Jussie Smollet - Horrible Hate Crime or Horrible Case of TDS?

[TSwizzle]

Based on the police reporting, it seems like a terrible attack. Based on the time of day, it seems possibly premeditated.

Well, it seems it was premeditated after all. But in the sense of staged. This is just unfortunate stuff. Glad he wasn't actually attacked.

I expect there are some of the more outspoken of the Twitterati (and a few on here) are conflicted about that.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Based on the police reporting, it seems like a terrible attack. Based on the time of day, it seems possibly premeditated.

Well, it seems it was premeditated after all. But in the sense of staged. This is just unfortunate stuff. Glad he wasn't actually attacked.

I expect there are some of the more outspoken of the Twitterati (and a few on here) are conflicted about that.

It is a bit devastating that someone would stage such a thing... which would be designed to create such outrage. I doubt they'd want such an attack, but they could possibly want it to be staged even less. This is one of those, 'no good option to choose from' things.

As I said, I'm glad he wasn't targeted in an attack, but it is hardly much of a consolation that he appears to have staged it.

I'd say mega props to the Police who actually did find the people involved in the staging. That the story is falling apart would be a testament to their investigation and taking this seriously.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

It sounded fishy to me at first too. I still don't know what to think.

What seems the more fishy? That a well-known, black/openly gay actor (who constantly attacks Trump through Twitter) who lived in the area and had just a week prior been sent an anthrax-scare package complete with racist/homophobic threats, thereby indicating that whoever sent it was serious enough to commit a federal crime and knew his whereabouts and might therefore have been stalking him for a while and knew his routine pretty well and could therefore easily have been expecting him to go out for a late night meal or the like (and also did a simple recon around the area a few days before to see where the security cameras might have blind spots to exploit, etc)...

Or, a popular, working actor--openly gay, so not needing to hide anything about his sexuality--just decided for no apparent reason to scuff himself up at 2:00 in the morning after grabbing a Subway sandwich and buy a rope (at one of those twenty four hour hardware stores that don't exist in Chicago) to make into a noose so he could file a false claim (committing his own felony in the process if it is in fact a false claim, facing severe penalties and even jail time) and pretending it was a hate crime, no less, thereby involving the FBI (and doubling down on the false claim felony) as a publicity stunt for what exactly?

He doesn't have a movie coming out that I can find any information on. He's already on a popular TV show. Iow, he doesn't need to generate his own publicity for anything, let alone do it in such a way as to commit a felony--involving the FBI,no less--if not true.

Unless he's off his meds or something, in which case one still has to wonder where the rope came from. Because either that was what the fuckhead Trump stalkers had with them in their stakeout car (along with the bleach, or whatever the liquid was), or this guy took time out of his busy schedule to shop for a planned psychotic break.

ETA: Btw, it actually makes sense that he was not too badly beaten, if in fact, as I surmise, they had been staking out and did a quick recon of the area around his apartment for any security cameras, looking for dead spots and found one or two. Iow, they may not have had enough space to freely beat the shit out of him.

A grand jury has indicted him on filing a false police report.

 

[repoman]

So Smollett has been an actor since the age of 10, is there any way that this fed into his mindset to do this hoax?

 

[blastula]

Throw the book at him or send him to the loony bin.

 

[ZiprHead]

There goes his career.

 

[repoman]

Helter Skelter

 

[Derec]

There goes his career.

Meh. He can always get a gig as celebrity endorser for Burberry.

He likes wearing rope around his neck for attention, apparently.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

It sounded fishy to me at first too. I still don't know what to think.

What seems the more fishy? That a well-known, black/openly gay actor (who constantly attacks Trump through Twitter) who lived in the area and had just a week prior been sent an anthrax-scare package complete with racist/homophobic threats, thereby indicating that whoever sent it was serious enough to commit a federal crime and knew his whereabouts and might therefore have been stalking him for a while and knew his routine pretty well and could therefore easily have been expecting him to go out for a late night meal or the like (and also did a simple recon around the area a few days before to see where the security cameras might have blind spots to exploit, etc)...

Or, a popular, working actor--openly gay, so not needing to hide anything about his sexuality--just decided for no apparent reason to scuff himself up at 2:00 in the morning after grabbing a Subway sandwich and buy a rope (at one of those twenty four hour hardware stores that don't exist in Chicago) to make into a noose so he could file a false claim (committing his own felony in the process if it is in fact a false claim, facing severe penalties and even jail time) and pretending it was a hate crime, no less, thereby involving the FBI (and doubling down on the false claim felony) as a publicity stunt for what exactly?

He doesn't have a movie coming out that I can find any information on. He's already on a popular TV show. Iow, he doesn't need to generate his own publicity for anything, let alone do it in such a way as to commit a felony--involving the FBI,no less--if not true.

Unless he's off his meds or something, in which case one still has to wonder where the rope came from. Because either that was what the fuckhead Trump stalkers had with them in their stakeout car (along with the bleach, or whatever the liquid was), or this guy took time out of his busy schedule to shop for a planned psychotic break.

ETA: Btw, it actually makes sense that he was not too badly beaten, if in fact, as I surmise, they had been staking out and did a quick recon of the area around his apartment for any security cameras, looking for dead spots and found one or two. Iow, they may not have had enough space to freely beat the shit out of him.

A grand jury has indicted him on filing a false police report.

Yes, I own a computer. So, “off his meds or something” then.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Well, this turns out to have been a fairly ineffective plan on his part.

While part of me does appreciate his go-getter attitude to try and increase his name recognition due to his working in an industry where greater fame translates pretty much directly into greater income through generating a lot of stories about how he's been so terribly victimized, he does have access to a number of quality writers and directors and he really should have had a couple of them read through the script beforehand to try and trim down the logical inconsistencies. For instance, perhaps don't have a couple of black guys from Africa play the fake Trump supporters and maybe stage the "This is MAGA country" scene somewhere other than downtown Chicago. Also, the noose was an unecessary prop and any back story about how a couple of racist thugs would just happen to have one on them when they randomly came across a gay black man who was wandering down the street was always going to be overly complex.

 

[southernhybrid]

The punishment for his crime, assuming he is convicted, is up to three years in prison, or probation and fines. In my opinion he should be offered a plea deal to avoid prison, and if he has an once of common sense, he will take that plea deal. He's already screwed himself and he's damaged both black males and gay males. Hate crimes are on the rise and there are already crazy folks on the far right that are claiming hate crimes are fake. This obviously fake crime, ( yeah I know he's legally innocent until proven guilty, but I'm not on the jury so I can have an opinion ) was horrendously stupid, and self centered.

 

[dismal]

Well, this turns out to have been a fairly ineffective plan on his part.

While part of me does appreciate his go-getter attitude to try and increase his name recognition due to his working in an industry where greater fame translates pretty much directly into greater income through generating a lot of stories about how he's been so terribly victimized, he does have access to a number of quality writers and directors and he really should have had a couple of them read through the script beforehand to try and trim down the logical inconsistencies. For instance, perhaps don't have a couple of black guys from Africa play the fake Trump supporters and maybe stage the "This is MAGA country" scene somewhere other than downtown Chicago. Also, the noose was an unecessary prop and any back story about how a couple of racist thugs would just happen to have one on them when they randomly came across a gay black man who was wandering down the street was always going to be overly complex.

I doesn't appear the fact the guys were Black had much to do with his undoing. It's my understanding they found the guys because when they asked Smollett for his phone records he provided a record with deleted out calls, they got the record of his actual calls from the phone company and tracked down the people whose numbers Smollett deleted. Not exactly Columbo stuff.

The reason the story raised doubts from the beginning is that while it might be slightly plausible there were two guys in MAGA hats with nooses and acid wandering the streets of Chicago at 2AM on a frigid night looking for someone to beat up, the odds of those two guys being able to recognize Jessie Smollett and know who he was is approximately .000000001% in a bazillion. Others raised points like whether someone who had a noose put around his neck by an attacker would still be walking around with a noose on 45 minutes after the attackers were gone, but I generally avoid speculation about how people ought to behave in the wake of an attack.

I think ultimately it's one of these cases where liars tend to overdo the details.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

The reason the story raised doubts from the beginning is that while it might be slightly plausible there were two guys in MAGA hats with nooses and acid wandering the streets of Chicago at 2AM on a frigid night looking for someone to beat up, the odds of those two guys being able to recognize Jessie Smollett and know who he was is approximately .000000001% in a bazillion.

That wasn’t the story and isn’t plausible at all. The story was that Smollett had been targeted—starting with the fake anthrax letter—stalked and then attacked, which is highly plausible as I laid out.

Sadly for Smollet, however, the most implausible version was evidently the true story; that he thought he could somehow get away with faking all of that. Which, once again, goes to his mental state.

 

[ronburgundy]

The punishment for his crime, assuming he is convicted, is up to three years in prison, or probation and fines. In my opinion he should be offered a plea deal to avoid prison, and if he has an once of common sense, he will take that plea deal. He's already screwed himself and he's damaged both black males and gay males. Hate crimes are on the rise and there are already crazy folks on the far right that are claiming hate crimes are fake. This obviously fake crime, ( yeah I know he's legally innocent until proven guilty, but I'm not on the jury so I can have an opinion ) was horrendously stupid, and self centered.

The bolded is why he should go to prison. It isn't a victimless crime, not to mention the racial riots he could have incited had he not been so stupid in making his story so over the top and suspicious from the start. False reports, especially of violent crimes can and have gotten innocent people imprisoned for life and killed. They are usually very hard to prove, especially since making an honest mistake is usually a plausible defense. So when they are easy to prove, they should get the max punishment. Also, the court should not consider the level of non-legal social/economic punishment a person might receive, since that varies wildly for person to person and is only speculative. He should get a punishment from the court that would still be a deterrent for a person who is an already unemployed unknown person for whom the non-legal consequences would be minimal.

 

[dismal]

The reason the story raised doubts from the beginning is that while it might be slightly plausible there were two guys in MAGA hats with nooses and acid wandering the streets of Chicago at 2AM on a frigid night looking for someone to beat up, the odds of those two guys being able to recognize Jessie Smollett and know who he was is approximately .000000001% in a bazillion.

That wasn’t the story and isn’t plausible at all. The story was that Smollett had been targeted—starting with the fake anthrax letter—stalked and then attacked, which is highly plausible as I laid out.

Sadly for Smollet, however, the most implausible version was evidently the true story; that he thought he could somehow get away with faking all of that. Which, once again, goes to his mental state.

We're all so impressed that you found it so plausible.

I award you +23 virtue points for the certainty with which you believed it.

But it's clear from the OP post #1 there were some who found it at least questionable from the beginning. Fortunately you were there to rant at them.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Well, this turns out to have been a fairly ineffective plan on his part.

While part of me does appreciate his go-getter attitude to try and increase his name recognition due to his working in an industry where greater fame translates pretty much directly into greater income through generating a lot of stories about how he's been so terribly victimized, he does have access to a number of quality writers and directors and he really should have had a couple of them read through the script beforehand to try and trim down the logical inconsistencies. For instance, perhaps don't have a couple of black guys from Africa play the fake Trump supporters and maybe stage the "This is MAGA country" scene somewhere other than downtown Chicago. Also, the noose was an unecessary prop and any back story about how a couple of racist thugs would just happen to have one on them when they randomly came across a gay black man who was wandering down the street was always going to be overly complex.

I doesn't appear the fact the guys were Black had much to do with his undoing. It's my understanding they found the guys because when they asked Smollett for his phone records he provided a record with deleted out calls, they got the record of his actual calls from the phone company and tracked down the people whose numbers Smollett deleted. Not exactly Columbo stuff.

The reason the story raised doubts from the beginning is that while it might be slightly plausible there were two guys in MAGA hats with nooses and acid wandering the streets of Chicago at 2AM on a frigid night looking for someone to beat up, the odds of those two guys being able to recognize Jessie Smollett and know who he was is approximately .000000001% in a bazillion. Others raised points like whether someone who had a noose put around his neck by an attacker would still be walking around with a noose on 45 minutes after the attackers were gone, but I generally avoid speculation about how people ought to behave in the wake of an attack.

I think ultimately it's one of these cases where liars tend to overdo the details.

Exactly. He needed to make it simple.

What's wrong with "I decided to spend a weekend in a small town in order to get away from my hectic production schedule and a couple of guys jumped me and beat on me while I was taking a walk who shouted 'This is MAGA country'". They don't need to recognize him, they don't need to have a noose and they'd be in a believable environment with far less security cameras around.

He gets the career boost of being a victim of a hate crime and there's a lot fewer inconsistent details to worry about. This is what happens when someone thinks that just because they can act, they can also write and direct. Sometimes people just need to stay in their own damn lane.

 

[repoman]

http://www.fakehatecrimes.org/

I guess there are different ways a hate crime can be fake.

 

[thebeave]

Weird motive. Looks like he staged the hoax because he was unsatisfied with his salary on Empire. I'm not seeing the connection there. Maybe by being a victim of bigotry he thought he would get sympathy points and they would give him more money because they felt sorry for him?

https://www.tmz.com/2019/02/20/jussie-smollett-indicted-felony-charge-filing-false-police-report/

I like the speech by the police chief. He really nails it (except for the "praying for Jussie" stuff at the end). Jussie is an even bigger idiot than I could have imagined.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Weird motive. Looks like he staged the hoax because he was unsatisfied with his salary on Empire. I'm not seeing the connection there. Maybe by being a victim of bigotry he thought he would get sympathy points and they would give him more money because they felt sorry for him?

It wouldn't be because they felt sorry for him, it would be because he'd improve his name recognition due to the assault and then try to parlay that into making himself a spokesman for victims of hate crimes in America. Being more famous because of this puts him in a much stronger negotiating position when his contract gets renewed and when he's signing onto other projects. There's also all the various speaking fees he could command as he goes around places and lets people congratulate him on how strong he is for being able to move past this horrific incident and use what happened to him as an opportunity to educate others about the racism and hatred some have to endure - I mean, just bless that man's heart.

 

[thebeave]

Weird motive. Looks like he staged the hoax because he was unsatisfied with his salary on Empire. I'm not seeing the connection there. Maybe by being a victim of bigotry he thought he would get sympathy points and they would give him more money because they felt sorry for him?

It wouldn't be because they felt sorry for him, it would be because he'd improve his name recognition due to the assault and then try to parlay that into making himself a spokesman for victims of hate crimes in America. Being more famous because of this puts him in a much stronger negotiating position when his contract gets renewed and when he's signing onto other projects. There's also all the various speaking fees he could command as he goes around places and lets people congratulate him on how strong he is for being able to move past this horrific incident and use what happened to him as an opportunity to educate others about the racism and hatred some have to endure - I mean, just bless that man's heart.

Good point. I think you're right.