By now everyone who isn’t a hardcore leftist has at least given some thought to “why did so many people jump all over this story and blow any pretense of objectivity so quickly and overwhelmingly”? How did so many word processors and teleprompters suddenly lose the ability to print “alleged” or “allegedly”? But I think there’s another aspect of L’affair de Smollett that is also interesting. Another layer of the onion, so to speak.
The other aspect is the overblown nature of the reporting. Let’s say for the sake of argument that the absurd (or is preposterous more appropriate?) story as related by Smollett was true – he was assaulted at 2 AM by two men who roughed him up, shouted “this is MAGA country”, poured some bleach on him and draped a piece of clothesline around his neck.
Overblown aspect # 1 – if all the above were true we still don’t know “WHY”. This could be a false flag by Trump haters (there are far more of these than incidences where anyone committed an act of violence associated with support of President Trump). Or it could be another actor who expected to get a bigger role if Smollett were temporarily laid up. Or someone with an axe to grind against poor Smollett but wanted to cover their tracks – don’t yell “stay away from by boyfriend” when you bash him. Or quite a few other motives. But the media never hesitated to assume it must be because of all the hatred President Trump has encouraged.
Overblown aspect #2 – what does this say about America? Whether the assailants hated gays or anyone who bashes President Trump, it’s not a big deal from a national psyche perspective. In a country of 330 million people if 2 people act out violently we don’t have much of a trend. The left wing media (but I repeat myself) didn’t do much thinking about the big picture when a Bernie Sanders campaign worker tried to kill dozens of Republicans. Or when a Democrat tried to murder dozens of people at the Family Research Council. But 2 guys act up on one night, we need one of those national conversation thingies ASAP.
Overblown aspect # 3 – Smollett wasn’t even hurt much. Again, assuming things went down exactly as he said, he wasn’t killed, raped, kidnapped, tortured, didn’t spend even one night in hospital. He walked back to his apartment with his freaking sandwich and didn’t ask for assistance for 30 minutes (working from memory here, so if I got that wrong please cut me a little slack). It’s not OK for anyone to be assaulted, even if it’s a slap in the face, but the left wing media acted like this poor bastard was going to be in a wheelchair for life.
Overblown aspect #4 – in addition to overplaying the physical trauma, the left wing media were wetting themselves over how poor Smollett would ever recover emotionally. Robin Roberts, a member of the Democrat steno pool from ABC, went to interview poor Smollett. At one point she asked him (again from memory, so I might not get every word right) “if they aren’t caught how are you going to heal?” Seriously? There are families in Chicago who have lost young children to gang shootings this year. There are people who just got a horrible diagnosis from a doctor. “How are you going to heal”? Talk about playing up a stereotype about people who are pathetically emotionally fragile (I’m referring to thespians, so if you jumped the gun and assumed something else, well, you go have a long think about yourself).
In summary your Honor, as unprofessional and incompetent as the left wing media were in swallowing every absurd detail as true, they were perhaps worse in overblowing the physical & emotional trauma and trying to make this into a national Rorschach test. I rest my case.