Jussie Smollett

Transferring Sainthood [Moral Authority] of the Victim

Published by Papa Giorgio

Transferring moral authority for power…. or as playwright David Mamet noted years ago, “by endorsing the victim [historical or contemporary perceptions of a victim], the endorser or those who trumpet the newly found victim perhaps —  gain — by magic, part of his incontrovertible status [moral authority or power]” — adapted from below:

One might say that the politician, the doctor, and the dramatist make their living from human misery; the doctor in attempting to alleviate it, the politician to capitalize on it, and the dramatist, to describe it.

But perhaps that is too epigrammatic.

When I was young, there was a period in American drama in which the writers strove to free themselves of the question of character.

Protagonists of their worthy plays had made no choices, but were afflicted by a condition not of their making; and this condition, homosexuality, illness, being a woman, etc., was the center of the play. As these protagonists had made no choices, they were in a state of innocence. They had not acted, so they could not have sinned.

A play is basically an exercise in the raising, lowering, and altering of expectations (such known, collectively, as the Plot); but these plays dealt not with expectations (how could they, for the state of the protagonist was not going to change?) but with sympathy.

What these audiences were witnessing was not a drama, but a troublesome human condition displayed as an attraction. This was, formerly, known as a freak show.

The subjects of these dramas were bearing burdens not of their choosing, as do we all. But misfortune, in life, we know, deserves forbearance on the part of the unafflicted. For though the display of courage in the face of adversity is worthy of all respect, the display of that respect by the unaffected is presumptuous and patronizing.

One does not gain merit from congratulating an afflicted person for his courage. One only gains entertainment.

Further, endorsement of the courage of the affliction play’s hero was not merely impertinent, but, more basically, spurious, as applause was vouchsafed not to a worthy stoic, but to an actor portraying him.

These plays were an (unfortunate) by-product of the contemporary love-of-the-victim. For a victim, as above, is pure, and cannot have sinned; and one, by endorsing him, may perhaps gain, by magic, part of his incontrovertible status.

David Mamet, The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture (New York, NY: Sentinel Publishing, 2011), 134-135.

SEE MORE AT: Deadly Altruism Marks the Left ~ Illiberal Egalitarianism and the NYFD

Bubba Smollett, NASCAR Hate Hoax (Mark Dice)

Published by Papa Giorgio

See the SUPERCUT of the MSM via TWITTER

  • As reliably as children being fooled by Santa Claus, the news media has once again been duped by an obviously false story that fit their favorite narrative about race. Last year, it was the Jussie Smollett fiasco, which I was one of the first media commentators to call out as lacking credibility. Today, in a very different but similar story, we have learned that, contrary to an enormous amount of media outrage and moralizing, black NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace was not the victim of a noose-related hate crime. (NEW YORK POST)

While I like their rants (Paul Watson, Mark Dice, and others) and these commentaries hold much truth in them, I do wish to caution you… he is part of Info Wars/Prison Planet and Summit News network of yahoos, a crazy conspiracy arm of Alex Jones shite. Also, I bet if I talked to him he would reveal some pretty-crazy conspiratorial beliefs that would naturally undermine and be at-odds-with some of his rants. Just to be clear, I do not endorse these people or orgs.

Victimhood Chic – Dr. John McWhorter

Published by Papa Giorgio
  • Only in an America in which matters of race are not as utterly irredeemable as we are often told could things get to the point that someone would pretend to be tortured in this way, acting oppression rather than suffering it, seeking to play a prophet out of a sense that playing a singer on television is not as glamorous as getting beaten up by white guys. That anyone could feel this way and act on it in the public sphere is, in a twisted way, a kind of privilege, and a sign that we have come further on race than we are often comfortable admitting. — John McWhorter

John McWhorter delivers some brilliant social commentary (a shining light into Don Lemon’s career):

THE ATLANTIC

….Notable in Smollett’s 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 going is more abstract, less dramatic, than it once was. Angela Davis is on T-shirts; it seems less likely that, for example, the Black Lives Matter activist DeRay Mckesson will be. How do you make as stark and monumental a statement as a King or a Malcolm these days? With a touch too much thirst for glory, and a tad too little inclination for analysis, one might seek to be attacked the way they were.

In john ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence, a newspaperman advises, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” One take on Smollett’s story, if he turns out to have orchestrated it, will be that it was true in essence—a teachable example of the very real phenomenon of hate crimes. For a long time, the enlightened black person was to pretend that O. J. Simpson was framed by the Los Angeles Police Department, out of concern about the way the LAPD actually had treated black people for decades. For similar reasons, even today the idea that Michael Brown in Ferguson died with his hands up, although soundly refuted by all lines of evidence, retains status as almost an “alternative fact” in some quarters.

However, Smollett, in crafting his own “legend”—if that’s what happened—is less channeling Simpson and Brown than Tawana Brawley and Rachel Dolezal.

In 1987, Brawley claimed that six white men had abducted her, raped her, and left her in the woods covered with feces. They had scrawled racial epithets across her torso. That account turned out to be as fictional as it now sounds, but Brawley claimed as late as 1997 that “something happened to me,” a deftly vague statement. However, a key difference between Brawley and Smollett, pointing up the difference between 1987 and 2019, is that while Brawley lied to escape the wrath of her mother’s boyfriend after she ran away from home for four days, Smollett may have lied to look good to the public.

Dolezal, white, spent years with a spray tan, “identifying” as black and even heading a local NAACP branch, and had fabricated episodes of racist discrimination against herself. As Bryan Cranston’s dentist character on Seinfeld adopted Judaism for the jokes, Dolezal, one might say, took on blackness for the victimhood. She felt that her existence was more meaningful while she was “playing” an oppressed black person than living as a white person despite all the attendant privileges. Few news events more perfectly illustrated that in our moment, a claim of victimhood from a black person is a form of power. Only in an America much further past the old days than many like to admit could a white person eagerly seek to be a put-upon black person out of a sense that it looked “cool.” A Dolezal would have been unimaginable until roughly the late 1990s.
One could imagine that Smollett, if he was playacting, had a similar motivation. For Smollett, being a successful actor and singer might not have been quite as exciting as being a poster child for racist abuse in Trump’s America.

Assuming, again, that the reports are accurate, Smollett’s clumsiness would be an especially poignant indication of how deeply this victimhood chic has taken hold—almost as if he thought this was such an easy score that he didn’t even need to think too hard about the logistics. This story has been reminiscent, again, of Brawley, except that she was 15 and Smollett is, at 36, more than twice her age then. Consider, for example, this saliently implausible detail: If thugs put a rope around your neck, your first impulse when they were gone would be to remove it, but he still had it on when police first made contact. Really?

Smollett told Robin Roberts, amid initial skepticism about his account, that people would have been more open to his story if he had said the attackers were black or Muslim—missing, apparently, that the attackers’ being white made the story the most interesting possible one to all the people he was seeking to reach. Then, suddenly, even an actor is awkward in playing his part. He addressed an audience recently using note cards and callowly compared himself to Tupac Shakur, unaware that all of this is the hallmark of someone making something up, speaking from a script—telling a story, as it were……

Funny Spoof On Jussie Smollett Rehearsing Attack (LOL)

Published by Papa Giorgio

(CAUTION, LANGUAGE WARNING)

IDRISS-TV has #GayTupac as a hashtag. In case you don’t know that he said this (partly in jest), here it is. Enjoy this funny bit on Smollett’s rehearsal

FRONT PAGE MAGAZINE has a great article summing up the issue:

Manqué cineaste Simon Lynxx needs to raise money for his film, so he pays two black friends to mug elderly movie mogul Hermann Wolff, so Lynxx can rescue him and get cash out of gratitude. That’s from Take Five, a D. Keith Mano novel released in 1982, the year actor Jussie Smollett was born.

Nearly four decades later, Smollett is an actor in the Fox series Empire, centered on hip-hop artist Lucious Lyon, CEO of Empire Entertainment. In real life, not on the show, Smollett sends a threatening letter to himself showing a noose, then pays two black friends to attack him in Chicago, which they proclaim is “MAGA country!”

The pair beat Smollett and string a rope around his neck while yelling racist and homophobic slurs. Smollett somehow escapes unscathed. The tale soon unraveled, and as Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson put it, Jussie Smollett “paid $3,500 to stage this attack…

[WITH A CHECK!]

…The stunt was orchestrated by Smollett because he was dissatisfied with his salary,” reportedly more than $1 million per year before taxes.

Smollett paid the $3,500 to Abel Osundairo, his personal trainer, and Ola Osundairo, a former extra on Empire. Police have the check and a video shows the pair buying the masks. The story was less credible than Al Sharpton’s Tawana Brawley hoax, but Smollett cast himself as a Trump victim. So right from the start leftist Democrats were all in.

“The vicious attack on actor Jussie Smollett was an attempted modern-day lynching,” proclaimed Cory Booker. “I’m glad he’s safe.” In similar style, fellow presidential candidate Kamala Harris tagged the attack a “modern day lynching.”  Green New Dealer Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who believe walls are immoral, called it a “racist, homophobic attack.” The media echo chamber also chimed in.

On February 14 Robin Roberts interviewed Smollett on “Good Morning America.” Smollett contended he was a victim and did not orchestrate the alleged attack. According to Roberts, “It’s a setback for race relations, homophobia, MAGA supporters. I cannot think of another case where there is this anger on so many sides and you can understand why there would be.”

Yet as the story unraveled, Smollett’s siblings blamed the media……….

Jussie Smollett Brutally Attacked By Trump Supporters (UPDATED)

Published by Papa Giorgio

TMZ has this:

‘Empire’ Star Jussie Smollett Brutally Attacked By Anti-Gay Trump Supporters Who Put Noose Around His Neck:

mpire star Jussie Smollett is the victim of an apparent hate crime in Chicago. The star of television show “Empire” was reportedly beaten overnight by two men who yelled “This is MAGA country,” reports TMZ.

They then put a noose around his neck, according to police, who described the attack as a “racially-charged assault and battery.”

According to the TMZ report, “Sources directly connected to Jussie tell TMZ, the actor arrived in Chicago from New York late Monday, and at around 2 AM he was hungry and went to a Subway. We’re told when he walked out, someone yelled, ‘Aren’t you that f***ot ‘Empire’ n*****?’”

The reports states that both the men were white and wearing ski masks and attacked the actor. “Jussie as he fought back, but they beat him badly and fractured a rib. They put a rope around his neck, poured bleach on him and as they left they yelled, ‘This is MAGA country,’” TMZ reported…..

This story sounds fantastical. Here is some funny, over-the-top, commentary by the HODGE-TWINS showing this obviously concocted story:

CLICK EACH TO JUMP TO MEDIA