It's hard to say a racist incident never happened, but why was it so easy to say that it did?

"Brigham Young University said Friday that it had completed its investigation into accusations of racial heckling and slurs at a volleyball match against Duke University last month and found no evidence to confirm that the behavior took place."

The NYT reports.

Note the careful language — "no evidence to confirm." They don't and can't say that nothing at all happened. The language in the BYU statement is: "we have not found any evidence to corroborate" ("From our extensive review, we have not found any evidence to corroborate the allegation that fans engaged in racial heckling or uttered racial slurs at the event").

"Jussie Smollett has been sentenced to 150 days of jail and 30 months of probation."

"He will have to pay back the City of Chicago just over $120,000 in restitution and was also fined $25,000. Following the sentencing, he had an emotional outburst and screamed 'I am not suicidal and I did not do it.'"

WGN9 reports.

ADDED: If you watch the video clip, you'll understand what he meant by "I am not suicidal":

 

He's saying that if he turns up dead in prison, it will not be because he's killed himself. He seems to be underscoring his argument against prison time: There's a danger that he could be killed in prison. And he wants everyone to know that if they say he killed himself, it will be wrong.

Nearly everyone believes he faked the attack on himself. He still denies it, but he's lost the capacity to convince anyone of his version of the story. Now, as he speaks about the future, he could be setting up another faked attack on himself. That is, he could indeed be suicidal, planning suicide, and trying to lay a foundation for theories that he did not kill himself.

I hope he is guarded so that he cannot carry out this terrible plan, if that's what it is. He deserves punishment for what he did, but not the death penalty. He seems to be a self-dramatizing person with very poor judgment, and I think he needs to be protected from himself.

Smollett guilty.

"Actor Jussie Smollett was convicted by a Cook County jury Thursday of staging and reporting a hate crime on himself, marking a dramatic end to a case that captivated the nation ever since he reported being attacked on a frigid night in Chicago nearly three years ago" (Chicago Tribune).

"A Cook County, Illinois, grand jury has returned a six-count indictment against actor Jussie Smollett for making false reports, a special prosecutor said Tuesday."

"Smollett, who is gay and black, he said he was the victim of a racist and homophobic attack near his Chicago apartment on January 29, 2019," CNN reports.

Kirsten Gillibrand: "So the first thing that I'm going to do when I'm president is I'm going to Clorox the Oval Office."

From last night's debate, and I've got to think that was a scripted joke, because it was a response to an invitation to explain how the Green New Deal — "which includes the guarantee of a job with medical leave, paid vacations, and retirement security for everyone in America" — is realistic

It seems as though she had a joke and had no compunction about sticking it in where it didn't belong:

So the first thing that I'm going to do when I'm president is I'm going to Clorox the Oval Office. The second thing I'm going to do is I will reengage on global climate change. And I will not only sign the Paris global climate accords, but I will lead a worldwide conversation about the urgency of this crisis.

Maybe that Clorox stuff is there to separate her answer from the question — which is about the realism of guaranteeing everyone medical leave, paid vacations, and retirement security — not simply getting back to the Paris accord and having a conversation. I want to talk about the Clorox, but I've got to stop and say I'm so tired of hearing that what we need is "a conversation." It sounds like no solution at all and a way to delay. But "conversation about the urgency" is quite special — delaying by talking about how delay is not an option. And if dealing with climate change is all important, why is the Green New Deal cluttered with guarantees of medical leave, paid vacations, and retirement security?

Gillibrand settles in to expatiate about climate change. Here's something that drives me nuts. There's always time to say the name of some specific individual in Iowa:

The greatest threat to humanity is global climate change. I visited a family in Iowa who -- water spewed into her home, Fran Parr, it tossed her refrigerator upend, all the furniture was broken, all the dishes were broken, and mud was everywhere. That is the impact of severe weather right now on families' lives.

So, this Fran Parr character, did she live on a flood plain? I notice that her house was a mess and admire the thematic unity of Gillibrand's little speech, which on first hearing felt like a mishmash. The theme is: a dirty house that needs cleaning up. But this answer is a jumble. I feel like it needs tidying up. There's the ludicrous phrase, "her home, Fran Parr." There's "upend" used as an adverb. There's the muddling of "climate" and "weather" and "water spew[ing]" (which I have to guess was a flood).

She devolves into all-purpose blather about doing things:

And so the truth is, we need a robust solution. When John F. Kennedy said I want to put a man on the moon in the next 10 years, not because it's easy, but because it's hard, he knew it was going to be a measure of our innovation, our success, our ability to galvanize worldwide competition. He wanted to have a space race with Russia. Why not have a green energy race with China? Why not have clean air and clean water for all Americans? Why not rebuild our infrastructure? Why not actually invest in the green jobs? That's what the Green New Deal is about. Not only will I pass it, but I will put a price on carbon to make market forces help us.

The question was how is it realistic to guarantee a job with medical leave, paid vacations, and retirement security for everyone in America. That sounds like just imposing requirements — burdensome requirements — on private businesses, which is nothing like sending a man to the moon, where government itself performs the task. Gillibrand never addresses those requirements at all. She switches to "green energy" and clean air and water. She declares "That's what the Green New Deal is about" as if to exclude the very things that were the subject of the question — requiring private businesses to provide medical leave, paid vacations, and retirement security.

With all that disorder — like broken dishes and furniture in a mud-splattered house in Iowa — let me get back to the Clorox. Clorox — do all listeners know? — is bleach. Do you clean with bleach? You can, but most people think of bleach as a whitener. We're so prodded to think of racism these days that I got sidetracked wondering whether the use of bleach will be regarded as racist. Will some people hear the white woman promising to whiten things up?

And when was bleach just in the news? Oh! Jussie Smollett!

“There’s bleach on me. They poured bleach on me,” Jussie Smollett told police the night of the alleged attack in Chicago. “Do you want to take it off or anything?” Chicago police officer asks Jussie Smollett about the rope around his neck. https://t.co/4mmKwNVaBb pic.twitter.com/WfsuKc3PrW

— CBS Chicago (@cbschicago) June 24, 2019

In the staged attack, the meaningful liquid allegedly thrown was bleach.

And then there's BleachBit — the method Hillary Clinton used to thoroughly destroy her 33,000 emails.

I wouldn't have brought up bleach. And why would a woman candidate present herself in the metaphor of housecleaning? "I'm going to Clorox the Oval Office." Why would you need to Clorox the Oval Office? The question makes me think of Bill Clinton and his famous bodily fluids. Donald Trump is known for posh interiors, not dirtying a place up. Of course, it's metaphorical dirt — the person as filth. Isn't it morally wrong to talk about human beings as filth? Well, maybe not. I'm sure many Trump-haters routinely refer to him in scatological terms. But this is a presidential debate, and Gillibrand seems to be appealing to our desire for cleanliness. I guess you stimulate that desire by making people feel uneasy about excrement and germs.

Elsewhere in the debate, Gillibrand called herself "a white woman of privilege" who "can talk to those white women in the suburbs." You know those women, always worrying about tidiness and warding away infection with chemical sprays on household surfaces. She can "explain to them what white privilege actually is, that when their son is walking down a street with a bag of M&Ms in his pocket, wearing a hoodie, his whiteness is what protects him from not being shot."

Protects him from not being shot?

The mind of Kirsten Gillbrand is like a bag of M&M rattling around in the pocket of a hoodie.

"The Illinois Prosecutors Bar Association issues statement condemning the Cook County State’s Attorney’s handling of the Jussie Smollett case."

Full text here. Excerpt (with boldface added):

The manner in which this case was dismissed was abnormal and unfamiliar to those who practice law in criminal courthouses across the State. Prosecutors, defense attorneys, and judges alike do not recognize the arrangement Mr. Smollett received. Even more problematic, the State’s Attorney and her representatives have fundamentally misled the public on the law and circumstances surrounding the dismissal...

When an elected State’s Attorney recuses herself from a prosecution, Illinois law provides that the court shall appoint a special prosecutor. See 55 ILCS 5/3-9008(a-15).... Here, the State’s Attorney kept the case within her office and thus never actually recused herself as a matter of law.

Additionally, the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office falsely informed the public that the uncontested sealing of the criminal court case was “mandatory” under Illinois law...

The appearance of impropriety here is compounded by the fact that this case was not on the regularly scheduled court call....

Lastly, the State’s Attorney has claimed this arrangement is “available to all defendants” and “not a new or unusual practice.”...  Central to any diversion program, however, is that the defendant must accept responsibility....

"Charges Dropped In Jussie Smollett Case."

CBS Chicago reports.

ADDED: The Chicago Sun Times reports:

“This is without a doubt a whitewash of justice, and sends a clear message that if you’re in a position of influence and power, you’ll get treated one way, other people will be treated another way,” [Chicago Mayor Rahm] Emanuel said. “There is no accountability in the system. It is wrong, full stop.”

Ed Wodnicki, the 18th District police commander who oversaw the investigation, called the decision to drop the charges “a kick in the gut." He said the $10,000 in bond forfeited by Smollett “doesn’t come close” to covering the cost in resources and manpower to probe the heater case that drew national attention.“I think the citizens of Chicago should be upset about that... We wasted time and effort on a reported serious, serious crime, to get to the point that it’s a lie? I want reimbursement. I’m a citizen in the city of Chicago. I want my money back... We were absolutely prepared to go to trial. We were rock solid. We were excited to have this case prosecuted”....

Can Chicago prosecute anybody for making a false report now?

"This redundant and vindictive indictment is nothing more than a desperate attempt to make headlines..."

Said Jussie Smollett's lawyer, quoted in "Jussie Smollett lawyer calls 16-count indictment 'vindictive'" (The Hill).

The most-up-voted comment over there is:

"This redundant and vindictive indictment is nothing more than a desperate attempt to make headlines"

That's exactly what your client did. Now lay in that bed.

"The immediate reaction is born of pure emotion, prompting phrases such as 'Oh my God!' and 'He did what?' to escape your lips without thinking, to cause the breath to catch in your throat and the eyes to pop in your head."

"Friday’s news stops you in your tracks, immediately flooding your mind with more questions than you know can be answered, sending your thoughts into a spiral of tangled emotions. Anger, disgust, disappointment, shock, denial, disdain . . . all of them with the right to course through your veins, even as you await the avalanche of detail that is sure to follow the initial revelations. Sadness, too."

From "Troubling charges against Robert Kraft leave us wondering what to think" — Tara Sullivan is emoting up a storm at The Boston Globe.

In that "spiral of tangled emotions" that have "the right to course through your veins," isn't there something that makes you just want to laugh derisively? This guy had everything. Who has as much?! He had a lot more than Jussie Smollett, and he exposed himself to ruination — not for a fantasy porn star like Stormy Daniels — but for a strip mall hand job? This is stupider than what Smollett did — if he did it — so crudely staging that attack and paying for it with a check — get cash, man — which had Charles Barkley laughing at him on television and modeling the spiraling, tangled emotion called hilarity:



ADDED: Maybe hilarity is an emotion that doesn't have "the right to course through your veins." It is — as I've said — The Era of That's Not Funny. Maybe we feel we don't have the right to laugh anymore. I can see that much of the reaction to the Smollett has been that he himself committed a hate crime — a hate crime against MAGA people — and we must take umbrage and express outrage and keep a stern, grim face. Then, thank God for Charles Barkley for transgressing and inviting us into the emotion we might think doesn't have "the right to course through your veins."

And I mean to laugh at the idea of emotions with rights. People have rights, and you have a right to feel whatever you feel... including ashamed of yourself for feeling something that you disapprove of.

ALSO: Laughing at Kraft for getting a hand job in a strip mall is like laughing at Trump for eating a McDonald's cheeseburger. Why doesn't the billionaire use his money to buy the fancy version of every damned little thing that he wants? Asks the nonbillionaire.

"Not capable of or liable to sin; exempt from the possibility of sinning or doing wrong."

I'm looking up "impeccable" because I'm reading the statement released by lawyers for Jussie Smollett:

"Mr. Smollett is a young man of impeccable character and integrity who fiercely and solemnly maintains his innocence and feels betrayed by a system that apparently wants to skip due process and proceed directly to sentencing."

The quote in the post title is the OED's definition of that very strong word "impeccable." I wonder how much the lawyers thought about the selection of that adjective and what alternatives were considered. It's so intense and absolute that it's self-defeating. Who is exempt from the possibility of doing wrong?! It seems to shout: We're lying.

If they'd asked me, I'd have suggested "good character." Maybe "fine character."

"What trips up Kamala Harris is an evident desire to please her audience. She wants no enemies to her left, no identity politics left untouched."

"She can't run as a prosecutor—crime fighting is so 1990s—but she can run as brash, bold, and woke. Her verbal miscues are possible evidence that this latest political fashion doesn't quite fit," writes Matthew Continetti at Free Beacon.

He describes 3 recent incidents. One is something we discussed a few days ago, here, her inability to handle a predictable question about Jussie Smollett. Another, as Continetti sees it, was that on her televised town hall, she didn't seem ready to handle questions about her own health insurance proposals. The third is that joke about legalizing marijuana — "Half my family is from Jamaica, are you kidding me?" — which provoked pompous pushback from her own father...

"My dear departed grandmothers (whose extraordinary legacy I described in a recent essay on this website), as well as my deceased parents, must be turning in their grave right now to their family's name, reputation, and proud Jamaican identity being connected, in any way, jokingly or not with the fraudulent stereotype of a pot-smoking joy seeker and in the pursuit of identity politics. Speaking for myself and my immediate Jamaican family, we wish to categorically dissociate ourselves from this controversy." 

I'd been thinking Kamala Harris just isn't practiced or adept enough. She's not comfortably glib, that's for sure. But Continetti detects deceit. He thinks she's trying to look more left-wing than she is.

I'll do a poll. Pick the best of the 4 explanations I'm offering. If you have a better idea, explain it in the comments, but don't tell me the poll is wrong because it doesn't have your idea. The question is phrased to resist that criticism.

Which of these options is the best explanation for this sort of slip-up by Kamala Harris?

She's needs get comfortable with campaigning and will probably improve with practice.

She's not glib at finessing what she hasn't thought through.

She's been over-promoted and her deficits are getting exposed.

She can't pull off the act of seeming as left-wing as she thinks she needs to be.

 

pollcode.com free polls

"It’s certainly embarrassing for those who expressed concern or solidarity with Smollett to consider that we’ve likely been misled, our empathy for the actor misplaced."

"But don’t confuse your very reasonable embarrassment and anger in the wake of having been duped for a more permanent kind of harm. No one who invokes the name of Jussie Smollett to cast doubt on real victims would have believed them, but for this. Homophobes who regularly link gays to pedophilia or believe that same-sex marriage is a sign of civilization’s downfall weren’t on the brink of a change of heart, but for this. Neither were racists like U.S. Rep. Steve King, who believe that America won’t be America unless the majority of her population is white. People who believe these ugly things, and the much larger group who don’t believe anything except that it’s not their business to care, don’t seize on hoaxes because an isolated case proves they are right. They do it because they will use anything and everything to distract from the fact that they are wrong.... [T]here’s no larger message here, and we’re not all victims of his crime. Haters, proverbially, are going to hate. They did it before, and they won’t miss a step after this sad, weird story is done. We may get sick of hearing Jussie Smollett’s name repeated in lieu of an actual argument. But those of us who understand that one hoax doesn’t invalidate countless true stories of homophobic or race-based violence will not be deterred."

From "Why Jussie Smollett’s Alleged Hoax Won’t Change How Anyone Feels About Hate Crimes" by Evan Urquhart at Slate. The commenters at Slate are not buying Urquhart's spin. From the most up-voted comment:

Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson speaks about the Jussie Smollett case.

ADDED:

I mashed up the CPD superintendent's press conference with Smollett's trainwreck ABC interview https://t.co/elvCTWOZzA pic.twitter.com/CQOPBdhX6d

— David Rutz (@DavidRutz) February 21, 2019

Isn't the evidence a little too good?

My single favorite thing in this video is the ski mask on the counter with the cardboard still in it. The eye cutouts and the mouth. Honestly this whole deal should be the next season of Fargo. 😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/QeqMTBvUub

— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) February 21, 2019

ADDED: In case you don't know what's going on here — from "Jussie Smollett arrested and faces a felony charge for allegedly filing false police report" (CNN):

While [police] did not provide specifics on the developments, surveillance video from January 28 obtained from a Chicago-area beauty supply store appears to show the men connected to the incident purchasing a ski mask, sunglasses, a red hat and other items the day before the alleged assault. They paid for the items in cash, according to the owner, who did not want to be identified.

The two men questioned by police -- identified as brothers Olabinjo Osundairo and Abimbola Osundairo -- were initially arrested February 13 but released without charges after police cited the discovery of "new evidence." They've met with police and prosecutors at a Chicago courthouse, police spokesman Tom Ahern said. The two are no longer suspects at this time, Chicago police have said...

In a joint statement issued to CNN affiliate WBBM, the men said: "We are not racist. We are not homophobic, and we are not anti-Trump. We were born and raised in Chicago and are American citizens."

"Jussie Smollett has officially been named a suspect in the criminal investigation into his attack, Chicago police have announced."

"He is suspected of filing a false police report, which carries a felony charge.... According to the Chicago PD, detectives are currently presenting evidence before a Cook County grand jury, which could lead to Smollett’s indictment. Two brothers, Ola and Abel Osundairo, were eventually arrested and brought in for questioning in the attack..... The brothers reportedly said all three men 'rehearsed' the attack days prior to it happening.... CBS reported that Smollett allegedly plotted the attack after being upset that a threatening letter containing a white powder that he received a week prior to the attack did not elicit a more serious response from 20th Century Fox, the studio behind Empire. A magazine potentially used to create the letter was seized from the brothers’ home; that letter is currently being investigated by the FBI."

That's how the story is reported in New York Magazine's "Vulture."

UPDATE: Jussie Smollett is charged with felony disorderly conduct.

"Smollett—if he really did stage the attack—would have been acting out the black-American component in this eschatological configuration, the role of victim as a form of status."

"We are, within this hierarchy, persecuted prophets, ever attesting to the harm that white racism does to us and pointing to a future context in which our persecutors will be redeemed of the sin of having leveled that harm upon us. We are noble in our suffering."

Writes John McWhorter in "What the Jussie Smollett Story Reveals/It shows a peculiar aspect of 21st-century America: victimhood chic" (The Atlantic).

What is "this eschatological configuration"? The antecedent sentence is:

Racial politics today have become a kind of religion in which whites grapple with the original sin of privilege, converts tar questioners of the orthodoxy as “problematic” blasphemers, and everyone looks forward to a Judgment Day when America “comes to terms” with race.

Eschatology is — in my dictionary, the OED — "The department of theological science concerned with ‘the four last things: death, judgement, heaven, and hell'" or "In recent theological writing, esp. as ‘realized eschatology’ (see quot. 1957), the sense of this word has been modified to connote the present ‘realization’ and significance of the ‘last things’ in the Christian life." The etymology has roots for last + discourse. McWhorter is talking about "Judgment Day," so the word (the metaphor) is apt.

And here's the Wikipedia article "Immanentize the eschaton":

In political theory and theology, to immanentize the eschaton means trying to bring about the eschaton (the final, heaven-like stage of history) in the immanent world. In all these contexts it means "trying to make that which belongs to the afterlife happen here and now (on Earth)."...

Modern usage of the phrase started with Eric Voegelin in The New Science of Politics in 1952. Conservative spokesman William F. Buckley popularized Voegelin's phrase as "Don't immanentize the eschaton!" Buckley's version became a political slogan of Young Americans for Freedom during the 1960s and 1970s.

Voegelin identified a number of similarities between ancient Gnosticism and the beliefs held by a number of modern political theories, particularly Communism and Nazism....

Back to McWhorter. I'm skipping ahead now:

Notable in smollett’s [sic] account is that he sought to come off as an especially fierce kind of victim—the victim as hero, as cool. “I fought the fuck back,” he told ABC’s Robin Roberts in an interview. Smollett has long displayed a hankering for preacher status. His Twitter stream is replete with counsel about matters of spirit, skepticism, and persistence that sounds a tad self-satisfied from someone in his 30s. His mother associated with the Black Panthers and is friends with the activist Angela Davis, and in interviews Smollett has identified proudly with the activist tradition.

The problem is that amid the complexities of 2019 as opposed to 1969, keeping the Struggle [sic] going is more abstract, less dramatic, than it once was....

It is and should be a mistake to switch to fakery and overdramatizing to keep the Struggle going. There's no reason why we can't be empathetic and attentive to subtle things. Let's talk about what's really true and what matters. It may be hard to believe that anyone will care about less dramatic problems, but if you wreck your credibility, you'll have no way to talk to people anymore.

Kamala Harris is terribly awkward when asked about Jussie Smollett.

She acts as though she doesn't remember what she tweeted, then, when reminded that she called it "an attempted modern-day lynching," she looks back (at 0:27) as if to seek help from somebody (perhaps that grim, frowning woman behind her), then turns forward again, says "sorry" and giggles. She giggled in response to the idea of lynching!

Then she partly composes herself, lifts her eyebrows halfway up her forehead and says "ummm, uh, uh, okay" and otherwise stalls for 10 seconds before coming out with "The facts are still unfolding," which struck me as ridiculous considering that she didn't wait for facts to unfold before declaring it "an attempted modern-day lynching," so she's making it seem as though she'll jump to a conclusion when she likes where she can go and will take refuge in restraint when she doesn't like it.

She should at least withdraw her original statement or try to justify it as something that expressed her genuine feeling of shock at the idea of a hateful attack.

She adds "I'm very concerned and obviously..." and then this edit of the video ends. I think, based on this NYT report — "Kamala Harris Faces Questions About ‘Democratic Socialist’ Label and Jussie Smollett in N.H. Debut" — that the next thing she said was that there should be an investigation. Why wasn't that obvious back when she was tweeting "modern-day lynching"?

More from the Times article:

Senator Kamala Harris visited New Hampshire on Monday for the first time in her life, and quickly experienced the realities of being a presidential candidate.... New Hampshire has a long history of favoring New England candidates. Despite Mr. Sanders’s popularity here — he won 60 percent of the vote in the 2016 primary — Ms. Harris distanced herself from him at an earlier event in Concord. Asked if she would have to tack to the left like Mr. Sanders to do well in New Hampshire, she drew a line in the sand.

“The people of New Hampshire will tell me what’s required to compete in New Hampshire, but I will tell you I am not a democratic socialist,” she said....

The audience... responded heartily to her veiled references to President Trump, whom she did not name. They rose to their feet and cheered when she denounced “his vanity project,” the wall on the southern border with Mexico....

"I doubted Jussie Smollett. It breaks my heart that I might be right."

Writes Nana Efua Mumford, "the executive assistant to The [Washington] Post’s editorial board."

I can't understand why anyone would want to admit that they're happier to know that a racist, homophobic violent attack took place than that one person told a big lie.

I wanted to believe Smollett. I really did. I know that there is a deep, dark racist history in Chicago and, if proved true, this would be just one more point on the list. I wanted to believe him with every fiber of my being, most of all because the consequences if he were lying were almost too awful to contemplate.

So it would be okay knowing that there was a horrible attack because you're so certain that so much more of the same out there?

She says "I need this story to be true," because otherwise people will be dubious of claims of "racist hate crimes or sexual violence" and more likely to buy into the notion that "there is a leftist conspiracy to cast Trump supporters as violent, murderous racists." Ironically, Mumford's column itself bolsters the belief that there's a big effort to misrepresent Trump supporters. She's saying she wants the hateful image of Trump supporters to stick. She was (and still is) hoping for Smollett's story to hold up. She's admitting she is an actively biased recipient of evidence.

In that light, it's interesting to read her crisp summary of how suspicious she was all along:

I tried telling myself that it is possible that two assailants were walking around downtown Chicago at 2 a.m. in January in 10-degree weather, waiting for a black victim. In addition to that, they were stalking around with a bottle of bleach and a rope. And ultimately, the prey they selected was an actor on a show that they must’ve been somewhat familiar with, because they were able to not only name the show but also know that he played a gay character. Never mind the fact that he was likely bundled up because again: Chicago, January, 10 degrees. Also, after he fought to get away, he left the rope around his neck until he got to the hospital....

There are over 2,000 comments on this column. The most-up-voted one, by a lot, is:

I'm black, and I and all my black friends doubted this story from the get-go.

A guy who has received death threats goes out alone at 2 a.m. in below-zero temperature because he got the midnight munchies? Nuh-uh. He'd go out with his security team, or send his security guys out to get it for him, or (most likely) have it delivered. This smelled like a hookup gone bad.

Smollett has done incalculable damage. God help the next victim of a real racist attack. Nobody is going to believe him because of this idiot.

We're not talking about Gov. Northam anymore.

I wonder why. Is it just a matter of time? Steel yourself when they all come after you and wait. They'll go somewhere else soon enough.

Or did something else happen that drove the story out of the news? Was it just big news — Trump's "emergency"? Or something that specifically offset the Northam story — maybe the Jussie Smollett  story: Maybe some people don't want to think about why Northam made himself into a fake black man if we're worried that Jussie Smollett made up some fake white men.

Smollett's possibly fake white men were outright hateful and they make black people feel that they are hated, and Northam's fake black man was more ambiguous, perhaps more mockery than hate and even possibly admiring (if it really was about imitating Michael Jackson). And, of course, what Smollett did — if he did it — happened just a couple weeks ago and Northam's idiocy is more than 30 years in the past.

ADDED: If it turns out that Smollett staged an elaborate hoax, how do you think it will/should be resolved? Obviously, one answer is criminal prosecution and punishment.

But — especially if he would continue to assert that he was attacked — it might be better for everyone involved if Smollett were allowed to escape all punishment if he would only clearly explain that it was a hoax, acknowledge that it was very wrong, and give a sincere apology. I'd be happy to forgive if we could get out a strong message that hoaxes like this are cruel and destructive.

Another scenario I've pictured is something about mental illness and rehabilitation. We'd learn that Smollett is unwell and will get treatment, which is problematic because it might feel like another hoax.

By the way, I hope it's a hoax. Aware that I'd prefer it to be a hoax, I'm wary of talking about it as a hoax at all. Maybe it happened, and if it did, Smollett deserves empathy for both the attack and the doubting of his integrity.

AND: A montage of media people and politicians conveying Smollett's allegations as if they were proven facts:

"While we haven’t found any video documenting the alleged attack, there is also no evidence to say that this is a hoax."

Say the Chicago police, quoted in WaPo.

Chicago police have said they’re investigating the alleged assault against ["Empire" actor Jussie] Smollett, who is black and openly gay, as a possible hate crime. Smollett told police he was attacked around 2 a.m. on Jan. 29 by two people who yelled racial and homophobic slurs, tied a rope around his neck and poured a chemical substance, which he believes to be bleach, on him. According to Smollett, at least one assailant told him “this is MAGA country” during the attack....