The Second Time Around

I don't have to tell you how hard the world is sucking at the moment, do I?

Inflation is taking off like a rocket with an inexhaustible fuel supply. A nation suffering from foreign conflict fatigue can't summon a better response to Vladimir Putin's barbarism than to endure higher energy costs.

And even as we sit poised to collectively turn our clocks forward in recognition of daylight savings time, the thermometer reads but eight-degrees this morning.

Joy.  

But then the news of Jussie Smollett's sentencing drops into your lap like a warm croissant and you are made glad. While Donald Trump isn't in front of a firing squad or in a maximum security prison for committing treason and inciting sedition, at least one turd—Jussie Smollett—has been flushed.

Being the lead actor in a hit TV series wasn't enough for Jussie. The empty maw of his want wouldn't close until Jussie had even more money and even more attention and even more of everything that celebrities wallow in once they become celebrities.

After a failed bid to heighten his influence on the show, Jussie got it in his head to stage a spontaneous hate crime. After all—it wasn't too much of a stretch, was it? As an actor, he'd seen directors put together dramas his entire career. He could do that, too.

Only he couldn't. He fucked up. Central to the case (at least in my eyes) was how an impulsive trip to an all-night sandwich shop intersected with a carefully-staged, pre-planned hate crime.

Hmmm. 

Yeah, that is one hell of a stretch.

Initially, it all went Jussie's way. Kim Foxx, our grandstanding Cook Country State's Attorney, invoked all manner of civic outrage as celebrities poured from the woodwork in knee-jerk support. One even had ties to a former president.

This while the Chicago Police Department earnestly investigated, racking up six-figures worth of overtime in the process.

Yeah, this was a great, big deal.

Then it got weird. As it became apparent things hadn't unfolded the way Jussie said they had, it all just disappeared. The case, the charges, everything. Gone. Like water on a Las Vegas sidewalk.

Foxx issued all sorts of officious-sounding babble that didn't explain anything. The feds took note and began an independent investigation.

This time, the charges stuck. Without the inaction of a Black SA seemingly only interested in decriminalizing crime and any and all Black people caught committing it, logic and objectivity triumphed.

Yes, Smollett provoked a powerful dislike in me. He is a shit. Among public figures, he is second only to president forty-five. Smollett is an inveterate narcissist, a congenital liar and a slavish attention whore.

Which would be fine if it didn't involve municipalities and hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars. Not to mention cheapening actual hate crimes and their victims.

So I offer thanks to the prosecutors and to Judge James Linn for cementing the end of this civic embarrassment in place—once and for all. It's a shame Judge Linn wasn't sitting on the bench for the Laquan McDonald and CPD trials.

With buy-in just short of a Trump-tard, Smollett's family are decrying his sentencing with every bit of mental illness they can muster. My favorite is the statement from Smollett's brother Jacqui, who claims Jussie is going to jail for being attacked.

Ugh-huh.

And how much Kool-Aid was required to embrace that, Jacqui?

Gas is trending towards five-bucks a gallon. Another miserable winter refuses to release its grip on northeastern Illinois. And the once-invincible Bulls have been exposed and now appear decidedly vincible.

But Jussie Smollett is going to prison.

Yay.

Black Privilege?

Not so long ago, I didn't know who Jussie Smollett was. I wish I still didn't.

One of the most self-centered and unlikable celebrities ever to besmirch the city of Chicago, Smollett deemed it appropriate to utilize its overworked police force in a bid to extract a raise from his employer, the producers of Empire, after a homemade death threat failed to generate adequate concern for the attention-starved actor's financial well-being.

Deep in the me-first recesses of Smollett's brain, another scheme was hatched. Like any right-thinking American, he reasoned that if a death threat wouldn't land him a bigger paycheck, being the victim of a hate crime would.

The restless creative forces within Smollett were soon at work. He cast two forlorn brothers as his attackers and elected to stage the drama amid the upscale high-rises which populate the near-north neighborhood of Streeterville.

Then, on one of the coldest nights of the year, Smollett ventured out to visit an area Subway sandwich shop.

He never made it.

He was supposedly accosted by two men, who took exception to Smollett's seeking to satiate a nocturnal craving on such a chilly night. They bit, kicked and punched Smollett, shouted racial and homophobic slurs and poured an unknown liquid over him. Then they placed a noose around his neck.

Before I credit the two goon's diligence in keeping a liquid in liquid form in sub-zero weather (the temperature at the time of the attack was zero degrees, with sustained winds of fifteen to twenty miles an hour leading to a wind chill of twenty degrees below), I have to marvel at such a highly-personal attack happening on what Smollett maintains was a spontaneous, unplanned trip to grab a sandwich.

Is there a bookie in Vegas who could even lay odds on that?

Regardless, Smollett fought them off, ending up in an emergency room where he was later released in good condition. Despite the brutality of the two-on-one confrontation, Smollett had only a fine, horizontal scratch beneath his eye to show for the assault.

Within hours, the knee-jerk wheels of the social media court were in motion.

Poor, poor Jussie! Bad, bad Chicago! Among the most-commonly expressed sentiments was “Give that man a raise!”

Alas, as the mass of CPD detectives assigned to this high-profile case went to work, Smollett's contentions began to unravel like a sweater from K-Mart.

It being very, very late on a very cold Monday night, pedestrian traffic was, as you can imagine, light. Pedestrians armed with unidentified fluids and nooses were especially scarce. In fact, the area's network of public and private security cameras didn't detect them at all.

Despite maintaining that he had spoken with his manager on his cell phone just before the attack, Smollett refused to surrender his phone as evidence. Which was certainly curious for someone victimized to the extent Jussie claimed to be.

And then there was the $3,500 which had recently changed hands, and the footage of the Nigerian brothers buying the rope and ski masks used in the attack. It wasn't long before the unavoidable conclusion could no longer be avoided.

In the aftermath, Smollett was rightly charged with sixteen felony counts of filing a false police report. He was dumped from Empire. All seemed right with the world.

Until yesterday. Out of the blue, Illinois state prosecutors announced they were dropping all charges against Smollett. While they maintained this didn't amount to an exoneration, Smollett's record has nevertheless been expunged and the case files sealed.

Hmmm.

If your eyesight happens to be better than mine, could show me where the part about it not being an exoneration kicks in? Because I can't see it.

Somewhere, an uneaten Subway sandwich molders. And we are again left to wonder whether our traditional notion of justice belongs on the endangered species list.