficult to believe from the start (and I sent e mails to the Times saying so based on my experience as an investigator from the day it was reported) - belongs to Mr. Smolett and whomever else is involved.
His motives, the entire situation needs to be put in a self-contained place and the authorities need to take care of it.
Meanwhile, all this guy has done is damage across the board. But, it's pure stupidity to spread this out as a left/right argument over who is wrong.
Everybody is.
2
I find it ironic that Jussie Smollett would say these words, because as I'll explain below, there's statistical evidence that non-white voters are committing hate crimes disproportionately.
“It feels like if I had said it was a Muslim or a Mexican or someone black, I feel like the doubters would have supported me a lot much more,” he told ABC News. “And that says a lot about the place where we are as a country right now.”
Yes, what I said before is true, and yet you'll never see it published in the news despite the fact that FBI Uniform Crime Reporting is the source. Google "FBI hate crime offenders" and look closely at the percentages for blacks, which was 21.3% in 2017 and 26.1% in 2016. Blacks are 13% of the population. Of "known" offenders for ethnicity, Latinos are more than 20%, yet they are 17% of the population.
So the question to the media is: How come they publish ad nauseum about hate crimes and who's victimized, often selectively (such as the numerous Smollett stories in The New York Times and elsewhere), yet ignore the national statistics for hate crime offenders?
Unless you're a black conservative like Larry Elder, this taboo statistical reality is entirely unpublished.
8
this article is highly ironic is anyone goes back and reads the 29th of January article that the New York Times published about the alleged crime. The media probably won't correct their biases, but at least they're publishing criticisms of themselves.
4
I don't know which would be worse, an attack by MAGA nationalists on a black gay man or a hoax that plays into Trump's tiresome "fake news" trope and white supremacists' penchant for blaming victims of real violence. If the Jussie Smollett incident really was a "false flag" stunt, then the actor has multiple crimes to answer for.
Remember the screaming talk show host (I will not use the hatemonger's name) who claimed certain well-documented mass shootings, in schools and elsewhere, were staged by anti-gun fanatics? The same clown said children were being kidnapped and rocketed into slavery on Mars, so we know how insane he is. But if he's right even once, it undercuts the credibility of actual targets of violence, and the news organizations that report those crimes.
Among the heinous things Republicans have done to diminish common decency in the United States is to raise the standards for acceptable racism to outlandish heights. Now, complacent white people have to be outrageously bigoted to be considered out of line, as if anything short of saying the "n-word," or dressing in blackface, or using a hateful slur, is OK. So, those who don't conform to the most simplistic and caricaturish bigotry can probably get away with it. Trump does.
I'm not exactly known for seeing eye to eye with a lot of what gets written in Commentary, especially over the last couple of decades.
But in this case I have to reluctantly side with Mr. Rothman.
If it does turn out that this attack was staged, then Mr. Smollett will have earned the same prosecutorial zeal that the perpetrators of an "actual" attack would.
The stupidity of staging such incidents, which almost always tend to be eventually uncovered, goes beyond the psychological issues of those who have them created; it only serves to do that which one would presume is not desired, which is to enable your opposition to gleefully shout "J'accuse" and paint everyone on your side of the sociopolitical divide with the same brush of disingenuousness. It sets back your own professed cause and allows those "fake news" accusations plausibility.
All progressives should despise bigotry and discrimination, but they should also despise lying about evidence of these things even more; as the reactionaries constantly themselves prove, you are only as credible as your biggest prevaricator.
5
As I read these comments, and reflect on the article, I wonder why a politician or a journalist—heck, an entire media outlet—cannot “rush to judgment” and, when they get it wrong, issue a correction or revise their position. It seems clear that we Americans are reactive and judgmental. But asking TV journalists, Twitter folk, and politicians to use critical thinking strikes me as unrealistic. They are not in the business of thinking, in any profound sense of that word. That said, 10,000 hoaxed hate crimes a year will never erase the racist history of the US nor undo the deadly violence unleashed on those Jews shot in their synagogue or those African-American Christians murdered in their church. The Jesse Smollett story is not a left / right issue. Bad faith is rampant in the US. So is self-righteousness. What is new? President Trump espouses a racist ideology, and guess what, Smollett is hardly any better. But neither absolves the other. Neither explains the other. They are both bad actors (pun intended). Neither stands for justice. Do we? Do we know or care what justice is? Anyone?
2
Hoaxes are rare so therefore it's reasonable that we'd believe a story of a black, gay man being attacked. That actually happens a lot in this country. If this actor made it up, it doesn't negate the vast majority of cases that are, in fact, real. Of course, we should treat alleged incidents as just that until facts surface. But that we'd point to Trump and his racist and bigoted supporters as creating an environment where minorities are at greater risk is hardly a stretch.
Liberals with Trump Derangement Syndrome are so ready to believe things like this are true. Whether it's the Covington Boys, Kavanaugh or MAGA hat wearing assaulters of Jussie Smollett, liberals run right to outrage. Meanwhile, Angel Moms and Families are ignored routinely bye leftwing media. The bright side for liberals is that it takes the spotlight off Virginia and their Governor Northam and Lt. Governor Fairfax.
3
Momentarily come to my senses. Tomorrow fill the opinion pages with my daily outrage.
1
This isn't a new cultural phenomenon. Consider the cases of Tawana Brawley, or Satanic ritual abuse at childcare centers; or consider all the evil that has been wrought from that screed "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion".
As they say -- a compelling story can run around the world before the truth has got its boots on.
3
Anybody wondering if Jussie sent the childish “hate” letter sent to him on the Empire set? I now know who he is and a month ago I had not clue he existed. Is that the goal?
5
Great article! Hopefully we will see more like this stating the unbiased truth. Lets not forget that one of Pres. Trump's biggest critics is Al Sharpton. He is notorious for pushing the phony Tawana Brawley rape in 1988. So this is not something new. False allegations similar to Smollett have been happening long before Trump came on the scene.
3
My initial reaction? I was very doubtful about the whole thing based on the tiny bit I had read.
Chicago? That's a hardcore Socialist enclave. I'm sure there are a few hard core MAGA fans but, as stupid as they might be, I didn't buy into a 2am attack on one of the coldest nights in Chicago history. On a night like that real MAGA fans would be sitting back in their recliners drinking Schlitz and watching reruns of the Dukes of Hazard.
Mr Smollett's claims? Sounded like a made for TV event. He never even went to get medical attention as well as barely speaking to police. Just like other made for TV event's that managed to pass for the "real thing".
If he'd been smart and done this in any major Southern city he might have pulled it off.
1
@Mark - Chicago is a "hardcore socialist enclave?" Dude, either get out more or learn the definition of socialist.
The rush to judgment by Dem candidates Harris and Booker and likely Dem candidate Sanders makes them look foolish, very unpresidential, and, frankly, Trump-like. Not a good start to their respective campaigns, to say the least.
4
I told my wife and various other people that this attack had all the indications of being staged. They all said I was delusional. The noose that he left around his neck, the unknown chemical, the fact that he was picked out of no where in the middle of a cold snap seemed awful fishy. Let's see what comes out of this when this guy finally fesses up to this staged attack.
4
Don't forget the Tawana Brawley incident nor the Duke Lacrosse team that was falsely accused of rape. This isn't a recent phenomenon.
3
Antisemitism and hate crimes against Jews are up during the past recent decade both in the United States, where Trump is currently President, and in Europe, where Trump is not President and wasn't on the radar from 2010-2015 when antisemitism began to surge. Trump is not the cause of the antisemitism (his daughter and son-in-aw are Jewish). The vast majority of antisemitism and hate crimes against Jews is being perpetrated and committed by democrats in the U.S. and their liberal counterparts in Europe, not republicans/conservatives.
Fakehatecrimes org is the Wikipedia of these things. Definitely feels like this is on an upswing. I’m 57 and I don’t remember anything like this false tarring.
After 4 years of Trump = Racism by the Liberal press these hoax stories are going to occur.
Real racism does not exist.
Trump haters believe what they want to believe.
These haters need help.
It's a sad situation and I blame the constant Trump hatred on display by the mainstream media.
4
Spot on. Not that it matters. No one in the progressive left (or on the New York Times editorial board) will see this incident as anything other than a regrettable aberration. Regrettable not because it happened. Regrettable because he was found out for, it appears, lying.
5
IF all of his allegations are untrue, he's done a great disservice to all anti-Trump causes. What a shame that would be - and presumably only for his own self-gratification/preservation.
1
Don’t forget the Duke University lacrosse team and the prostitute who claimed she was raped. I believe the prosecuting attorney lost his job over that miscarriage of justice. The intolerance of the “righteous” though, toward those who caution reason, will not abate.
4
The facts are not all in in this case, though that certainly has not stopped Fox News and conservatives everywhere from cackling with glee at the notion that this attack was faked (in fairness, it seems like a stretch). Of course, the intended (sometimes unspoken, sometimes quite openly spoken) narrative is that, if this incident was faked, then claims of racist attacks like this are obviously overblown -- and it's time to trot out whatever other examples we can think of to prove the point, as if a handful of fake attacks cancel out thousands of real ones.
Fox News pathetically spent much of its time this evening straining to connect this incident to left-wing boogeyman Al Sharpton and the Tawana Brawley incident from all the way back in the 80s. But when some young black men were falsely accused and imprisoned for killing a jogger in Central Park, and now-President Donald Trump attacked them in full-page newspaper ads and said "hate is what we need," also in the 80s? Who can remember that far back?
It’s a mystery to me.
I think I speak for millions when I say that my first thought upon hearing the story was: “Who is Jussie Smollett?”
3
@JMF - The funniest underpinning of this whole story was the notion that two racist white people would even recognize him on the street, or even know he was gay. That right there was alarm #1 when I first heard this tall tale.
4
Unfortunately this case will again not result in a learning moment. The reality is that hoaxes like these go back a long time, well before the election of Donald Trump. The Duke Lacrosse case and The Rolling Stone rape fraud are two really famous examples, but there are many more on both left and right. In the end to end this we have to stop the whataboutism and try to look at all these cases with clear eyes. Trump will not be around forever but these cases will be.
1
There's a lesson to be learned here, well, actually two lessons: first we need to be more careful when we report and spread news of attacks based on the victims' race or lifestyle, and second, you can be sure that whenever something such as this happens a conservative will wag their finger, with barely disguised glee, and warn us all that dismissal of future legitimate attacks will the liberals' fault.
I had never heard of Jussie Smollett before. (I have never owned a TV.) If publicity is what he was seeking, he achieved it. I know now who he is!
1
If you followed this case from the beginning with any interest, there was one reporter, Rob Elgas with ABC 7 in Chicago, who tweeted regularly with factual updates. He reported several days before the more salacious elements broke, that sources were indicating that it was a hoax. He was then chastised roundly for reporting that Smollett's character was being written off the Empire show and that this was a motive .. but overall he was just about the only journalist or reporter trying to push for facts in what was a highly suspicious story. The truth has yet to come out, and we will now be subjected to lawerly spin and obfuscation. But it's worth noting that almost nobody else would touch what were obvious holes and contradictions in Smollett's account, and one had to dig through Twitter for any of this.
3
One other point, if someone confronts & insults you or even strikes you, it's just not that big a deal. It's simple assault and the racial component while ugly, is not some magical cause to become hysterical just because you can. Hate is a ubiquity in the ignorant, in the educated, in most all groups somebody hates somebody. Certain outrage hobbyists think they've found the magic word to use as a cudgel, for creating an unassailable pc ideology, it's sometimes a tactic.
Try just getting over the need to go nuclear beyond what would be the common version of a crime, over what is really just human weakness.
1
I don’t believe him.
1
Like many others this story sounded far fetched from the get go. Having just returned from Chicago, I was well aware of just how hardy one needs to carry out a homophobic attack at 2 AM. All the ancillary facts didn't add up. But, the reactions I got when discussing my skepticism were downright hostile. Being dubious made me the worst kind of racist homophobe. So I waited, and now that the police have done their job, it's all about motivation for the fraud. Who cares?
3
With the advent of online media, absolutely everyone can pretend to be a journalist without proof of their qualifications. The competition for exposure has lowered standards. The unfortunate result is that we run the risk of the citizenry losing fatih in the veracity of what they read and hear. Sorry to the nuvo--journalists out there, but I have chosen to rely on the NYT and WSJ for my news and opinion......maybe not perfect but between the two I think I'm getting a somewhat balanced view of it all.
1
Makes me think back to the days of Tawana Brawley. Fortunately, a price was paid in that case by Al Sharpton and her attorneys. Hopefully, Mr. Smollet will face criminal charges for this debacle.
3
I'm pushing 60 -- Gay. If you would have said to me 30 years ago. Oh .. you will be an out, respected, gay man married to you partner of 25 years ...
My reaction would have been close to the now famous reaction of Joy Reid being told by Ann Coulter that Donald Trump was going to be president.
I know what prejudice and homophobia looks like. When my partner and I heard the story ..... we looked at each other -- Chicago ... sandwich ... no way.
Sadly -- we lost many to AIDS -- forcing us into mass action. In doing so we came out of the shadows and changed perceptions -- and what do we get ... this?
Everybody is a victim .. when actually they should be grateful.
4
Amen!
The rope around his neck was a giveaway for me. How many racist thugs carry nooses with them as they hunt for victims in the middle of a big city? Suspicious from the start, yet too many, sadly including Ms. Harris, who should know better, given her record as a prosecutor, made fools of themselves. Causes me to think again about her fitness, I am sad to say. If this proves anything, it is the amoral instinct to strut one's policy positions, without caring about truth. Ms. Harris made a devil's bargain: seizing on this case to show her bona fides to those who have been hectoring her for her past "sins" as a prosecutor.
4
@JayJay - Even more suspicious was the notion that any victim of such an act would then leave the noose around their own neck as they walked several blocks to their final destination. In the event of a real attack, you would rip off that noose in disgust and anger, not leave it there for all to see.
3
I can't blame people believing Smollett's story at the beginning, even if it does turn out to be a hoax. Objectively speaking, what is more far-fetched, the details of his claims or that he faked an attack on himself for unknown reasons? The truth may indeed turn out to be incredible, which is exactly why we should NOT interpret initial wrong takes on it to be harbingers of a crumbling civil discoure. If it is a hoax, then Smollett made a serious mistake and deserves consequences. That's it. All these think pieces trying to spin out a broader meaning out of it are the work of writers (and media outlets) trying to cash in.
1
This story reminds me how the Germans orchestrated a "Polish attack" on Germany in 1939 that "justified" the German occupation of Poland. Of course, history has plenty of similar events.
1
A few thoughts:
Media coverage has the bias for controversy. They're trying to generate views and clicks. So this kind of story sells. Very similar to the way that you hear about those stories like the story where ACORN was helping pimps evade taxes an implicitly supporting underage prostitution. You don't hear about the story when it is later revealed to be false because that is less interesting and doesn't work well as click bait.
Also, the country still has a long way to go vis-a-vis social progress. There are shootings in black churches and synagogues by white supremacists. The FBI has also foiled several plots (one comes to mind about a case in New York where some KKK members were trying to build a ray gun to give people cancer). So these stories carry that truthiness that Stephen Colbert spoke of.
Every political persuasion is vulnerable confirmation bias and the people who prey on it for whatever ends. A lot of media coverage skews towards bias confirmation because it gets the viewership that gets ad revenue. This time the victim was the political left.
Good for the NYT to write about the broader issue here. How common it is for people to believe an accusation— such an ugly part of our culture and it’s growing. Whether it be law suits, hate crimes, or #metoo accusations, the sensational aspect stimulates the bored and feeds the anger that seems so prevalent today. Ah -It sells, but at what cost? Everyone loses.
92
Brett Kavanaugh's implausible story was deemed credible enough to get him on the SCOTUS. Bias much?
The story of the MAGA capped boy on the National Mal, in the face of photographic evidence to the contrary, was given credibility in this paper, so it could indulge its both sider bias.
Sorry, I see no object lesson here.
What troubles me is not that some people believed his story and drew conclusions about our culture from it, but how much attention we give to celebrities.
That will be our undoing.
It is interesting how this Smollett story parallels the Brett Kavanaugh story. A woman, who I imagine did actually suffer a traumatic event as a teenager, offers a story that just doesn’t add up - doesn’t feel right. Yet for political reasons, many many people proclaim they “believe her” - they accept her tale as factual truth.
6
Fake hate crimes should be prosecuted as vigorously as real hate crimes because both inflame racial tensions and hatred.
241
@William Case
If Smollett is guilty, it does not rise to equivalence of someone who uses physical violence to kill or harm another person.
That's making excuses for "the other side."
3
@Because a million died Right but to let this slide without publicly and not chastising this man would license every other fool to do the same. This was a deliberate attempt to start something that many innocent people could end up getting hurt
5
Let’s think about who these people in “positions of political and cultural authority” are. Why do we give them that authority ? Have they earned it ? Are they biased ? The mainstream media has a major, major reckoning on their hands with the treatment of this story and the Covington high school students in D.C. the other week.... this new generation of Twitter dwelling journalism is precisely the problem. They are dispicable
This essay is dangerous. It makes sense for the police, and the rest of us, to assume an obviously battered person reporting a crime is exactly what they appear to be. If that’s not the case this time, that’s the incredible thing - not that people took an apparent victim at his word.
And it’s ridiculous to write an analysis like this without reference to all the real reasons why the kind of bigotry alleged in this incident is completely plausible in America. It’s not just about Trump. We have a long dark history and for some people that’s a living memory.
107
@Lindsay
This case was fishy from the start because it fits with a pattern of several other hoax hate crimes with perpetrators that are oddly transparent and vocal about their supposed MAGA ideology. It's just too convenient - Help I was beaten up by homophobic thugs who specifically targeted me (a C-list celebrity) and made sure to tell me that they are Trump supporters.
30
@Lindsay A "battered person?" Smollett claimed he was attacked by two men but his "injuries" consisted of one small scratch below his right eye. In a premeditated seemingly surprise attack with a two-to-one advantage, I'd expect the "victim" to be a bit more battered than that. A slip and fall on the ice could do more damage than that. Then there was the whole, "they poured a caustic substance on me," part which turned out to only be bleach a substance that won't cause more than mild irritation unless you get it in your eyes or leave it on your skin for a prolonged period of time.
In other words, every part of the "attack" seemed to do minimal damage while being programmed to trigger maximum hysteria. So it seems like a huge stretch to say Smollett was "obviously battered."
32
@Lindsay: It's one thing to disagree, but this essay is not "dangerous." Civil discourse should never be labeled dangerous. Too often these days, that sort of language is used to silence admissible free speech.
Furthermore, police, media, and the public generally should give an alleged victim due consideration but should stop short of full acceptance/belief. You mention our nation's "dark history," and I would point out that during that time, a lot of innocent black "criminals" were deprived of fair consideration and justice because law enforcement, courts, and the public decided for the white "victims" from the start. To repeat that error today in the reverse (i.e. in favor of a black victim) is not the kind of justice we should want.
58
I'm not sure what Mr. Smollett hoped to achieve in creating and participating in his racist and homophobic ruse, but it was beyond pathetic. Any attempt to diminish the standing of those who have truly been subjected to such violence shall not prevail.
In watching the interviews given by Mr. Smollett, I didn't believe a word he said and hope that he will avail himself of the mental health treatment he so obviously needs.
2
Here’s the worst thing: the media WANTS this to be true.
Don’t worry guys, someone, somewhere will punch an ethnic minority and they’ll find out he had posts on social media supporting Trump and that will be used to condemn the half the United States who voted for him. What in any other time would be a minor fracas will be catapulted in to the National Converation.
9
The number of fake hate crimes is tiny compared to the number of real ones.
Increased hate in America--or rather, hate that was always there but now has license to show its face, thanks to our president's rhetoric--is real.
Why were we quick to condemn the alleged crime? Because we've learned that blaming the victim first is wrong, whether the details are "fishy" or not.
If this attack turns out to be fake, it's all the more sad because it gives conspiracy theorists like the author of this article more fodder to peddle their disingenuous "false flag" arguments.
But a high-profile hoax shouldn't take away from the thousands of real events that diminish real humans in real ways every day. They are the real victims, if people let this incident overshadow the reality of hate in America.
2
I count about 6 or 7 reports of fake racist episodes mentioned in this episode. Maybe there are a hundred more out there. For me, that just doesn't compare to the hundreds of actual racist episodes that have taken place since Obama was elected. It obviously makes this writer happy to highlight the few exceptions. Maybe it makes him feel relieved to believe he lives in an America where racism is not a problem. Fake news indeed.
3
And why is everyone not questioning the police’s story? Who monitors the cameras and can they be manipulated? This can be way creepier than suggested
Smollett’s once-off (probably) fake claim to have been racially attacked will certainly harm him more than the President’s (demonstrably) fake claims that the entire country is under attack by brown skinned people streaming across the Mexican border will harm him. Which is unfortunate. And not to minimize or trivialize the harm Smollett has done, but really, it pales in comparison. At least, if Smollett loses his job, the president should do likewise. Unfortunately for Smollett, that’s now the company he keeps.
1
Jussie Smollett used identity politics to play everyone and every group to gain publicity for himself and his acting career. Although the details never rang true, even suggesting that this whole thing didn't smell right meant getting branded as a homophobe or a racist. It's hard to imagine that the Chicago police didn't have doubts from the get-go, but by investigating this so thoroughly (their only recourse to avoid being decimated in the court of public opinion) they effectively played Jussie right back and exposed him for the self absorbed jerk he is.
He'll never get charged or fined, but media, PLEASE--no more interviews, what really happened stories, etc. The only punishment this guy could ever possibly get is being ignored, so let's make that happen.
And if Harris, Sanders and Booker couldn't sense that Jussie's story didn't feel right, how will they do against Putin? No better than the unpresidential president we have right now.
6
I think it should be fairly obvious at this point that race baiting is a technique utilized by the political left (the right has their own set of tactics). This particular tactic consistently generates outrage and allows left leaning political groups to strike a moral pose for the media. The tactic not only allows one to pose as the "good', but also implicitly marks the 'other' as racist. Basically, a slick way of tarring someone when nothing happened.
Guess what: most people aren't bigots and know the difference between right and wrong and are opposed to 'bad things'.
8
The only regular "racism" I see in America is that claimed by minorities when they are arrested for committing crimes.
And given the left-wing media's fascination with white racism, it's understandable that the sense of grievance might spread to opportunists who would use false stories to help themselves.
In other words, the more "racism" is discussed (especially in the Age of Trump), the more fake racism stories are likely to develop.
Real racist crimes like South Carolina and Pennsylvania are horrid and horrifying.
But these crimes are anomalies in a nation that continues to be remarkably cohesive and committed to justice for all.
No matter the spin of the liberal media at any moment in time.
6
Americans are impatient for results. Yes as a people we "Rush to Judgement".
We are not willing to wait for a complete and thorough investigation before reaching a decision.
Smollett's apparent deception fed a narrative that many liberal and political activists were eager to vaidate.
Coming from New Jersey, I was not surprised to see the ever naive Corey Booker be one of the first people to be out front swallowing this story hook, line, and sinker. And then lecturing everyone about it.
With cameras almost everywhere today it really just became a matter of time before Smollett's collaborators would be caught and his series of lies would unraval.
4
Don't pretend that you don't enjoy this Noah Rothman, or that this doesn't serve your ends. I've been watching you for years.
1
I guess it just FEELS so good to be self-righteous and judgmental that the thinking part of the brain shuts down.
Sadly, that seems to be pretty much true of everybody nowadays. And, even more sadly, that may be why we end up tearing ourselves apart in this twittering, fox/msnbc-newsing era.
4
Some progressive Democrats still haven't dealt with their egos enough to be able to deal with this faked event - or reconsider their automatic support of him.
Protip: If you're a leader who followed Fake News CNN into the abyss and then saw them bail on Mr. Smollett, you're days late not getting out of the same place.
What will be interesting will be if this stunt saves the TV show from disappearing. It appears to be on its last legs.
Oh well, they can't ALL be ''NCIS,'' can they?
The wise news consumers have learned to always check the conservative opinions on news events before committing themselves to a reputation-destroying blunder.
Another example of jumping to conclusions appears to be happening all over - in Trump’s state of the union speech he had in attendance a couple of relatives of people killed recently in a home invasion by ‘illegal immigrants’. Best to wait until the guilty verdict, I think.
Hate crimes are up in New York state and the writer is correct, the largest increase are in reported attacks against Jews and Muslims. One can't help but see the irony in that tragedy.
But while I agree that the tendency to jump to conclusions without clear evidence is wrong, I also think that we are overlooking the motive behind at least some of these false claims.
As a person of color if I stopped to report or complain about every racial slight it would be an endless process.
So I have an imaginary line, or as DuBois called it, a duel consciousness. One side is reserved for the ignorant and the other for those far fewer events where action against racism must be taken.
And there is the psychological burden of racism to consider as well. It's a familiar companion with you when you wake up and sometimes continues to rattle around in your head long after you should be sleeping.
I don't know what really motivated Jussie Smollett. It might have been something less serious but troubling event that garnered no attention. It might have been some moment of guilt or shame for not asserting his identity when it was called for. Or it may be a reason we may never know.
In either case we should be mindful of false suspicions of racism or homophobia. But our white brethren should not falsely assume that this episode means that real events of bigotry are on the decline.
They are not and the the many gut wrenching cell phone videos that we've all seen testify to that.
3
The frightening undercurrent of these stories is not that people reach incorrect conclusions due to bias. It's that they really, thoroughly, do NOT care what actually happened, or who was really hurt.
There is an outpouring of false compassion and false commiseration, all of which is really self-serving, deceptive, and manipulative. Anyone who cared about victims would want to know who was actually victimized and how.
The mask of passionate advocacy conceals deep apathy and cynicism.
4
Some historic wisdom for those who still hope that the original story turns out to be true...
“The real test is this. Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one’s first feeling, ‘Thank God, even they aren’t quite so bad as that,’ or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils.”
-C.S. Lewis
4
I hadn't heard of this event before now. I guess I don't know why the guy would do such a thing. PR stunt? Firing up the base? S&Gs / trolling?
It doesn't take a genius to see how staging someone like this could set your cause back a hundred years.
3
The problem is that people react too fast. They make knee-jerk reactions before they have all the information. Let's use this as a cautionary tale to think and analyze before we opine.
4
Let's not let the Times off the hook as one of the enablers of this situation. In the past couple years, it has frequently substituted "eyeball counting" for genuine journalism, a "rush to judgement", as it were. "Fake news" is not just a question of misleading articles or outright lying. It also results, intentionally or not, from inflammatory headlines and ledes, as well as from editorial decisions that determine which subjects are covered, how often, and where they articles are placed. The ongoing Virginia soap opera is just one recent example.
3
Very similar to the Group Hate(Orwells direct experience was with Leftist tyranny)that was directed at the Catholic school students after the manufactured incident on the Mall in DC. Many prominent people rushed to judgement, a few even called for violence against the children involved. There have been very very few apologies and a whole lotta "we don't care if they're innocent, they're guilty of something and they still deserve it". If the Reactionary Left doesn't stop hysterically living up to their own stereotypes they're going to hand Trump re-election.
1
This sentence pretty much sums it up... "people in positions of political and cultural authority abandon critical thinking and pressure those who don’t abandon their circumspection under pain of being smeared as bigots." I'm a Gay White man who followed this story on my usual LGBT media site. Anyone (including myself) who questioned his story were called racist. We were told that our opinions were based on either white privilege, institutional racism or internalized homophobia. I sincerely hope that the same media sources that were in such a rush to show that a story no matter how flimsy that showed racist white men as villains will take a deep breath before jumping onto the bandwagon in the future. Considering what happened with the #metoo movement I very much doubt it.
1
When I first heard about this/ I was so disgusted. I thought it was just so horrible. To now think it might have been staged? The damage done if staged seems as bad as if it had actually happened- but- in an entirely opposite way.
The country loses both ways in a very bad way.
3
This is what comes from seeing EVERYTHING through the lens of Democratic vs Republican politics. It's exhausting and depressing.
8
Why is Donald Trump the scapegoat for everything now? Its getting old. People need to start taking personal responsibility. I would argue these fabricated hoaxes stir up more controversy do way more damage than anything the President could ever say. Its like people today are looking for a reason to be offended or to start an issue.
Wow. What a great piece.
1
Mr. Rothman neglects to mention the ultimate suspension of disbelief in the country: the demand that everyone believe every woman's allegation regarding sexual harassment. Critical thinking and questioning in that case brings on howls of outrage like nothing else.
Fair, cogent points in this article, but also a fair amount of bias. One can be capable of critical thought and also still be well aware of America’s history of racism, homophobia and other forms of bigotry.
Next.
2
Equally dangerous are hoaxes and false accusations of rape and sexual abuse. As here, there are plenty of real issues that need rectification. As here, fake or erroneous narratives hurt the real ones.
I hope all transgressors fitting the above categories are punished by law.
I never believed him from the start.
1
The man appears to be troubled. His report of an alleged assault did waste the time and resources of the law enforcement agencies involved but had little other negative effect. Scores of white males weren’t forcibly stopped and questioned. There weren’t any reports of wholesale detentions nor any crackdown on white communities. The only true damage is that those with certain agendas will trot out this episode following every future racial attack.
1
Every single credulous commentator had a cynical motive for such credulity--the politicians attempted to score points, the pundits, in search of ratings or twitter followers, tried to outdo each other with moral outrage, the anti-hate hucksters hoped to attract donors, the websites and newspapers and columnists all played their usual roles--and if you asked any average, unbiased, reasonably intelligent person on the street, his story stunk from day one. Incidents like this just give everybody a game to play, and they all do.
1
The matter of Jussie Smollett is about more than what happens when people in positions of political and cultural authority indulge their biases by suspending disbelief, it's a symptom of what happens when those on the fringes of political left and right actively nurture grievance, take it mainstream, and then compete over victim status.
A culture of victimhood exists because being a victim is valuable. Both the left and right now put great stock in "identity politics" because it means not only identifying with a group which has been victimized, but that any member necessarily gets primary, not just secondary, gains out of being a victim. Further, the last groups to be acknowledged as victims, lose.
Once you get to the point where a black gay man is necessarily a victim, no matter how implausible his claims, while an ultra-orthodox Jew cannot be a victim, even with incontrovertible evidence of him being brutally attacked solely for who he is, then you can tell which is a member of one of the last groups to ever be acknowledged as victims, and has therefore lost this most dangerous game.
I write this a civil rights and criminal defense attorney with over 2 decades of experience who dealt with this long ago. Years ago, I interviewed the family of a man who'd just stabbed another person 16 times for no reason. "You know what his problem is?" the family stated. ("He's a psychopath," was my silent answer). The family continued, "He's too sensitive, and he's the victim here."
4
There are times when people of the dominant culture falsely claim they were attacked by people of color - see Bethany Sorro, who claimed a black woman threw acid in her face in Vancouver WA. The story she told echoed some of the implausible aspects of Jussie Smollet's story (i.e. odd time of day, bad weather), but people immediately bought into her story and black women in the Portland metro area paid the price. Charles Stuart of Boston and Susan Smith of South Carolina also come to mind.
We should all slow down our reactions to stories.
In 2017, Trump's first year in office, there was an 86 percent increase in LGBTQ homicides from 2016.
Smollett's false accusation about anti-gay violence not only hurts the accused perpetrators, it also does incalculable damage to the LBTQ community. Hate crime victims already have a hard enough time coming forward and being believed - prosecute Smollett to warn other fakers that this country takes hate crimes seriously.
1
Noah Rothman, like so many of this newest generation of rightwing "white men are the real victims" authors, does what these sorts of writers do as often as possible: Take any opportunity to use a bad person's actions as yet another example of the evils of "social justice."
Rothman may speak or write in a refined, even professorial, way, but it does not hide the underlying seething racial anger and resentment that he and equally angry fellow writers (like Dinesh DeSouza or Jordan Peterson) seembarely able to contain.
"...there is no justice in treating individuals not as individuals but as representatives of their tribe." Then the left has NO standing on any important issue of the day, because that's all they've got.
1
I live in Oregon, where the comment boards of the largest local newspaper are always filled with hateful remarks by people doubting just about any alleged incident of involving a racially motivated attacked. When a black guest at a Portland hotel was wrongfully evicted because a security guard found it suspicious that he was talking to his mother on a cellphone in the lobby, all sorts of folks doubted his story. I did not. When a white woman in McMinnville screamed racial epithets and brandished a knife at a black family, the bigoted commenters once again doubted the black family's story. So when the Smollett case came along and the doubters once again reared their hateful heads, I was naturally inclined to believe Smollett. I agree with the point of the op-ed column, but I'd also rather err on the side of believing someone who claims they were a victim then just assuming an overly skeptical attitude at the start. Especially when so many of the doubters are motivated by blatant racism.
2
One legit hate crime is too many, but NY Times readers value facts. It’s true that the number of reported hate crimes is up from 2016 to 2017; it’s also true that nearly 900 more agencies participated in reporting in 2017.
Some very interesting data here:
https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/fbi-releases-2017-hate-crime-statist
1
An excellent, well-thought-out article. Now for the acid test -- does the same logical process shown here apply to Christine Ford, Julie Swetnick, and Brett Kavanaugh?
---Rewire’s Kieran Scarlett called “the avalanche of speculation that he’s lying” an “attack” on Mr. Smollett’s black and gay identities.---
The speculation *is* an attack on those identities. The people most eager to accuse Smollett of lying were doing it to position themselves above a black or gay person. Whether Smollett is telling the truth or not doesn't change the motives of his accusers.
@Mike S. - No Mike, his "accusers" are simply pointing out the infinitesimally small chance that two white racists would recognize this guy, much less even know he's gay, on a brutally cold night in Chicago when everyone is bundled up to their eyeballs. Odds are, on a night like that you could walk right past someone and have a difficult time even telling for sure what race they are. The entire story was full of holes from Day 1.
@Jim You're missing my point. The point isn't whether he's telling the truth or not. The point is the eagerness of certain people to belittle a black and gay person.
This is what happens when virtue signaling is taken to extremes...
Ultimately a Chicken Little moment.
1
This story is incredibly sad. To believe an actor/singer on his way up, in a hit TV show, would for one minute think faking an attack was a good idea is sad enough but his own fault. Far worse are the legitimate hate crimes, and there are far too many, will be suspect. Yes, this is a time of leaping to victim defense and yes, there is racism and yes, I had doubts due to the 2am alone on streets but who could think a person in his position would risk this?
Lawyering up may help his legal jeopardy but hardy his PR. Those who rushed to his defense will be furious at being taken in. There are likely more facts to be learned and maybe not quite so cut and dried, somewhere between real and hoax. Either way, this young man will likely have a long time to think about the direction he wants for his life.
So hate crimes get more severe punishment right?
So does faking a hate crime deserve more punishment than faking an ordinary crime?
Just asking.
Seems like it should.
3
This bizarre "crime" -- most bizarrely involving a noose in modern-day Chicago --took place a couple of days before a certain Democratic candidate announced his run for President.
This same candidate was in the midst of passing (and preparing his run on) an anti-lynching bill.
Here is the candidate's tweet in response to the event:
"The vicious attack on actor Jussie Smollett was an attempted modern-day lynching. I'm glad he's safe.To those in Congress who don't feel the urgency to pass our Anti-Lynching bill designating lynching as a federal hate crime– I urge you to pay attention."
Incidentally, the actor plays a character based on John Legend, who happens to be a close personal friend of the candidate.
Coincidence? If not, it's a head-shakingly inept attempt at relevancy for an issue.
But hey, I'm old enough to remember when Al Sharpton shot to fame with a fabricated police brutality story about an African American girl named Tawana Brawley. It was proven to be a hoax, and not a particularly effective one. You'd think Sharpton would have been finished. Yet, now he's a TV commentator and a self proclaimed leader of his community.
Maybe whoever's idea this was figured, like Sharpton, that any publicity is good publicity.
1
This whole thing seemed fishy from the start, glad the truth is coming out.
1
There is war on white men. As a white man, I have experienced several cases of women, both black and white, hurling insults at me and I felt totally defenseless to do anything about it. Once, I responded in kind and the woman got right up in my face. Look at what happened to those white boys from Covington High. An Indian man got right up in their faces and they couldn’t do anything about it. If a white man did that to a minority, it wouldn’t be tolerated. There is an extreme bias against white men in the city. I feel it nearly every day. As a result of my experiences, I'm very cautious about where I go in public these days, because I’m scared. I feel like a woman could just punch me in the face in a public place in front of crowd of people and get away with it. Unless I have video evidence of the assault, I don’t stand a chance. And if I try to defend myself, I will probably end up in jail.
1
If it feels too good to be true... If it fits one's anti-Trump narrative too perfectly...
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Being a resident of Chicago, I can assure you that it is anything but MAGA country. That suggestion is laughable and was a clear signal to me that this ‘attack’ was made up.
1
This episode is simply the latest high profile example that puts lie to the magical thinking assumption that 'victims' never lie and a legal standard about the suspension of an automatic 'guilty' verdict is still the ethical course for nonlegal settings.
.
#metoo anybody?
With so many comments saying what liberals think and what the far right thinks... I realize that I do not actually know the mind of any of them. I believe that those who claim to know others' thoughts are, first of all, wrong, and second of all, insulting.
And if my words have insulted anyone I know... let's talk.
1
Another well-framed and clearheaded view from N. Rothman. Thank you.
3
This article left out the "Me Too" movement which has suffered from the same false reports and accusations. The culture of "want to be " victims is pathetic. The loss of dignity and self respect is astounding.
This is a terrifically upsetting and also confusing event. If the men who were arrested — are they the same people accused of helping to plot this? — were released by the police, why were they not held on the crime of helping to create a fraud?
This is incredibly disturbing. The list of false accusations in this opinion piece are so damaging to the real fight for racial and social equality. A sad, sad time we are in.
4
I think this whole thing is horrifying. So many women are attacked and not believed. It has become the burden of the victim to "prove" the attack happened, and I see so much of the aftermath in the work that I do. I agree with others that right from the beginning I thought it was a fake. Why would he be walking around with the rope around his neck? (And yes the subway in his hand.) In real time, in the trenches of the work I do, I do not see clear evidence that the "Me too" movement has really made a difference. Worse yet is the indignation that the politicians exhibited.
Finally I think this actor is so talented and gifted. Why would he have to do this? Sounds like a cry for help to me.
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@Sarah Smith
Of course you have to prove an attack happened. Do you not understand our system of justice?
27
A cry for help is a petition. This was a ‘crash’ for help. It is inappropriate to jeopardize and mislead others when one needs help. This sort of action is akin to driving a car through a red light at an intersection on the way to the mental hospital rather than call a cab or an ambulance to deliver him or herself there.
6
@Joe In any "he said, she said" scenario, both sides are entitled to be heard, of course. In a court of law, there IS the presumption of innocence, however, in the court of public opinion, surely, the accuser's allegations should be considered more than that of the accused. (I am specifically referring to sexual assault in this case.) Many rapes are never even reported due to fear of a) being blamed, or b) not being believed, or c) fear of retribution/social stigma, etc. Of those rapes that ARE reported, victims often decide not to press charges, knowing that she will be put on trial, HER reputation sullied, etc. Of those who DO press charges, few alleged rapists are successfully prosecuted and sentenced. Pew Research says 1 in 5 women and 1 in 71 men experience sexual assault.
5
People who make false accusations are doubly guilty: they hurt, even destroy, the people they falsely accuse and they also make it more difficult for real victims to get the attention and support they need. It seemed from the get-go Smollett helped stage this, and once this case is resolved I hope he does time in jail, just as he put innocents at risk of that fate with his selfish and pathetic actions. People who fall for these manipulations over and over again need to rethink their entire way of interpreting the world around them. And anybody who enables false accusers should understand they are responsible for these events, as well as the increasing polarization of our society.
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@LV. I agree! The False Accuser in Chief in the White House daily makes false statements about immigrants, the news media, Democrats, the list goes on. His lies, propagated on right-wing media and believed without thought by his followers, have led to an increase in verbal and physical attacks, death threats and even the murder of his targets. Trump and all of his enablers should do jail time and his base really should do some serious soul searching and rethink their entire way of interpreting the world around them.
5
I would be sympathetic to Jussie Smollett if this incident that he reports had happened in the "boys town" neighborhood of Chicago. Many residents of this neighborhood are subjected to hate crime. Streeterville, on the other hand, is a neighborhood area dominated by Northwestern Hospital, hotels, restaurants and shopping centers. It is one of the safest neighborhood areas of Chicago, and one of the least likely for anyone to encounter the type of hate crime reported by Mr. Smollett
23
Let's not forget had this been a White man attack by black men, this would not have even made the news. This is how emotional and one-sided the coverage of racial issues has become in this country. As long as the villains are white men, then it "must" be true. Thanks for a great article.
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While I agree with Mr. Rothman's direction and caution, I do wish he had added that there are also times when the narrative proves true - such as when top Democrats were sent pipe bombs and the man arrested had been living in a white van covered in stickers supporting President Donald Trump.
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@Joe Donahue. He did say that hate crimes are up in the Trump era. He only warned against a rush to judgement based on tribalism
2
I’m glad this was written. People react much more strongly to stories than to statistics, so it’s unsurprising that we look for the “perfect” injustice to drive home what we believe to be the bigger truth, rather than relying on boring, unrelatable statistics.
Even crimes that aren’t staged get blown out of proportion and misused when it suits our purpose. Trump supporters, for instance, regularly invoke Katie Steinle, a woman who was murdered by an illegal immigrant in San Francisco, to support their anti-immigration policies. Steinle’s family has vehemently insisted that they do not want their daughter’s memory to be used as a political cudgel, but the actual people who lost their daughter are considered the least important part of the story, even though the “story” is the biggest event of their lives. It no longer belongs to them.
To use an example that probably won’t sit as well with a regular NYT reader, consider the men who were arrested at Starbucks, and the resulting “living while black” vids. There are 14,000 Starbucks in the country. What are the odds that one of the managers has poor judgment? Is that really an indictment of the entire system, or did that incident just “prove” what we were all ready to believe?
These stories always involve people, normal, everyday folks just like you or me. But they become totems, and we all need our totems.
38
Yes one more time when we should learn the lesson of patience. self-restraint, not jumping to conclusions and trying, convicting and sentencing in public at the drop of hat. From Franken to this and many others before and along the way.
When will we learn? When will our leaders learn? As near as I can tell, the only leader who held himself in check until reports were in and investigation was done was no-drama Obama. Statements of horror can always be made with a simple tagline, "if true."
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@child of babe Obama had a drama that ended with a beer summit and began with "The police acted stupidly".
But I do think he learned something from that.
This was such an unbelievable story that I was dismayed how many people jumped on the bandwagon of calling it a hate crime. Booker and Harris should have shown better judgment in waiting for the investigation to be completed.
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I don't know the facts of the Smollett case, but if it wakes people up and makes them pause before going "Aha! It just goes to show...", I do know it will have served a useful purpose.
Trump has unleashed the common but ordinarily restrained tendency to validate Alice in Wonderland: first the verdict, then the trial. This has the dual effect of "convicting" the innocent while "exonerating" the truly guilty in reaction to reduced credibility.
When this tendency to rush to judgement is combined with the current sociopolitical atmosphere wherein people largely seek sources of "information" that confirm what they already believe, you have a society where marketing, whether of soap powder, a candidate, a stereotype, a fear, a cell phone, or a claim of reality becomes the supreme occupational aspiration, modus operandi, and moral good.
Across the political spectrum, office holders, candidates, religious leaders, and cultural figures are busily tripping over themselves to denounce whatever it is that will serve their agenda, rarely bothering to ascertain the validity of the claims before pouncing. Meanwhile, the media, busily devaluing journalistic standards in favor of "eyeballs", provides free "advertising" for every extreme statement or interpretation of a tweet or event, whether real or claimed.
Trump most certainly has exacerbated this situation, but his election and Administration are much more an effect than a cause of this tragic dynamic. "We the people" are responsible.
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@Steve Fankuchen
The Times should not be let off the hook as one of the enablers of this situation. In the past couple years, it has frequently substituted "eyeball counting" for genuine journalism, a "rush to judgement", as it were.
"Fake news" is not just a question of misleading articles or outright lying. It also results, intentionally or not, from inflammatory headlines and ledes, as well as from editorial decisions that determine which subjects are covered, how often, and where they articles are placed. The ongoing Virginia soap opera is just one recent example.
317
I've noticed this problem with the news. A hasty and huge response in reporting initial events. There is rarely follow up as to how the events play out over time. I believe it is necessary for a news outlet to identify mistakes in their reporting when they are exposed. It would be nice if there were more reports on individual stories and how things play out over time.
126
This is such a wonderful article. I wholeheartedly agree with every word. And I really hope that NYT decides to publish more opinion pieces along these lines.
238
Chicago City News Bureau motto: when your mother says she loves you, check it out. This means that even when something is so blatant that it just has to have happened, it's your job to go find hard evidence that it did happen. Keep disbelieving until you've got the facts, and don't let anybody try to throw you off the pursuit.
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You heard that on the “Ingraham Angle” just now on Fox News Channel. When you write a term paper, you acknowledge your sources. You don’t need to condescend to explain the quote.
The problem with applying critical thinking before reacting to events that one hasn't experienced first hand is that it usually requires a lot of time and a lot of accurate information to feel even somewhat confident in a conclusion.
That's not a scenario that plays well with our hyper-reactive media and social media world, unfortunately.
"Let's wait for all the information to come in" is not a position that garners clicks or likes.
111
That’s exactly why scientists, engineers and other deep thinking professionals are being ignored and relegated to the sidelines. “It is complicated and depends on the situation” is being relegated as an un-answer even when it is the right one. There seems to be less interest in taking time to understand the basic situation.
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In other words, all this was staged so Mr. Smollett could gain the name recognition that would put him on the A List?
Well, we know who and what he is now. But it sure didn't get him on the A list. If the allegations are true and the attack was indeed staged, he'll probably never get work again on a high profile project. He's ruined his career.
134
The problem we're having is that everybody is at each other's throats to the point where, the moment a brand new weapon shows up in the form of a news event that seems to provide backing for someone's point of view, they immediately rush to deploy it. And this doesn't just apply to "left" and "right", it applies to pretty much everyone who is participating in the political argument. (As some have pointed out, it's a bit odd to be writing articles about rushes to judgment, when no official statement has yet been made or conclusion issued by the Chicago PD. What's your rush, Mr. Rothman?) The problem with the opinon wing of the media and "cultural authorities" is that they are paid to have opinions. To not write that piece about a breaking story is to risk someone else beating you to your hot take, thus you losing your influence. Restraint is not rewarded. Certainty, or at least sounding like you are, is, because it sounds like wisdom and your audience wants to know what to think. But don't think this is just a "left" problem, even though social justice warrioring takes up a lot of airspace right now. Mr. Rothman should look at the Ashley Todd case from 2008 where the conservative media jumped all over a similar hoax where a McCain volunteer claimed to have been attacked by a black Obama supporter. The right is just as susceptible to stories like this, don't kid yourself. We all need to be on the lookout for con artists and hoaxers in an attention starved world.
68
@J Thank You for taking the time to put that into words, I could not figure out how to do it !
1
@J
Case in point is the hate heaped on the high school boys with MAGA hats confronted by a tribal elder.
3
The short list of hoaxed Hate-Crimes was informative.
A list of authentic Hate-Crimes would be even more so.
But then that might interfere with the premise of the article.
Or perhaps there just wasn't enough space.
140
It was right that people reacted to the claims of violence against this horrible person with anger because the claims were horrifying. That's why it's doubly grotesque to learn that they were fabricated because he not only diminishes his forever-tainted self but hurts the very people that he claimed to relate to, namely black and gay men. As a gay man, this episode upsets me more than I can say. It's despicable to have made such lurid and extreme claims because it diminishes the rights of those that will come after him that really DO find themselves attacked for being black or gay. I hope that he suffers the full weight of the law and pays for the crime that HE committed against society - he's repugnant in all the worst sorts of ways for what he did!
164
@John Thank you for realizing that it is most important to me to strive to be even handed and objective. That often requires supporting situations that on many levels I disagree with, such as the allegations of misconduct against Brett Kavanaugh, whom I loathed to see elevated to the Supreme Court but who should have been denied based on his record, not unsubstantiated allegations. In this case, contrarily, the proof is fast emerging of a vile attempt to gain sympathy by using his race and sexual orientation and exploiting those for personal gain, to the DETRIMENT of those that DO suffer legitimate attacks and discrimination. Smollet is beneath contempt.
2
I do not recall ever reading commentary by Mr. Rothman on the topic of racist attacks, despite the unprecedented rise in such incidents; incidents that are overwhelmingly and unarguably true. Now that he has ventured into this space, maybe he can spend time covering all those other cases.
84
Revolutions have a tendency to devour their own.
79
@Jim. Revolutions practice on their own first.
1
This is an excellent piece. The cost of all the time wasted by not only police, but by everyone talking about this, is simply staggering.
If there is a silver lining to this stunt, it is that it should help thin the field of presidential candidates for 2020. Trying to win the race to pass judgement or the contest to act the most outraged is not at all presidential.
100
I've read many of the comments. Perhaps I missed the one that asked the question of why Mr. Smollett would fake an attack. He is a successful artist appearing in a successful show. This conversation reminds me of all the women who have been accused of faking harassment or rape accusations. I think it is unfair to make judgements when we don't have all the facts.
34
As a liberal I thought the story seemed fishy from the first time I read about it. And from reading messages on Internet forums and message boards I would say about 95 percent of the American public (regardless of political persuasion) also thought it sounded fishy from the get go.
So why did it take the media so long to figure out what seemed so obvious to the general public?
219
@William Because the media is 100% responsible for creating the "victim" culture in America. The media never waits for investigation or verdict. They seek to insight people. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the media staged these types of attacks so they can report on them.
7
@William
The 90% of media people who always vote for Democrats or socialists are more partisan players than professional news people. Walter Cronkite carefully toed this line - but Dan Rather and those after him jumped right over it.
It used to be that such partisan advocates were fired for showing bias, but journalism died in the U.S.decades ago and does not seem to feature in schools of ''journalism'' anymore.
8
@William the media knew too but had to tiptoe on eggshells given the subject's race and sexual persuasion (I believe it's called intersectional victim)
13
If, as is now being suggested, Smollett staged his own assault, then the reaction, loud condemnation of a non existent attack, tells us something about human nature. We see the world as we think it is, not as it is. Our brains construct our world and we are much more accept information that supports what our brains have built than that which contradicts.
26
@Michael Feely I think there's validity in your observation, and it goes both ways: the eagerness of the acceptance of the original assault is just as telling as the loud condemnation of its (apparent) falsehood.
11
@Michael Feely
Yes. It's called confirmation bias.
Smollett lied...cooked it up....paid these 2 guys...the brothers confessed. He needs to be charged and tried. Justice will prevail. Forget the “constructs.” Lied. Paid his friends. Period.
The Right has been exploiting this tendency on the Left for some time already, to great effect. Think Al Franken, Covington, Northam.
The Democratic Party, hoisted on its own petard, is lurching to defeat in 2020.
116
@javelar All of those instances you list would be non-events if not initially mis-reported and spread like wildfire by the Left or invited the 'eating of their own' by false hysteria they themselves had instigated. The Right barely had to lift a finger to exploit any of them .. this exploitation was set up and manufactured by their opposition's own actions and news dissemination.
2
It seems to me that the author and many of the commentators, are the mirror image of those they harshly criticize. Just as those on the left want to stand up with the LGBTQ community against bigotry, discrimination and assault, the right seems to want to disbelieve any such allegations from the start.
I know that we are "all entitled to our opinions" but wouldn't it be better if those opinions from both side of the "wall" were based on facts rather than our divisiveness.
30
We all know that information comes quickly to your attention but it is up to us question the information we are receiving from all platforms. Americans need to take the time to read and think about scenarios that are playing out in front of our eyes.
No one knows what actually happened that evening. Over 8k lies have been told by Trump and they are glossed over by his minions so you are at a disadvantage if you don’t stop and think before one reacts .
For decades we failed to care about injustices and maybe there was an overreaction . We were compensating for turning away for over a hundred years when we should of been fighting for the rights of all.
15
@Tony
Actually the two Nigerian brothers know full well what happened that evening and have already given their statements to the police. Smollett is going to jail.
@Tony I don't agree. I think the vast majority of people thought this story seemed fishy from the get go. It was the media who refused to question the obvious.
There are real hate crimes out there that demand attention. Every time someone, whether s/he is a celebrity or not, falsely reports a hate crime law enforcement resources are diverted from the crimes that have been committed and need to be investigated and their perpetrators identified. If Jussie Smollett has lied he should be charged with lying. Hate crimes are serious issues and there are people who have been maimed or murdered when they have been targeted for a hate crime.
Smollett and the others deserve our scorn for this. They do not merit as much attention as they are getting. I'd rather read about a real hate crime being solved.
32
@hen3ry
Smollet did commit a hate crime. He was perfectly willing to let innocents, specifically two innocent white males chosen solely for their race, take the blame(and possibly the punishment) for an invented crime solely for his own self-aggrandizement. With the way he's sticking to his rapidly dissovling story against all evidence, do you doubt that he'd hesitate to falsely testify against any "suspects" that might be produced? If the races were reversed here, wouldn't that be a hate crime?
3
@TLibby sorry, it was a hoax if the current story is true. A hoax is not a hate crime.
@hen3ry
Sorry, can't agree. There's too much of a slippery slope here to simply call it a hoax. And you don't address the issue that this was directed specifically against a particular race and political leaning.
I don't know the facts of the Smollett case, but if it wakes people up and makes them pause before going "Aha! It just goes to show...", I do know it will have served a useful purpose.
Trump has unleashed the common but ordinarily restrained tendency to validate Alice in Wonderland: first the verdict, then the trial. This has the dual effect of "convicting" the innocent while "exonerating" the truly guilty in reaction to reduced credibility.
When this tendency to rush to judgement is combined with the current sociopolitical atmosphere wherein people largely seek sources of "information" that confirm what they already believe, you have a society where marketing, whether of soap powder, a candidate, a stereotype, a fear, a cell phone, or a claim of reality becomes the supreme occupational aspiration, modus operandi, and moral good.
Across the political spectrum, office holders, candidates, religious leaders, and cultural figures are busily tripping over themselves to denounce whatever it is that will serve their agenda, rarely bothering to ascertain the validity of the claims before pouncing. Meanwhile, the media, busily devaluing journalistic standards in favor of "eyeballs", provides free "advertising" for every extreme statement or interpretation of a tweet or event, whether real or claimed.
Trump most certainly has exacerbated this situation, but his election and Administration are much more an effect than a cause of this tragic dynamic. "We the people" are responsible.
22
Rothman sees an either or proposition. it isn't. yes, Trump era is the symptom of increased tolerance for racism and bigotry in the US. And yes, people like Smollett will exploit that to their own dubious benefit. The two can coexist.
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@James brummel
Trump is the excuse for bias and hatred.
I agree that the Smollett staging - if in fact true - will do harm to legitimate hate crimes, which clearly and objectively have risen during the trump era.
While It is human to believe Smollett’s initial telling, the true test will come if they,when faced with facts, adjust their initial views. This seems to be happening. Funny how so many republicans - who are gleeful at this episode - hug trump even tighter with every clear lie he tells or Russia revelation is made. Go figure!
39
Excessive credulity and seeing what we want to see afflict both the right and the left, both the reporters and the readers. An awful lot of people in this country could use a crash course in evaluating evidence and thinking critically.
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@A reader
Crash courses, unfortunately, aren't very useful for acquiring those skills. The shortcuts often taught in school for discerning reliable sources usually simply serve to reinforce institutionalized authority. Real discernment comes from reading a lot and realizing repeatedly when and how one has been misled. Critical thinking is not really a skill that can be taught. It is a skill that develops alongside knowledge of a subject area. If you don't already know a lot about hate crimes, for example, your not going to be very good at thinking critically about a particular allegation. People who read the news from multiple sources every day are better at sniffing out fake news than those who just read the headlines from one.
19
@A reader
Critical thinking is something that should be taught in America's schools starting at elementary level. It isn't. Look at today's political discourse on almost any online comment forum. Credulity and self affirmation are the norm. Sometimes even here, at the Nyt.
1
It would appear that when it comes to melodrama Trump has met his match in Mr Smollett. It’s even more depressing to witness the gullibility of the Democratic candidates, especially as it suggests that they’ve not lost their knack for blowing elections.
61
There are way too many attention starved people in our ADD celebrity-driven, instagram facebook society!
54
How come that this was and still headlines news? And Heros are second hand news or fillers? This report should be covered until the end and get even more coverage, than now. All the way to sentencing if it goes to court. This is saying that IF the preliminary investigation is true and everything was was a hoax.
8
Guilt by accusation is happening far too frequently. It is especially prevalent on the left (where I have been at home for more than 50 of my 74 years). Old white guys gave us the concepts of "due process" and "fairness." Those are two values, flip-sides of the same coin, that we shouldn't abandon. People! Calm down. Be reasonable. Above all, be fair.
86
To me the key aspect was the many red flags in Smollett's story. Politicians and media should have been smart enough, knowledgeable enough, and unbiased enough to know from the beginning that this particular alleged attack was dubious.
74
Maybe. But, let's keep in mind this this happened in Chicago whose police force is not exactly spotless in its treatment of race.
10
@jb
How is this relevant? The police were not actors in this incident. If anything, did a great job investigating this case while remaining sensitive to the the racially charged elements of it.
8
@jb - In this instance the Chicago police showed much restraint, publicly supporting Smollett while quietly investigating the red flags in his story. I am a passionate liberal, but thought the story was fishy from the start. A historically cold day, Trump supporters in Streeterville, 2 AM and he happens to run into people with a rope and bleach (bleach?), he is covered from head to toe in winter clothes and they recognize him as a tv actor? I noted my concerns in a liberal online forum and was taken to task in a pretty brutal fashion. Trump is a scoundrel who we criticize for making reality what he wishes it to be. We can't do the same.
It is indeed possible to give voice to thoughtful counterpoints.
There is a sensible medium between being an ideological echo chamber and misguidedly granting false equivalence in the name of equal time.
It's not easy to get it right. Good thing we have the Times at the lead.
8
If Mr. Smollett's claim of being attacked is false he should definitely be exposed for duping the public and wasting a lot of people's time. However, it's not at all surprising that people have believed his story, and even less surprising that they link what they believe is a racist attack on a person of color to the influence of Donald Trump, his campaign, and his administration. Have, or have not, David Duke and other admitted racists thanked Donald Trump for creating an atmosphere where they feel comfortable? Have or have not we witnessed attacks on black churches, synagogues and mosques since he's been the president? People supporting Trump should not be surprised if people believe in such attacks when they hear about them, and that they link them to him.
27
If Smollet is proven to have orchestrated the 'attack,' he owes an apology to everyone who has ever suffered a hate crime. If the actor did treat the evil act of an assault as an opportunity to get publicity, or what have you, he has made it that much harder for true victims to be believed.
58
@NM
An apology is the least that he owes. Some jail time is warranted.
3
@NM he deserves jail time too...crying wolf
1
A significant percentage of murders go unsolved in Chicago. Given this statistic, and the current political climate, I can see how Smollett thought he would get away with this. Its disgusting that both media and police resources were expended on this story rather than actual crimes that occur every day in Chicago, often resulting in death or great injury.
However, Smollett has not been found guilty of lying to the police, or making up this story. By rushing to judge him before all the facts are out, we are all being hypocritical in condemning him at this moment.
29
@Will
Fair. But he's earned a certain amount of dubiousness at the very least. And, if guilty, he should be the one held responsible for diverting police and media resources for his own benefit. Why blame the media for reporting a fire instead of the arsonist who started it?
9
@TLibby
The story is totally dubious, and no doubt should he be held responsible if true. Still, I hold the slightly radical opinion that the media should suspend reporting on most if not all crimes until they are fully adjudicated.
10
@Will
Sorry, but I think that's most definitely against the public interest. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Reporting bans allow infestations tongrow in the dark.
Unfortunately many hate crimes happen in this nation every day and a false claim does nothing to exonerate those crimes. In fact, why is this case, which is suspect, being given any attention at the expense of true victims?
Why are people who were willing to believe Jussie Smollett being vilified for taking him at his word? Is the intention of this article to encourage skepticism when someone claims to have been attacked? I prefer to err on the side of compassion, even if, on rare occasion, someone is 'staging' a crime.
19
@Stephen
Many everyday? I don't know about that. While thousands are reported, that doesn't mean they are ultimately adjudicated as such.
24
I took an entirely different view of the article. The author didn't say to outright disbelieve someone's claims, but simply to wait to learn enough to reasonably believe. Additionally, the falsehoods further hurt the groups who are truly suffering hate crimes, by making them harder to believe. Finally, your claim to have compassion for potential victims -- how about compassion for those falsely accused? Historically oppressed groups certainly know the pain and injustice of false accusations.
31
@Holmes
I surely agree the falsely accused are victims who deserve compassion as well. Publishing and repeating these 'falsehoods' is the problem in the first place and they do indeed harm "those truly suffering hate crimes, by making them harder to believe." Which was my point in asking "why is this case, which is suspect, being given any attention at the expense of true victims?" It's a rhetorical question and I'm sure we all understand Mr. Smollett's celebrity played a big part in the amount of coverage this has received.
If this is a fabricated crime, as Mr. Rothman suggests, then the hurt this brought upon true victims of hate crimes will be enormous.... and prosecutable I would hope.
6
This whole article is evidence of the news media's impulsive and reckless reporting. I clearly remember reading about all of these incidents, but I don't recall reading the aftermaths or retractions of any of them. Such stories are nowhere near as flashy. Appealing to clicks and partisan readership is not worth sacrificing the facts.
47
I don’t understand why I am to assume that the police apprehended the correct suspects in the first place...
3
@Ryan Swanzey Well, let's see. Smollett has indicated that the two men in the surveillance photo are the ones who attacked him. Phone records and other investigation linked those two to the scene. One of the two brothers played a bit part on Empire and had worked as Smollett's trainer. When the police searched their apartment and questioned them the brothers confessed to the scheme and the police also found rope and bleach in their apartment.
And by the way, those brothers are Nigerian immigrants (and no, they aren't white Nigerians), so I doubt they were shouting about MAGA or have a burning desire to lynch other black people...
Add in all of the other holes in this story and the complete lack of any witnesses to or surveillance videos showing the "attack" in progress and it's pretty obvious it's a hoax. Plus, look at the guys "injury." All two grown men could inflict on him was one little scratch below his eye? And why would you throw bleach on someone? It's mildly caustic but unless you get it right in someone's eyes it's not really going to do anything. The whole thing was obviously bad theatrics. This is why Mr. Smollett can only get bit role on a FOX show... His acting chops certainly aren't HBO or even Netflix worthy.
1
Kudos to the Times for publishing this column. I couldn’t agree more with the writer.
I’ve weathered withering criticism myself just days ago for suggesting that perhaps we should wait till all the facts have come to light before making any judgement. I was labeled all manner of terms from ‘bigot’, ‘racist’, to ‘homophobe’ - which seemed odd because I am a gay person of colour myself and unnecessarily harsh since I was not disputing any of Mr Smollett’s claims. But they still paled in comparison to the abuse those who raised questions about Mr Smollett’s claims received.
It’s a problem when ‘wait and see’ can be interpreted so pejoratively. Its a problem when so many smart and influential people felt the need to jump the gun to give their hot takes (that many have began to walk back). It’s a problem when being a public victim seemingly entitles you to an army of obsequious online trolls raring to gaslight anyone who so much as question your narrative.
Believing victims is fine as a private exercise but when people start imposing their beliefs on others, that’s where the problem begins. As a principle, I choose believe victims until the facts make it impossible to do so, but I don’t see it would be my place to unthinkingly evangelise/advocate on their behalf. Nor do I see it my responsibility to defend the victim’s credibility.
86
I am disturbed by the number of comments that blame President Trump for this debacle. There is a great deal to dislike about our president, but why must every incident in life be blamed on him?
121
@William hayes
It's fascinating that people might see the problem as this event's benefiting Trump. Never mind that Trump supporters were slandered. Never mind that a red hat had everyone rushing to judgement believing the worst.
1
@william hayes
Trump Derangement Syndrome. The Republicans suffered from a similar condition when Obama was in the White House. One of the symptoms is being blind to the irony of the situation.
1
“Every incident in life”? Not really. Only those that involve someone wearing a MAGA hat, whether made up or not.
As with any nefarious plot or crime, the culprits must outsmart everyone who has the duty or other interest to get to the truth of the matter. Yes, he fooled some people who should know better than to react instinctively and emotionally to an overly dramatic scenario but not for long.
It's one thing to outsmart the sheriff in a one stoplight town and quite another to outsmart the Chicago PD and media.
It's even tougher to outsmart the posse on Trumps trail. These 2 stories seem remarkably familiar on a very basic level.
10
Didn’t seem so hard to outsmart the media.
I've already ruled out Gillibrand for spearheading Franken's ouster.
But from this point on, any Democratic candidate who jumps to judgment about things like this won't get my vote in the primaries. And I say that knowing some of my favorites have already done so.
Clean slate from this point on.
But we already have someone in the White House who does this. We don't need another.
148
@Talbot
me too regarding Gillibrand and what she did to Franken - such purity! - plus the act that a 50+er is running as a "mom". Although I will always technically be a "mom", I will leave that title to a real "mommy" looking after little kids.
43
There are plenty of 50 mothers out there with children under 18. I was 42 when my youngest was born and just think of the skills necessary to work and raise 5 children like Nancy Pelosi. You used a broad brush to assume that 50 year old mothers are finished being a parent.
28
@mbamom newsflash! Nancy Pelosi is worth upwards of 75 million dollars. Get out of here with praising her like some saint for raising 5 kids. She’s a career politician and just showed her incompetence yet again getting made a fool by the fool in chief president Trump. In exchange for wall funding she could have actually negotiated something good out of it. Instead we’ll get a 5-4 victory for Trump in June 2020 from the Supreme Court going into the election ....
1
One of the reasons why I don't visit Facebook much anymore is because it became so wearying trying to advise people not to base judgment on a viral video, which shows only one p.o.v., within a limited time frame and no context — only to be called names for it.
33
I am a very left wing Democrat and I certainly agree that hate crimes against marginalized groups, and sexual harassment and exploitation of women, are overwhelming and endemic crises. At the same time, the Left's current adoption of a "guilty if accused" response to allegations of hate crimes and "MeToo" episodes, especially regarding allegations that are decades in the past, is terribly wrong and extremely dangerous. It not only risks the destruction of innocent individuals, it feeds the Right's narrative of the Left as intolerant, "snowflake"-reactive, hyper-moralistic, and untruthful. The concept of innocent until proven guilty, and the withholding of judgment and retribution until facts are clearly established, are critical defenses against a societal descent into endless and destructive tribal screaming matches. Please, please let the data guide our responses to these things - not our preconceptions. Don't believe everything you think.
274
@Mark While I agree with your overall point, and your conclusion "let the data guide our responses" you start out by simply declaring that hate crimes against marginalized groups is an overwhelming crisis. Excuse me for saying so, but where is the data on that? Or is it just a given to qualify what you have to say here?
41
@Mark Mallard
https://csbs.csusb.edu/sites/csusb_csbs/files/2018%20Hate%20Report%205-141PM.pdf
here is an academic report containing the increase in hate crimes in 2018 (newest dat available)
An average rise of 12% from the previous year, and the fourth consecutive year that hate crimes have increased.
16
@John Keno
If you don't get it, maybe you're part of the problem?
Let's not forget the campus sexual assault issue, too, and the Rolling Stone article that just accepted everything the U of Va undergrad said about having been raped by multiple frat brothers -- all made up. Yet if anyone dares say that maybe accused students deserve due process, there are screams about how sexist that is and how almost all reporters of sexual assault are true. Believe me, I am in a position to know that some are true and some are most definitely not true. We are going through reverse McCarthy-esque moment in this nation and it needs to stop.
184
What a thoughtful, reasonable, and well-written piece, especially during these tense times. Congrats to the NYT for publishing it.
130
In a strange way, the rush-to-hysterical national coverage seems to have incentivized the police to do a really, really thorough investigation. Putting together information from various articles, it seems that the police started with two very hazy images, traced public transportation records, identified the two men, traced the men overseas and as they returned to the USA, and questioned the brothers until they confessed to being paid for the assault. If this investigation were the model used to pursue real bigots engaged in assault, then as a country we might actually cut down on racist-, homophobic-, and gender-biased-crimes.
26
Sure, if you think drawing a disproportionate amount of resources away from real crimes in a city plagued by violence is a good thing. Tell that to the parents of a murder victim whose killer is still out there. There's absolutely nothing positive about false police reports that waste police time and makes true victims harder to believe.
1
@MSC
It was local media who actually engaged in that ancient act of "investigation".
If the reports are true, then everyone who is appalled at Trump's demonization of the media as agents of fake news should be outraged at the damage Jussie Smollet has done. Many real acts of terror in this country are routinely denounced as false flag operations by various malign actors, depending on the incident at hand. This incident, if true, will give them currency, and strengthen Trump's hand. But as should have been done at the start, lets wait for the story to play out.
44
Hoaxes occur. Horrific violent attacks occur. The incidents of factual attach occur at such an astronomically greater frequency than hoaxes, that assuming an attack actually occurred is the statistically valid response. However, just like rape, victims can expect to be questioned, and not believed, and then only if every fact and detail can be lined up in a pretty, perfect reconstruction, then and only then will the ruling patriarchy give an inch of compassion to the victim. What Mr Smollett has done is indefensible and will be more than two steps back for authentic victims. However, what the people who leapt to his defense did, well there is nothing wrong with that, statistically or morally.
17
@Marika H
What evidence do you have to support your claim that false accusations are much less common than truthful ones?
Have you ever been in an auto accident? Did both you and the other driver accuse the other of being at fault? Were both your description of the accident and that of the other driver the same?
I suspect that the human tendency to exaggerate and even to lie is greater than you admit.
However, regardless whether false accusations in the past have been common or uncommon, such false accusations will undoubtedly become much more common if they can be made and be effective without any corroborating evidence. The current atmosphere in the US has become to accept mere accusations as absolutely true when those accusations are made by someone in currently preferred groups like women or blacks. To many people, that is an invitation to make false accusations.
56
@Marika H
Disagree. The valid response is to not assume anything, and say "Ok, this person has made a claim. I don't yet know if this claim is true."
Unless you're a member of that person's inner circle, and are there for emtional assistance, any grand conclusions are unwarranted and very likely to align with one's biases.
36
Thank you for this insighful article, Mr. Rothman. It seems now that admission to the new all-white-male country club has nothing to do with white males, but with groups who have established themselves as the arbiters of our moral fabric, namely, anybody who isn't white or male and who wants to pin his or her general malaise on the latest scapegoat, the white male. How that redresses the problem of human evil is beyond me. But as a race, we've always needed scapegoats, and nobody wants to be reminded that the larger problem is the unsolvable question of evil. So while two hundred years ago that evil was pinned on people of color, and fifty years ago it was pinned on the Semitic race in Europe, the fact that now it's being pinned on whiteness does nothing to solve the question. As Hannah Arendt pointed out in her coverage of the Nuremberg Trials, evil happens because people do not think, i.e., reason. How much actual reasoning is behind the current zeitgeist of anti-male whiteness?
133
@Kafka...
2OO years?
5O years?
You need to do a better job of historical research.
Comparing the justified anger toward White male history with the history of racism and anti-semitism is simply a perfect example of why so many folk find clueless White males so worthy of critique.
@Kafka
Dear Toby,
"Comparing the justified anger toward White male history with the history of racism and anti-semitism is simply a perfect example of why so many folk find clueless White males so worthy of critique."
So your answer to evils committed by others in the past is to condemn a whole race "white males" in this case regardless of whether they have done anything wrong or not?
All you are doing is perpetuating an already difficult problem; that is, Racism, by claiming that white men should be condemned, because of history. Historical evils have occurred since the beginning of the human race but shouldn't we judge people on their personal behavior not that of their forebears or their race?
6
Shrill ignorance has become a virtue. Volume has replaced substance. Truth has been separated from facts. We are off our foundation. The house cannot stand.
78
@John Medina Your comment brought to mind AOC's comments after she torpedoed the Amazon deal, about how we could now spend the 3 billion on roads and schools and housing and whatever. Of course, there is no 3 billion sitting around to spend and now no 27B in additional tax revenues either. Truth certainly has been separated from virtue. Making fact free statements seems de rigueur on the far left and far right these days.
29
The reaction of the left and of a very large part of the middle to this apparent false accusation by Smollett is essentially the same as their reaction to the accusations by women claiming sexual attack long ago which is totally unsubstantiated by any corroborating evidence. When the accusations are by members of groups that enjoy preferential status among the left and much of the middle, those accusations are automatically assumed to be 100% true and 100% accurate. They even believe that accusations of events going back decades are 100% accurate in their description despite the very long time elapsed.
The left will never change from their unjust behavior. But incidents like this Smollett affair and the assumed guilt of Justin Fairfax will hopefully serve to awaken the many in the middle who have previously been swayed by the left's unjust campaign against the fundamental principles of justice, especially their campaign to end presumption of innocence and to end the requirement of proof beyond reasonable doubt before pronouncing guilt and inflicting punishment.
62
So, when Trump took out ads in the New York Times calling for the execution of the Central Park Five and refused to admit their innocence after it was proven, how was that a demonstration of the presumption of innocence? In no way do I excuse the behavior of those on the left who criticized anyone who raised questions about this case, but don’t try to pin the refusal to reserve judgement on on the left. There is plenty of bad behavior on both sides. There also a fair amount of wagon circling on both sides as well, but I dare to say that the left has been faster to admit it when one of their own has been proven guilty. Less so for the right.
36
@Eric Schneider
Your intense partisanship is on display. Where did I claim that Trump was an advocate for justice? Where did I praise anything he did on that basis?
You, however, just cannot seem to deal with the issue at hand. You seem compelled by your intense partisanship to turn events having nothing to do with Trump into discussion and intense criticism of Trump.
This Smollett affair isn't even a federal matter. Only state law is involved. Trump has nothing to do with enforcement of state law. If you want to politicize this matter, then you might draw some relationship to the Mayor Rahm Emanuel or the governor J. Pritzker. But I have a suspicion you wouldn't dare do that since they are of your party.
34
Are you saying that if someone says they were molested as a child and repressed it, my first inclination should be to doubt them whenever they find the strength to come forward?
I don’t understand how this attitude creates a safer society for the vulnerable.
13
I don't know the facts of the Smollett case, but if it wakes people up and makes them pause before going "Aha! It just goes to show...", I do know it will have served a useful purpose.
Trump has unleashed the common but ordinarily restrained tendency to validate Alice in Wonderland: first the verdict, then the trial. This has the dual effect of "convicting" the innocent while "exonerating" the truly guilty in reaction to reduced credibility.
When this tendency to rush to judgement is combined with the current sociopolitical atmosphere wherein people largely seek sources of "information" that confirm what they already believe, you have a society where marketing, whether of soap powder, a candidate, a stereotype, a fear, a cell phone, or a claim of reality becomes the supreme occupational aspiration, modus operandi, and moral good.
Across the political spectrum, office holders, candidates, religious leaders, and cultural figures are busily tripping over themselves to denounce whatever it is that will serve their agenda, rarely bothering to ascertain the validity of the claims before pouncing. Meanwhile, the media, busily devaluing journalistic standards in favor of "eyeballs", provides free "advertising" for every extreme statement or interpretation of a tweet or event, whether real or claimed.
Trump most certainly has exacerbated this situation, but his election and Administration are much more an effect than a cause of this tragic dynamic. "We the people" are responsible.
17
According to RAINN, 1 in 6 women has either been raped or subject to an attempted rape during their lifetimes.
What made this far too easy to believe (along with political and social blinders mentioned here) is that the real thing happens far too often. Throw in a news cycle we messure in seconds and this is almost impossible to avoid.
If we were more skeptical as a nation, it would be much less of a problem. Of course if we were more skeptical as a nation, we'd have a different president.
20
@trudds we were skeptical that is why we have trump in office and not a "career politician".
3
@trudds Really? How often have facts Smollet alleged happened?
@trudds Excellent point. Just a tiny bit more skepticism would have given us a different president. Darn.
Much credit to the Chicago Police Department for their thorough investigation of the alleged attack. They treated Mr. Smollett with respect and took his allegations seriously. I am a lifelong Chicagoan and I was having a hard time accepting the idea that such an attack could happen in this city, especially in the Streeterville neighborhood.
166
@TC Fischer
While the Chicago Police Department might have treated Mr. Smollett with respect, at some point his allegations were found dubious.
Mr. Smollett's claim that he was attacked by a Trump supporter is another reason to avoid rushing to judgment.
Recall "Jackie" at UVa.
Ditto for Duke Lacrosse
The list is long.
62
@TC Fischer Yes. I thought that the ChicagoPD, to their credit, handled their press releases on the investigation with great care and caution as it unfolded. Good job.
35
@jbartelloni Your list is hardly as long as the one of actual, provable hate crimes that have conditioned us to believe Mr. Smollett.
1
A grand jury should decide whether to indict the two alleged attackers, or Jussie, or all three.
It’s either a hate crime, a false report of a hate crime, or a conspiracy to falsely report a hate crime.
Either way, justice requires an end to such behavior and a deterrent punishment. Convene a grand jury.
46
@Conservative Democrat
The problem is not the justice, it's the punishment. Events like this cause misery for everyone. Those who are real victims and those who are falsely accused of crimes. It's impact is compounded way beyond a simple assault, racially motivated or not.
Even if they get prosecuted and convicted they won't serve any time at all. Maybe a few hours of public service doing something menial. Standard plea deals and sentencing guiltiness sees to that. Meanwhile the real victims will suffer a life time, especially those that were falsely accused and lynched by the media.
6
@Conservative Democrat
Or a conspiracy to falsely report a false hate crime.
3
Apparently at the heart of many fake news stories lies ad-tech fueled online social media messaging services that were designed for sharing chat and gossip. Behind ad-tech lies big-tech platforms that have nearly perfectly stripped all of the profits away from newsrooms to do rigorous investigative journalism, and transferred all responsibility for accurate news to those who share it (not the big tech platforms). Until we can figure out how to put the circuit breakers back onto peer reviewed news we'll be chasing our tails around sharing like a frenzied puppy gone berserk.
11
@CliveB
Why not simply wait till all the facts are in before jumping to conclusions?
When the media falls over themselves to sensationalize such incidents, it's no wonder really.
61
@Paulo
. . . .and the politicians and the celebrities.
1
This story sounded strange from the start
In this era of social media and yelling, the truth gets lost
But most of all, it is sad that a young man has potentially ruined his career and sets the cause of equality backwards
63
@Chicago Paul
Agreed. It is a sad episode. One has to wonder if Jussie Smollett has some mental or emotional issues that need to be addressed. It is certainly pretty strange for a very successful young actor to get himself into such a mess.
To what end?
7
@Chicago Paul
Smollett will take a few weeks down at Cabo, then get back to his job.
1
The fact of the matter is that real hate crimes far outnumber hoaxes.
The author is magnifying this episode in service of advancing a broader political agenda - the very same thing that generates such weeping and gnashing of teeth on his side of the aisle.
Perhaps he ought to stop moralizing about damaging hoaxes and get to work undoing the systemic problems that put theses unfortunate events at the center of our attention.
40
@Patricia
Justice is administered individually; it is not rendered collectively.
Those who accuse should be prepared to buttress their allegations; they should also expect their claims will be challenged.
49
@Patricia Suppose many people cheated on their taxes for systemic reasons. And whatever demographic you belong to was known to frequently cheat on their taxes. Would you be OK with the IRS assuming you cheated on your taxes?
11
Justice is often administered for the benefit of collective - vis a vis the individual. It’s the model for some of the foundational changes in our society. Systemic injustice and intentional torts can exist at the same time and provide context for one another.
3
What about the possibility that Smollett is framed to make it appear he staged his own attack? It's definitely good to wait for facts and more certainty.
6
@Al That would have to be quite a brilliant scheme by the Nigerian brothers, but not impossible I guess.
@Al How would that even work?
1
He made a stupid mistake by actually staging the incident. It turns out nobody saw it anyway! People believed him when he just said it happened - nobody could have proved it didn't.
6
@Johnny Orange Really ? The mistake was staging it he should have just said it happened? So you are the one in favor of false prosecutions. The system only works when someone tells the truth
Maybe the best thing we could do, observing this sad, unfortunate case, is dare to draw no sociological conclusions whatsoever. Dare to stand back, and refuse to exploit any aspect of this one high(er) profile person's manipulation of circumstance. Many people will want to investigate and explicate this young man's motive, understand his MO. Find some cultural ramifications in the depth of his deception and investment in the benefits of the outcome. Let's not do that. Let's focus instead on the 17% rise in hate crime (see FBI stats for 2017). On known and proven victims. This could be the distraction -- the cry of wolf -- that proves life-altering to those in need of 24/7 attention. Draw no inference, racial or homophobic. Look to the anonymous, faceless victims elsewhere who need scrutiny. As always, making non-celebrities our focus is the real work.
29
@Hal Corley
Beautifully stated and thank you for your eloquence.
7
When the guy our media overlords turned into a Twitter hashtag (#JusticeforJussie) is now alleged to be an aggressive and manipulative purveyor of a fake hate crime claim that defamed the President’s supporters (watch the outrageous Robin Roberts interview) then let’s change our focus from this “distraction.” How convenient! I’ll bet you weren’t labeling the Jussie story a distraction when it had legs, Hal. There must be an Alinsky rule justifying making up stories about one’s political enemies because, hey, there are faceless victims elsewhere who need scrutiny.
6
@Hal Corley
If this guy was a celebrity, I sure didn't know it.
At least he won't be any more.
3
Are there not real, serious issues that need looking at. This issue is such a waste of energy for anyone to give it any thought. There are real hate crimes that need our attention. This is not worth our time.
7
Of course, when the whole Jussie Smollett hate crime claim falls apart spectacularly then let’s stop wasting our energy on it! It was okay to have every left leaning politician, celebrity, journalist and quasi journalist decry the racist, homophobic “Trump’s America” when the wave was gathering momentum. They could silence most questioners with the “hate filled bigot” label and the “victim shamer” claim, but eventually the weight of the story’s many inconsistencies became too great. Now, it’s clearly go time for the nothing to see here; keep it moving crowd.
3
Listing fake crimes (and some that aren't necessarily fake) while leaving to the imagination whether any hate crimes have happened is definitely malpractice when hate crimes have been documented to be on the increase under the current regime even though the increase is mostly not as spectacular as the few singled out here.
10
This is so sad. There is enough hatred and biases around to stage such an awful thing. The left needs to apologize just as we want the right to do so.
37
No...”the Left” does NOT need to apologize. If it was truly a hoax, HE needs to apologize....and face the probable loss of his job and any legal actions that may be coming his way.
Are you possibly saying this kind of attack happens so rarely that a reasonable person, Left OR Right is wrong for actually believing his account? Absolutely not. Ask the murdered gay man, Mathew Sheppard, that.
1
@DAT
Apologies are due from all sides, particularly from those who are laughing.
1
@DAT They'll never do it. Their belief is they are acting on behalf of oppressed groups so the rules don't apply to them
If he staged it, he will have helped Trump get re-elected.
58
@Christopher
With good reason. These reasons have existed all along. It's only now becoming apparent to some.
13
@Christopher
Don’t respond so hysterically! I am not going to vote for Trump simply because
an immature actor might have orchestrated a poorly conceived hoax. Nor would I vote for a Democrat or a Socialist simply because some not-too-bright celebrity falsely (allegedly) claimed to be a victim of some hate crime which points an accusatory finger at a politician. Citizens have good minds. Give us credit for being able to act rationally when voting.
"I am not going to disbelieve these women." said Chelsea Handler, in the wake of the Me Too movement. And with that sentiment a whole new crop of con artists cropped up. Eager to stage or dramatically embellish or exaggerate incidents for their own personal agenda, be it to gain fame, attention or some semblance of payback. In the sorry story of Aziz Ansari, we had a Me Too Moment over a date that did not live up to expectations.
It's not a right or left thing. It's a human nature thing. Some people seek whatever advantage they can. However they can. And if that means hitching their wagon to the perceived political zeitgeist and playing it for all it's worth, all the better.
If Mr. Smollett did in fact stage this incident, he should be charged with filing a false police report and any and every other applicable charge that can apply...along with being fired from his television gig. He would have abused the public's trust to try to make himself a household name and inflamed a culture war already raging in our society. Such a betrayal is no different than Donald Trump who also used racism and xenophobia to further his ambitions. The Left cannot stoop to such a low level.
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@O My actually, it is a Left thing, probably 100%
1
@O My
He should receive the maximum penalty that a perpetrator of such a crime could receive.
5
"That is why it’s incumbent on responsible Americans — especially those with large platforms — to treat alleged crimes as just that: alleged."
This seems like good advice when considering alleged crimes committed *by* people of color, if you get my drift. But no--we have a long way to go on that.
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@CatPerson good one!
I agree!
I don't think anyone should ever say anything about any topic or anyone, or have any opinion about anything, unless they know, with 100% absolute certainty, every detail and aspect of what's happened.
Why even have "judgment" when the facts alone can speak for themselves?
Accordingly, I think the jury is still out on what precisely happened during the last 10,000 years. I mean who knows? Who knows where each and every atom was at every moment in time? So, it's probably best not to discuss, or have any views on anything of it what-so-ever.
After all, Donald Trump constantly uses the phrase "Who knows?", and he's a stable genius!
In all seriousness, why is it that it's always Republicans that decry others who "jump to conclusions", when that pretty much describes their entire approach to everything?
"Oh! My umbrage is up!" - It's pure hogwash. The lot of it.
14
@Chicago Guy I'm a Democrat and I decry it.
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@Chicago Guy I think the warning was to both sides, not just liberals. It was also a lament that when one side is proven wrong, there's scant acceptance, let alone soul searching, about why one jumped to an unwarranted conclusion.
The Smollet case stank from the start but so many cultural and political figures wanted to believe it, they ignored the obvious red flags. This case just happens to be the most public, most obvious example of people seeing what they want to see. While we don't know the full story, it's pretty clear it's not the first version we heard.
@Chicago Guy I like the way you think.
The media used to be more cautious about their reporting. Now there is such a rush to be first that all caution and caveats are suspended.
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@Al Bennett
I agree. I would add that many reporters are more interested in advocating than bringing the skepticism that is the mark of a good reporter to the story. Reporters ought to have been probing the obvious weaknesses in this initial report. Instead they happily set about rounding up statements of predictable outrage without ever stopping to ask the political and cultural grandstanders about an obvious rush to judgement. Today it is all about the tweet and being first.
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@Al Bennett
Reporters were telegraphing their feelings. It's known as "virtue signaling".
3
@Al Bennett Since when? The Times blew up the story of "38 witnesses" who supposedly did nothing while Kitty Genovese was being raped and murdered in the 70s. Turned out that's not exactly what happened. There was a good documentary about it a couple of years ago. In the 70s the go-to accusation was apathy; today it's racism.
Here’s the deal. If the perpetrators are caught, five years in jail. Hard time. No parole. No privileges. If the attack was faked, then the same sentence for the “Empire” actor. Let the investigation begin.
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While I appreciate this piece and the information contained herein, I am skeptical of the the simplistic "moral" implied by the statement: "False claims of victimization taint legitimate episodes of violent bigotry and discrimination . . . ." "Legitimate episodes of violent bigotry" [an interesting turn of phrase itself] are not "tainted" because right wing commentators gladly use these false claims as supposed evidence that white folks are the oppressed. The truth is more tragic and more violent. The trauma caused by the increasingly racist, sexist, ablest, homophobic [etc.] environment in the age of Trump effects many people more deeply than is acknowledged by our author. The tragedy is more indicative of internalized trauma, internalized racism [self-hatred], and more. I am not saying that people should be believed past reason or that people are not responsible when they lie. I am only saying that the root cause of actual hate crimes and [more rare] false claims is one in the same: violence and oppression. Without that recognition, we are left again with a "moral" to a fable: that racism, sexism, heterosexism and other forms of hate are limited in their effect. They are not. Thus begins the conversation we need to have.
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@Networthy "Actually" not. To say that oppression has many manifestations and by-products is not to prescribe an absence of personal resposnibility. The focus of this article and many of the comments is far too narrow and naive. You have a different opinion, and that's life. Unfortunately, you have mischaracterized my own. Nevertheless, thanks for the reply - rather have disagreement than nothing. It is the beginning of the conversation to which I am alluding. And, by the way, nice touch on the "umm." Best.
@Warren Light, Esq.
A pertinent analogy: a poorly designed stretch of highway with a history of numerous multiple car collisions. Analysis of each 20 car pile-up reveals personal decisions that are on a continuum, responsible to egregiously irresponsible. Unless the community decides to address the underlying condition [the poorly designed road], the problem will recur.
In the current discussion, the "highway" is not only poorly designed, it is intentionally violent, oppressive, and traumatizing. It rewards some people and groups of people for terribly irresponsible/unethical/violent behavior. In the context of such events, it makes no sense to discuss personal responsibility without addressing the underlying issues [and you might add, 'vice versa'].
First, I have no idea what happened in this case.
Second, here's the deal: an ordinary black, gay man who is attacked ought to be listened to and taken seriously from the outset.
The difference in this case is that Mr Smollett is an actor.
As a result, it was prudent that there be a questioning of him on this matter and not to suspend disbelief. He is an actor in a system that seems to automatically reward the victims of wrongdoing. He had alot to gain.
Conclusion: The reason the left showed a lack of good judgement was not because men of colour or gay men need to be put through the wringer before being believed. They needn't.
But because an actor was involved.
IF he set it up, there was just so much for him to gain from it.
6
@EC All allegations of violence, no matter who the victim or perpetrator is, should be investigated and judged on facts.
14
@John
You are right.
I guess my main point was how much Smollett had to gain as an actor had the incident been genuine.
And frankly, that if fake, he really sought to slander MAGA people. None of it is helpful.
8
Selective reporting of incidents that support one side's preferred narrative and ignoring those that don't have become common practice these days in a media environment defined by information silos where warring sides of the US population go to have their biases regarding the "other side" confirmed rather than expose themselves to any form of "balanced" debate. Sadly this "give me news that supports my opinion" model is a money spinner for media outlets on both sides of a divided American and includes media outlets as diverse as Fox and the New York Times. Very different audiences, but for both stories that confirm their preferred narratives are red meat their audiences.
These patterns are influencing how the next generation forms it worldview. Recent disturbing studies have shown milennial news consumers are following a pattern of not reading articles on subjects they already have opinions on but skipping all the boring and tedious objectivity that might be encountered in a traditional news piece and skipping right to the comments sections where they confirm their bias.
Shouting heads and the kabuki theatre they engage in may be good for making money but they undermine the essential roots of a democratic system based on rational give and take. But all that just seems so quaint these days.
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@Belasco Well said.
2
Mr. Smollett, whether or not you are innocent, it is a fact that I never heard of you prior to the attack and now I know who you are (a "star"). So in a sense, operation accomplished.
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It is regrettable that some hoaxers have emerged during the dramatic uptick in hate crimes committed during trump's reign of terror, but the reality is the president continually 'primes the pump' for his racist base to act - and they respond. How this has become acceptable to the republican party is simply beyond me. 2020 can't come soon enough.
8
@markymark
Democrat stages an attack and blames it on Trump, and instead of placing the blame where it belongs -- on the hoaxer -- you reward the hoaxer by blaming Trump. Nobody "responded" to Trump by attacking Smollett. The attack was a fabrication. You really don't get this? It's my opinion that your attitude is more dangerous than anything the "MAGA" crowd believes.
2
The moment I read that he refused to turn over his phone I was suspect. Then there was nobody in the area on camera. The second thought that this was a made-up story. It only took a few days to unravel that he orchestrated the whole thing. Shame on him.
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@Flo Yes, you are right, the failure to turn over his phone was in retrospect a big "tell", especially since he had said he was on the phone during the attack. That huge error probably undermined his report with the police from the pretty early on.
7
I was so shocked and horrified by this disgusting scenario...until it was reported that Mr. Smollett was returning from the local Subway sandwich shop (hence the sandwich in his hand). Even in Chicago, that toddling town (song reference for you younger folks), there is no way a Subway shop is open past midnight...probably not past 10 PM...That was my tip-of that the story could not be exactly true.
8
@NYCSANDI I'm not sure if the Subway was open, but it was COLD. And if there are any Trump supporters in that neighborhood, they keep it to themselves!
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@NYCSANDI
Actually, there are several Subway stores open 24 hours here.
1
I am struggling to remain open-minded given the title of Rothman's book. If Smollett lied, he is seriously troubled and perhaps totally unaware of the harm he would be causing to the reality of actual homophobic and racist attacks. If he is telling the truth, well, I agree that until all of the facts are in, it is okay to question "shaky details." How white and heterosexual people conduct the questioning is key.
This essay should have had more balance. The rare examples of people who "cry wolf" by manufacturing crimes in no way means that hate crimes do not happen. Mr. Rothman, hate crimes against LGBT people have risen since Trump was elected. And anti-Semitism and anti-immigrant violence, and.....
What is "unjust" is not social justice. It is centuries of inequality against people of whatever identity the people in power choose to oppress.
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@J. M. Sorrell Point taken but should white, heterosexual people conduct police investigations, question suspects, look at evidence, etc. differently from the way anyone else does such things? The nice thing about evidence is who you are or how you feel about it doesn't change it. Implying that evidence should be viewed through racial/gender norms really undermines the whole idea of objectivity based on fact, doesn't it?
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@J. M. Sorrell
You say that this essay should have more balance. I invite you to conduct the same analysis on the other pieces on this Opinion page.
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@J. M. Sorrell
Smollet is not troubled. He has an agenda.
If you read even a little of his Twitter feed over the past couple of years you will see exactly why he did this.
The only thing this sober and well-argued case lacks is statistics. We should see the number of falsehoods and phony conspiracy theories floating out on the Right, compared to those floating out on the Left. That will give context. However, Mr. Rothman's argument is important, and should be taken to heart.
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@Carling Crimes aren’t right or left. Violence isn’t right or left. Criminals aren’t right or left. Even bigotry isn’t right or left. All acts against our fellow people should be investigated and judged on facts and we should act accordingly.
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@John Yes,but my comment was about falsehood; not about crime, violence, or bigotry.
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@Carling
How much would you like to bet those figures would be biased? If this incident has taught you anything, it should be that the bias against Trump and his supporters runs very deep.
An unfortunate occurrence worthy of suspicion, certainly. But a justification of the idea that the social justice movement is "Unmaking America"? Come on.
There seems to be one relevant acknowledgment that's left out: That the USA has a very bad history of and reputation for dealing with violence against people of color. I'd like to think that it wouldn't take any thinking person here very long to think of a few very good examples that may even help to explain this event.
After Mr. Rothman at least goes to the (vaguely self-defeating?) effort of acknowledging the fact that hate crimes are indeed on the rise, I wonder where the similar logic is for the idea that some reactions to this centuries-long trend will be less than ideal? A few individuals somehow invalidate the entire attempt to acknowledge and address centuries of bigotry in law and policy? Come off it. He's just doing the exact same thing he's accusing others of: jumping to generalized conclusions based on the isolated actions of a few people.
He's right that this episode is shameful, and even that we should allow ourselves to reconsider our processes of judgment. But I'm not buying the bigger argument that Smollett is positioned to somehow invalidate the process of our society dealing with legitimate issues. Smollett may turn out to be the kid who choked on the coolest Christmas toy - but we're not pulling this one from the market just because someone did it wrong.
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My spouse and I have proposed that everyone from journalists to politicians to the public at large adopt the language and stance of the skeptical scientist examining evidence relevant to a hypothesis when addressing incidents such as the Smollett affair. By doing so, appropriate respect and consideration for both the accused and the accuser may be granted.
For example, rather than claiming that one either believes or does not believe the accuser, judgments such as, "Tentatively, the evidence for these claims appears to be either compelling (or less than compelling, depending upon the quality of the evidence), but further investigation is needed" may be proffered. Those qualified judgments may then be revised depending upon the results of systematic and careful investigation.
It really is possible to respect accusers without committing oneself to credulous acceptance of every claim that they make. And he rights of the accused were tenaciously defended by the framers of our constitution for good reason.
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I don't want to rush to judgment, but if, as alleged, Mr. Smollet staged the purported attack, then he is worthy of condemnation particularly from members of his own community. He will have undermined very real claims of racial, religious, and homophobic violence.
He may have psychological issues but, more than likely (given the business he's in) his motivation is publicity. I hope he hasn't undermined protection some of us might need in order to pull off a publicity stunt.
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@Justin Please don't give this liar a pass by suggesting he has a mental health issue. It was a very calculated attempt to use the current climate in which those claiming to have victimized by men(particularly white men)are automatically believed because it fits their pre-conceived notion that all white men whether gay or straight, guilty or innocent have done something bad and need to just shut up.
5
Fake or not, the undeniable truth is that the alleged episode could have been true and no one would have been surprised. Or shocked.
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@HapinOregon There are thousands of different scenarios that could happen and be believable. There are disturbed people in the world. They are not the average person now though.
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@HapinOregon Best comment ever: "the undeniable truth is that the alleged episode could have been true".
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@HapinOregon "It could have been true" is not the same thing as being true.
Funny how the same people who accuse Trump of manufacturing a crisis on the border in order to get his way, have no issues manufacturing hate crimes in order to get theirs.
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Noah Rothman is a treasure, please continue to bring his insights to the paper.
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We've been doing this for some time.
The McMartin preschool case in the 1980s, where adult caregivers were charged with satanic sex abuse of hundreds of kids. The case was eventually dropped and all charges dismissed.
The Duke lacrosse case, where everyone's favorite villains--white upper middle class young men--were charged with raping a black exotic dancer. They were innocent.
The UVA fraternity that supposedly assaulted a young Asian woman. They were also innocent.
Abd it just goes on and on. The judge in General Kelly's case who accused him of treason for supposedly doing business with foreign powers while still in the military. Except Kelly hadn't. The judge apologized profusely for his error but the damage was done.
When do we stop? When do we go back to innocent until proven guilty?
When does the media start using the word "alleged" each and every time?
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The media will not go back to the presumption of innocence because speaking of alleged crimes doesn’t generate as much revenue.
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@Dr. Trey You're right. The digital headline in the Times for Kelly included the judge's quote in a bullet, even though the story made it clear that the judge was wrong, felt terrible about it, and apologized.
And hundreds of commenters who clearly didn't read the story demanded that Kelly be tried for treason.
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@Talbot I'd like to add the Tawana Brawley hoax that Rev. Sharpton still can't admit is a hoax.
8
The Smollett story was obviously fishy to begin with. It's embarrassing that so many people didn't notice or pretended not to notice. Some of the other stories cited, although also false, did not particularly stand out against the background of actual attacks. Reasonable people hearing of them could easily have responded to them as they would to real attacks.
28
Rothman makes some decent points here but they mask a radically conservative agenda. He would do well to remember that it was wealthy, propertied white males who invented the categories of identity he now seeks to deny to those minorities who are trying to figure out what to do with them. Is it a messy process? Yes, but it was in the cards when our society decided long ago to create categories of identity in order to disenfranchise so many. There is no doubt our current political discourse does not favor reason, but the reason for that is not the social justice movement, it is the centuries of very real, very brutal oppression.
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@Jeremiah Crotser White people, male or otherwise, did not create categories. Human beings do that, across every culture. White people are not the problem. American is not the problem. Bigotry, ignorance and selfishness are the culprits. These have been the shortcoming of every civilization that ever existed, and all that exist today. Until all of us, or at least most of us, reject the politics of stereotype - reject the politics of categorizing human beings at all - we are all doomed to suffer and inflict injustice. As for Mr. Smollett, his case appears to remain undetermined, and we should continue seeking knowledge with an open mind, pursuing lessons to learn to guide our own choices - lessons of integrity, bias, and critical thinking - rather than seeking people to condemn, of any category.
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@Jeremiah Crotser
I don't think looking for evidence is radical, or especially conservative. Nor is doubting narratives that utterly confirm one's deepest values.
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@Jeremiah Crotser Oppression was brutal and violent and unacceptable. Those people are mostly dead now though. It’s fair to say that racism isn’t completely gone but the people who created this problem are no longer with us. We should all be judged on our own actions and not those of others.
1
Smollett can't be considered very smart. He planned everything with two guys who could easily be connected to him, and were his contact list. Very possibly, they were dim enough to text each other about their plot. They bought the rope and the MAGA hat at local stores, using their credit card - did they think no one would check? Then when police showed Smollett the video footage, he said yes, those are the guys who attacked me. Did he think they were going to tamely take the rap and go to jail for a $3500 payment? All the police had to do is promise not to charge them with anything if they confessed and turned state's evidence, and that's just what they did. They don't even have to pay back the money they received!
The only explanation is that these deluded children expect to be believed, not investigated by competent detectives who have heard all kinds of stories before, and don't believe anything without proof.
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@Jonathan
Probably the entitlement to being believed has been reinforced many times before.
9
I’m wondering if this wise advice to refrain from judgement until all facts are known applies to accustations of sexual harassment as well? Is the accused in those cases entitled to any presumption of innocence or at least absence of guilt? Perhaps the subject is more complicated than many prefer to admit.
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@PeterKa
We already know the answer to these questions and it is "no" on all fronts.
5
It's in our nature to judge, though it may be prudent to choose our initial words wisely. We can draw conclusions about the general direction of justice over decades, of course, and it's never been in favor of women and minorities. In that light, it's not difficult to understand why one may believe Jussie Smollett and Christine Blasey-Ford. Maybe justice in America today is not much better than a coin flip.
3
Wow, coin flip odds would be a huge improvement for some people in our country. A jury of your peers. A different article this morning explained how a prosecutor in Mississippi had to try a case six times to win a murder conviction. He was dismissing almost all black jurors in every trial, and asking far more questions of black jurors than white jurors, presumably to provide fodder for why he wanted to strike a juror selection.
I’ve never seen the cops shoot a white child on sight without so much as a verbal order. Tamir Rice didn’t get coin flip odds at justice, he just got shot on sight for being a black kid in middle school playing with a toy at the park.
2
When it becomes more rewarding and fashionable to be a victim than to be a smart, kind or courteous person - victims suddenly appear everywhere. When we accept every claim as true and virtuous when it's first pronounced, regardless of the evidence or investigation, we encourage more people to utter false claims of persecution. This really isn't rocket science.
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@Shane
And we have a winner.
We've risen victimhood to the status of martyrdom, in the new and righteous religion of the far left. And all must rush to embrace the miracles of victimhood when they occur, lest their faith and conviction be found wanting.
There'll be more of this. Much more. People are poo-pooing now about another hoax, but ultimately the people who act like this won't care and don't care, and they won't learn from it because it doesn't hurt or harm them. It is foolish to expect them to take a look at themselves and be more discrete or contemplative when they got the clicks they wanted. They know where their likes are farmed: from emotional appeals, not rational analysis.
Welcome to the post-truth world.
Turns out Trump, like the Joker, wasn't crazy, he was just ahead of the curve.
13
@JB And let us not forget America's number one martyr, Individual One.
@JB
JB, is it too much to think you can be "ahead of the curve" and "crazy?"
The Smollett alleged crime was suspect from the outset. People (and media) need to think critically and use caution in the initial stages while the details are being investigated.
Hate crimes are so offensive that we need to be sure before labelling them as such. That is what the police are there to do. Listen and gather facts before leaping to the hate label.
Unfortunately, Trump’s rhetoric and dog whistled laced babble makes us more prone to thinking the worst but slow down prior to judgement. This kind of story and the reaction just fuels the far right’s narrative of the left’s derangement.
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@Liz McDougall You call it a narrative, but I think you'll find that looking at it soberly and dispassionately, the left has become quite disturbingly deranged.
1
It's a hunger for instant gratification and the impossible demands of the 24 hour news cycle.
Quality information takes time. We readers need to stop demanding instant gratification and in return, demand quality information from our media. We can't have both. It's simply impossible.
And the media needs to exercise some restraint and simply refuse to provide instant gratification at the expense of quality, even if that means competing media outlets get the scoop once in a while. Integrity first, money second.
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We seem to have lost sight of "Innocent until proven guilty."
And by all of us, I mean ALL of us, TIMES readers who make comments insisting on people's guilt or innocence before they've gone to trial, media leaders/editors who do the same but more carefully, by making sure to say "alleged", and our politicians, who feel pressured by us and the media, to make pronouncements on a moments notice, without being allowed the option of gathering full information before stating an opinion.
Determination of guilt should be left to JURIES, not NY Times readers or any other group.
We CANNOT accept blindly the accusations made by people. All accusations must be investigated. It is the only way to protect the innocent.
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Huh? How exactly have due process or rule of law been replaced by internet commenters? Do you think anything anyone says here influences whether or not charges are made and, if so, to whom they are directed?
None of the articles written here or anywhere else affect what the police are doing in this case. Much less literally random people on the internet speaking with some kind of self-ordained authority.
There’s 7.7 billion people in the world, and 325 million of them live in the US. I know it’s not warm and fuzzy in the participation trophy world, but yikes, NONE of us are individually THAT important.
Huge lol to internet commenters affecting law enforcement and court proceedings.
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@J Jencks
In times of insanity, common sense is radical. Hear, hear!
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@J Jencks The only person who is being accused of anything at present is Jussie Smollett. How evenhanded of you to withhold judgement until the jury speaks.
In spite of Smollett’s despicable behavior, this statement by N.A.A.C.P. president, Derrick Johnson, is true.
“The rise in hate crimes is directly linked to President Donald J. Trump’s racist and xenophobic rhetoric.”
Racists in this country have been inflamed by our president, resulting in a fast and strong reaction to what Smollett did.
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@Andrea R
Except it did not even apply in this apparently phony case. Like a button is automatically pushed or the string is pulled on one of those talking dolls from my childhood with the canned responses.
4
The NAACP should focus on real situations of racism. This was not one of those.
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@Andrea R And as we see it also created an atmosphere in which people like Jussie Smollett can make up a story that is as utterly ridiculous as he did and still have it all over media as another example of racist white men who worship Trump. I'm an openly gay white man as well as a Progressive, liberal Democrat and I find it personally insulting that so many people allowed their own prejudices to fall this story.
8
The demand for racism, homophobia, misogyny, and bigotry vastly exceeds the supply. It only stands to reason that absent evidence that their deeply held world-view is actually true, True Believers simply invent it. As per a late, great Journalist, it's "fake, but accurate".
The left desperately needs this to be a deeply bigoted country. If it weren't -- and, oh, by the way, it's not -- that utterly demolishes their identity-obsessed ideology.
As a rule of thumb, the more closely the facts of any particular story track the leftist Narrative, the more likely the story will be revealed to be a hoax.
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@Brenda
What facts do you possess that inform you that we do not in fact live in a deeply bigoted country?
26
@Brenda Enjoy your climate change!
20
@Brenda
“The demand for racism, homophobia, misogyny, and bigotry vastly exceeds the supply. “
Never better said. Too many victims looking to encounter too few actual perps so they just have to resort to faking it. Over and over.
18
It's really a shame that the same journalists who jumped on the bandwagon of attacking the Covington High School students learned nothing from their mistake of ignoring evidence to side they didn't like. Once again they jumped on this story without vetting. Shoddy journalism only helps trump and his claims about the "fake news media."
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@Peter
I thought the same. Did people not learn from the Covington student’s story? Where has healthy scepticism gone? Why are so so quick to rush to judgement? We have become so quick to react.
80
@Peter
Just so.
Trump's greatest trick has been getting his opponents to behave like him.
The best possible media response is to be even more professional, more responsible, more careful with facts. Too many have dropped all pretense of objectivity, which just further corrodes the profession's reputation.
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@Peter
The didn’t and they won’t. That is like asking my spaniel to stop chasing squirrels. Mindless instinct.
8
Any journalist and any smart person should have immediately asked themselves a question: what person would not immediately pull a rope of his neck? Besides all the other clues, this for me was what immediately seemed highly suspicious. I also wondered, why, in the days of apps to bring you anything, especially if you a wealthy celebrity, especially in a big city, who would go out at 2am to Subway on one of the coldest days of the year. And since when is Subway known for salads? Now Smollett is floating the story that he was incensed the threatening letter did not get enough attention so he staged attack. He is trying to retain his high moral standing. Typical sociopath. Clearly $ involved as was giving a concert a few days later. It is tragic that this horrible hoax imperiled his two Nigerian friends, who probably admired hime, will feed Trump's fake news narrative, will call into question to validity of true. future hate crimes and diverted police resources. Let's not explain it away. I do not think major media explained it away. I think the stories seemed more hesitant than stories on similar attacks in the past. So did police statements. Read between the lines, folks.
68
This man committed an insidious and reprehensible crime and belongs in prison if found guilty.
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@Rich
He didn't hurt anyone.
1
@Rich
I think that's harsh. It was a dumb move. A stunt. Actors are not know for their genius.
The fact that so many gullible people -- yes, fueled by Trump animus and an almost religious belief in these narratives -- fell for it doesn't mean he deserves a more severe punishment. He should be punished with as much objectivity as his allegations deserved.
2
Therefore, it is just as important to not jump to the conclusion the incident was a hoax, Mr. Rothman. The rush to self righteous indignation that Mr. Trump and his base are contributing to hate crimes might have something to do with statistics showing a significant rise in racist rhetoric and hate crimes since he was elected. You may want to put this in perspective by considering the history of Jim Crow and how it manifested in the Chicago Police Department. Expecting a person of color or any person with such a perspective to automatically believe the Chicago Police is an objective party in how it reports crimes against black people is childlike. Or the kind of mentality that a sheltered white person would grow up with. Not that of a serious journalist.
16
@Mary
Or you could look at the simple facts of the case and draw a reasonable conclusion regarding Smollet's allegations. That would seem to me a much more sensible position than filtering everything through a narrow racial lense.
22
Local Chicago journalists were the ones who did the hard work verifying the story. They put the well paid, elite national media to shame and exposed them as nothing more than pompous stenographers who are willing to write anything that confirmed their biases. This is a sad event that further tarnishes the media as purveyors of fake news.
547
@Padraig Lewis could you explain how the work of one set of journalists being good and another set of journalists being (maybe) not (so) good "tarnishes the media"?
Perhaps you meant to say "tarnishes the well paid, elite national media", which might be true in this case, but is hardly the case in the many cases where the same "well paid, elite national media" outshines local media on important (local) stories.
The dubious concept of "fake news" was originally intended to cover the publication of stories invented by "journalists". This almost never happens in most major media outlets, and it certainly isn't the case here (even if journalists and commentators may not have been prudent enough).
I'd suggest paying more attention to who is actually putting lies into the space that the media reports on (maybe Smollett, certainly plenty of other people). This isn't fake news, but you are still being lied to. I'd worry more about that.
25
Darn, the “leader of the free world” has encouraged attacks on journalism all over the world by literally calling the free press an “enemy of the people”. This is what I would have expected power brokers to say when the printing press was invented: it’s an enemy of the people.
It’s not “fake news” just because a lot of us have friends and family and neighbors who have been taken advantage of by others, often as an abuse of power, whether in a church, a school, or even at home. The media covered this story the way they did because it’s hindsight to say that the initial report should have been doubted, unless we want to treat every victim of abuse that way. Count me out of that. If someone hurt someone close to me, the last thing I would want to hear from the police is that it’s probably a lie to acquire attention and/or money. The police didn’t do that here.
I don’t fault the media. They are providing snapshots of where the investigation has led so far. The alternative is for the media to ignore this entirely, at least until charges are brought. Then you’d probably end up with just as many people wondering how the story as initially presented isn’t receiving national attention.
“Fake news” - anything we individually don’t agree with gets thrown out? I always thought of “fake news” as something that a Snopes or whatever can categorically prove as false, typically with an unknown origin. You can find this “guy’s” claims about our previous president among them.
3
@Padraig Lewis
Yes but I think Chicago natives immediately knew it was fake like I did. No one in that weather goes out to get something from a place that probably wasn’t open to run into racists wandering around in the zero temps lugging their lynching tools, bleach etc. people just seem to be getting more and more lacking in common sense
10
I initially took the report at face value. Though Mr. Smollett is a celebrity, I had never heard of him. I did begin to wonder, though, as things unfolded - his refusal to turn over all of his cell when they wanted to get a timeline (he claimed to have been on the phone when the attach happened); there being no video evidence despite the presence of many, many, many cameras in that area... if the final verdict is that it was staged, it would be one of several I have heard of put on by people of all races, most unknown beyond their own friends and family. The question then would be "why"?
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@Anne-Marie Hislop Why? Why do you think? Because on the left in America today to be a victim is to wield actual power, a position of high status. Just look at the reaction to Mr Smollett on the left when the story initially broke.
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@Jack
He was a C level celebrity who I hope ends up being charged as if he committed a hate crime. And due to his economic means - I hope he covers the cost of this charade rather than pass the bill onto Chicago’s taxpayers
6
Truer words were never uttered.
In America, being a “victim” is the ultimate power, legally and politically. No wonder everyone clambers about their particular victimization.
3
Apparently attention starved people have no problem creating discord to get more attention. Being on a popular tv show wasn’t enough. It seems this man has some serious mental problems as evidenced by the purchase of a Subway sandwich.
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@Paulie Actually the turkey sub isn't bad.
3
We still don't definitively know what happened, yet those of us who give him the benefit of the doubt are being asked to apologize? Nope
11
@Justice
We can wait. Don't forget now.
13
It's an art form !
6
“It feels like if I had said it was a Muslim or a Mexican or someone black, I feel like the doubters would have supported me a lot much more,” he told ABC News. “And that says a lot about the place where we are as a country right now.”
This is deeply problematic. First, many people believed and supported Mr. Smollett quite vocally. Secondly, the doubt came from the fact that the story didn't make sense (white nationalists were wandering the frigidly cold streets of Chicago in the middle of the night with bleach and a noose, looking for a black man they could identify as gay to attack?). Finally, Mr. Smollett's speculation about how people would have reacted had he made up a different story tells us nothing about where we are as a country right now. The fact that so many people were so eager to embrace this nonsensical narrative tells us much more.
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@Kate
“It feels like if I had said it was a Muslim or a Mexican or someone black, I feel like the doubters would have supported me a lot much more,” he told ABC News. “And that says a lot about the place where we are as a country right now.”
The irony is that it was two African-Americans (from Nigeria) that attacked him (though he knew him and they say he paid him to stage the attack).
People were suspicious because the story didn't add up, not because of the race of the attackers.
41
What it tells us is that the wild west is back, only this time via the internet. Tell any lie, set up a phony incident because the end justifies the means, doesn’t it? Stay tuned for much more coming our way as the far left battles for what they are certain they deserve.
45
Certainly appropriate to point out the lack of restraint on the part of media and politicians as well as the lack of later apologies for getting things so wrong. Is there indeed a rash of such fabricated events as this article seems to imply or is this just the normal expectation for people trying to get some momentary attention. I guess we need to be gracious with Smollett and others for making up such trite and easily debunked allegations. Does that suggest that they are not serious about getting away with it, but just want a little attention? I guess we cant realistically expect that they will go off and join ISIS.
5
The rush to believe Smollett without a shred of evidence evidence is the flip side of a call out/virtue signaling culture that has become out of control on the left. Trump has created an enormous amount of irrationality and chaos over the past two years; let’s hope the Democrats sober up a bit in 2019 and 2020 to avoid giving him the Presidency for a second term.
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@Cass I don't believe that any single individual can 'create' an environment like this. He took advantage of what already existed with his own brand of chaos. Until they figure out the 'who' and 'why' of how Trump got elected, they will continue to do his leg work for him with stories like this one. Much easier to believe we're simply living in a country of racists, bigots, and haters .. and that this brand of intolerance inexplicably followed eight years of Obama.
2
What is most disheartening to me is when liberals display the same mindset as conservatives.
I am realizing that liberal thought is dead. Liberals are supposed to be able to suspend judgment, to be responsive to facts, to be able to see all sides of issues.
I realize that those who currently identify as liberals are as dangerous to our culture as are those who identify as conservatives.
364
@Dan That is as much of an over reaction as was the failure of skepticism on the part of those primed to believe the story. It certainly is the case that everyone ought to be careful that her views accord with evidence. That is a foundation of liberalism. The present day conservatives have consistently fallen short in this regard. (see Change, Climate for the supreme example of this)
26
@Dan,
Amen to that.
It has been a revelation to me and my husband the blindness on the side of the Democrats, and we typically vote for the Democrats.
We were just saying last week, “I wonder how many people there are out there just like us that have been astonished by the education we’ve received the last couple years.”
It’s disheartening.
90
@Dan This comment almost strikes me as a hoax. "Liberals are supposed to be able to suspend judgment, to be responsive to facts, to be able to see all sides of issues." Any thinking person is supposed to be able to do all that. Humans make mistakes. I still find the batting average for liberals acting on what is true to be considerably higher than conservatives'. In fact, when it comes to spreading falsehood, I would say all liberals put together are no match for the man in the White House.
54
The seque at the end makes the reading go off.
It would have landed the point better had you listed say at least 6 cases of the anonymous to the public instances of real hate crime at the top of the article then talked about how hoaxes like the one Mr Smollet has apparently committed makes life harder for them. Maybe even address the why's of those hate crimes being anonymous to the general public.
As it is I feel like Nana Efua Mumford expressed in the title of her WaPo opinion piece "I doubted Jussie Smollett. It breaks my heart that I might be right."
24
@magicisnotreal
Yes! An excellent piece -- far more measured than the hysterical hypocrite writing this column. So glad you referenced it.
but wouldn't this mean the preferable scenario would be one where racists, in the middle of the night, hunt people down with ropes and bleach, their anger undiminished by the coldest weather of the Chicago winter.....?
I'd actually be glad if this isn't true.
3
@magicisnotreal
Chris, SM,
I think the answer is ambiguous. Clearly Mr Smollet is just another person made an idol who has clay feet. That is in itself sad but the nature of the act it seems he has perpetrated for whatever tortured reasons he has/had is really harmful to a lot of people where such cases of self aggrandizing usually only harm the clay footed idol. Therein lies the ambiguity.
I do not know the facts in the Smollett case, but if it wakes people up and makes them pause before going "Aha!", I do know it will have served a useful purpose.
Trump has effectively unleashed the common but ordinarily restrained tendency to validate Alice in Wonderland: first the verdict, then the trial. As well as being morally wrong, this has the dual effect of "convicting" the innocent while "exonerating" the truly guilty in reaction.
When this tendency to rush to judgement is combined with the current sociopolitical atmosphere wherein people largely seek sources of "information" that confirm what they already believe, you have a society where marketing, whether of soap powder, a candidate, a stereotype, a fear, a cell phone, or a claim of reality becomes the supreme occupational aspiration, modus operandi, and moral good.
Across the political spectrum, office holders, candidates, religious leaders, and cultural figures are busily tripping over themselves to denounce whatever it is that will serve their agenda, rarely bothering to ascertain the validity of the claims before pouncing. Meanwhile, the media, busily devaluing journalistic standards in favor of "eyeballs", provides free "advertising" for every extreme statement or interpretation of a tweet or event, whether real or claimed.
Trump most certainly has exacerbated this situation, but his election and Administration are much more an effect than a cause of this tragic dynamic. "We the people" are responsible.
14
@Steve Fankuchen: "I do not know the facts in the Smollett case, but if it wakes people up and makes them pause before going "Aha!", I do know it will have served a useful purpose."
Really? Can't wait to hear your thoughts on the virtues of turning in false fire alarms.
https://emcphd.wordpress.com
This is a recurring pattern in America going back to the Witch Trials in 17th century New England.
It should be called the Puritan Hysteria Virus. In the 20th century alone, it was responsible for the internment of the Japanese, the Red Scare, the McCarthy era, Reefer Madness, the Satanic Panic at day care centers in the 1980’s, and now the Virus appears to be on the loose again.
Richard Beck, author of We Believe the Children, (About the Satanic Panic) wrote that after each hysterical episode, a “collective amnesia” sets in, as if it had never happened.
The problem with the amnesia is that as a nation, we don’t learn from the experience, and therefore collectively, we can’t grow, mature and evolve.
Lots of Americans are increasingly aware of the need for psychological and emotional maturity.
The fact that the criminal justice system is being manipulated by people with their own agendas should terrify every American who isn’t wealthy or famous or knows people in law enforcement/politicians.
All the rest of us without those advantages are potential prey.
42
@Annie Gramson Hill I am wondering if this incident, more accurately, is like firemen who start fires to fight to appear to be heroes.
16
@Annie Gramson Hill: Presenting history to a nation that cannot even remember what happened 3 months ago is an exercise in futility, but I admire you for trying. If I could recommend your comment 10,000 times I would.
https://emcphd.wordpress.com
3
If Mr. Smollett in fact made this all up, he should be prosecuted. It would also be a gift to those who claim there is no racism among Trump supporters, despite the well documented evidence that there is, and that they will assault those they see as enemies.
However, one might also compare this case to the one where a white woman claimed black men had abducted her children, but had in fact murdered them herself. How many conservatives believed her?
48
While I am sure some jumped on this as Mr Rothman describes, my sense of the general coverage was that it was more cautious than inflamed. I can't really find a report from the time that wasn't couched in terms like"alleged". It is very strange to say but if the reports of planning and acting are correct, then I am disappointed. Not in the lack of a real attack but that we get played; this exacerbates the split in this country.
20
@Al Warner Maybe there's something in the water here in Erie, but I was thinking of commenting very similarly as you have. This article seems to reflect a kind of leveling effect, when something is broadcast for a while (even including the "alleged" as you've pointed out), and then there is a counter-comment that can garner attention for being a reversal of the initial trend. My concern is that either way, the "split in this country" ominously continues to be exacerbated, indeed.
8
While there is value to this story, I fear it minimizes the fact that most hate crimes are just that: legitimate crimes of hate.
It's true there are occasional hoaxes and that some people will set themselves up to be perceived as victims.
But the thrust of this is similar to picking out a rare few cases of women who falsely claim sexual assault to discredit the vast majority of women who are telling the truth when they report harassment or assault (not to mention all of the women who do not report because they are traumatized and know they will be told that 'they waited too long' or those who want to report right away but fear they will be dismissed out of hand).
So, yes, on one had we should allow time for these stories to fully develop. But emotions are involved because we *know* that blacks often are harassed or assaulted or killed for being black. People who are trans are often harassed or assaulted or killed for being trans. And so forth. These situations are more likely to be 'true' authentic crimes and unlikely to be staged. I worry that we all become cynical and immediately assume these things are staged (which already seems to be happening when women report: It's a smear, it's a spurned lover, she's after money, she wants her 15 minutes of fame, etc.)
36
I think that it illustrates the importance of these types of serious allegations to be investigated, tried, and adjudicated by the justice system. While imperfect, it is the best avenue to reach the most clear picture of the truth, most of the time.
The hysterics of both mainstream and social media are the last place to look for the clearest picture of the objective truth.
24
I agree with Noah Rothman that many politicians want to shoot first and ask questions later when it comes to alleged biased attacks.The Democrats pretend to have the moral high ground when it comes to honesty and transparency yet they are just as prone to spin and obfuscation as the Republicans. It was blatantly obvious that Sen. Kamala Harris, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, and other California politicians turned a blind eye when an illegal immigrant shot a CA policeman to death. These facts didn't fit their political narrative that illegal immigrants were misunderstood do-gooders, so they averted their gaze. Their silence was deafening. Yet Kamala Harris can rush to the condemnation of a hoaxed hate crime in Chicago, which isn't her state. Harris and other Democrats only notice the crimes that fit their political ideology, and they don't ask critical questions of the facts that fit their ideology. Once again these echo chambers lead to bad government; bad reporting; bad scholarship.
151
@Iris I don't dispute your first sentence, though I would replace "politicians" with "people of all stripes." But per your specific example, what is there to say when an illegal immigrant shoots a policeman? It does not change the fact that illegal immigrants as a group are less likely to commit a crime than US citizens, a political "narrative" that is the truth.
14
@John B "It does not change the fact that illegal immigrants as a group are less likely to commit a crime than US citizens". And there is twice as much violence that is black on white then visa versa. 3% of violence against blacks is by whites. From the media and activsits you would have the impression 97%
of all violence in the US is white on black. There is no doubt that white on black violence is the most over reported while black on non-black violence is the most under reported.
8
@Iris Four days later, a white man shot another police officer in California. Did you hear about that one, or did you do exactly what you claim others did, and only process the stories that fit what you already want to believe?
2
All I can say from my heart is thank you!
10
When we hear from Jussie Smollett, we will have only a part of the story with which to draw an object lesson.
When we see and hear his supposed accomplices, we will have another part of the story with which to draw an object lesson.
When we see and hear what the police and prosecution have found in the course of their investigation, we will have another part of the story with which to draw an object lesson.
For now, we have only the knowledge that Smollett was attacked and that his attackers claim he paid them to do it.
The information about Smollett paying for his own attack is, what, a day old? Let's not rush to write op-eds about a story that hasn't yet been told. Give it, say, another week? Two?
The attack didn't strain credulity in the least. Not any more than a sitting member of Congress attacking The Guardian's reporter. Not any more than MAGA groupies attacking people at Trump rallies. Not any more than white supremacists killing a young woman in Charlottesville. The fact that the would-be victim is Black doesn't make it any more or less believable.
We need to try and understand why. We also need to remind ourselves that one individual shouldn't make it impossible for future victims to come forward and receive the full protection of law enforcement and our system of justice.
This is a tough situation with repercussions down the line.
---
Things Trump Did While You Weren’t Looking [2019] https://wp.me/p2KJ3H-3h2
16
It is absurd to think that people were prowling the streets in minus 30 degree weather for a famous person to show up so they could beat him
107
@Jake
Oh, so crimes happen only in fair weather? Got it!
4
@Rima Regas
Actually, we don't know if he was attacked. If this was choreographed by Smollett, it's hardly an attack.
15
Seems everyone involved in this debacle is simply looking for additional ‘15 minutes of fame’.
13
I note with grim amusement how Senator Cory Booker is now withholding judgment until "all the information comes out". Funny how he couldn't do that to begin with, him and all the others. Jumping to conclusions without all the facts sounds rather Trumpish to me, and the contenders for the 2020 Democratic ticket will have to do a lot better than that.
This was an excellent article addressing an inconvenient truth, and NYT could use a lot more like it. Well done, Mr. Rothman.
856
@Sam the Slam
This article omits President Trump's reaction, he told reporters at the White House on January 31st that he had seen the reports that night before and said, “It doesn’t get worse, as far as I’m concerned.”
Is he not a 2020 presidential candidate worth mentioning? Not even when Donald Trump is referenced in the article?
41
@Sam the Slam
Sam, let's not let the Times off the hook as one of the enablers. In the past couple years, it has frequently substituted "eyeball counting" for genuine journalism. The ongoing Virginia soap opera is just one recent example. "Fake news" is not just a question of articles lying but also in the editorial decisions that determine which subjects are covered, how often, and where the articles are placed.
66
@Steve Fankuchen
Agreed. The bigger “fake” is the head fake pointing peoples attention to what, whether factually true or not, is not news.
12
The fact that major media outlets rushed in and blindly accepted Jussie Smollett's story despite some obvious red flags is just one more reason why the media is losing credibility in large parts of the country. Will there be any mea culpa's forthcoming from the news organizations, political candidates, and other so-called leaders? I suspect not.
475
Actually the mainstream press were quite restrained, for the most part. Politicians weren’t. They jumped on this grenade without much thought.
115
@Carl, not just media. The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Senator Kamala Harris who is a presidential candidate, and Senator Cory Booker, who is another presidential candidate. One hopes the latter two, if one of them is elected, has more forbearance when the electronics warn of a Russian nuclear missile launch that never actually happened.
33
@Observer of the Zeitgeist: One way to make sure we don't learn the hard way about the quality of their forbearance is to not put them into a position where that will be tested in ways that could have profound consequences for us all...if you know what I mean.
16
Facts should be gathered before judgement, however, if he made this up, it should be prosecuted vigously. Filing false reports with police, is a felony. Mr smollet should be happy to cooperate with Chicago police, trying to solve his case. His actions are really bringing his credibility to question. Again, if he orchestrated this event he must face legal consequences, as prescribed by law.
204
@Jim m
Looking forward to the apologies from Harris, Booker, Sanders, Pelosi, et al. Any minute now. Any minute...
7
Excellent article. Quite honestly, it’s incredibly hard to believe anything people say nowadays; this holds especially true if what they are claiming seems to be politically motivated. I think we as a nation have allowed our emotional biases to cloud our common sense and ability to accept that just because we disagree with someone politically does not mean that person is a bigot. The fact that most of these crimes were committed by the left upon themselves says a lot. As an independent, my vote is heavily swayed by these types of instances. It’s sad what our nation has done to itself, politicians need to stop widening the divide and start to build bridges across the aisle on both sides.
99
@Will B I agree that bridge building in both directions is needed. But while this article lists crimes that were actually committed by people representative of the purported victims, this doesn't mean that "most of these crimes" in the aggregate are committed by the left. The author cited these as examples of a troubling issue that masks the fact that real hate crimes are increasing.
50
@Matt
Thanks for pointing this out..you beat me to it!
3
"When some observers pleaded for caution in the Smollett case, their prudence was condemned as bigotry."
Thank goodness for America's prudent and objective and neutral press, which did not jump to conclusions. America's craven and opportunistic politicians, on the other hand...
28
@Ed L. Either we’ve been looking at very different news sources or this is some subtle sarcasm that I’m not getting.
31
@Chris Hugh
Yes, it is, and I got it.
7
@Chris Hugh
Trust your instincts, Chris.
11