With all of the hoax "hate crimes" and #MeToo shakedowns, a buddy of mine said he wants to get in on the action. He was going to claim to be sexually harassed/hate-crimed at work and, when asked by whom, he planned to respond, "By anyone who will settle."
He's onto something. An increasing number of claims are made with financial or political motivation (those against Supreme Court Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas, for example). The problem is, when so many false claims are made, the important and real crimes are diminished. Ask the Chicago kids killed while 25 detectives were otherwise occupied with the Jussie Smollett case, hunting down those white nationalists who gave him noogies and called him names.
Ron HartIn the case of the hoax "hate crime" "Empire" star Smollett tried to pull off, he had both of the aforementioned motivations. Money: he wanted a higher salary than $125,000 per episode from Fox. And he could play the victim, the most coveted role for Democrats and Hollywood. The bonus? His lies would make him a hero to the left and would hurt Donald Trump.
What we learned in this foreseeable farce (I predicted it in a column when it was first reported and got a lot of pushback) is that the media and their left-wing brethren will believe anything you say if it aligns with their political worldview.
From the start, the Smollett story seemed like BS to me. At 2 a.m., two white guys recognize Jussie in a Subway sandwich shop. They happen to have MAGA caps on in Chicago's hip section of town in 10-below zero weather. And they happen to be carrying bleach and the noose that all Trump supporters carry with them, as you know.
Then these two guys decide to even some score with a guy they don't know. It was fishy from the start. In Chicago, not that much planning goes into anything. Chicagoans do not put nooses over necks, call names and declare their political beliefs ("This is MAGA Country" - even though Chicago votes 95 percent Democratic). In Chicago, they handle beefs like men, with drive-by shootings that go unsolved.
So, in Chicago, Smollett filed a false police report, and two Nigerian brothers were initially arrested for beating him up. Now they both could be charged with impersonating police officers.
The new PC norm in America is that if you are a woman or minority and you claim to be the victim of a crime - even though there is scant or no evidence - you must be believed. If someone does not believe you, that person hates women and/or is racist. Anyone who doubted Christine Blasey-Ford was guilty of misogyny when he or she asked for evidence.
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The left knows it can do this now because once someone is accused and the media do not like you (i.e., you're a Republican), they have successfully ruined your reputation. Rush Limbaugh calls the media the "drive-by media," because, like the gangs in Chicago, they shoot ya quick and run away with no responsibility.
The predictable martyrdom that followed Jussie Smollett's charges is why he did it. The most recent examples of media firestorms are the Brett Kavanaugh hearings on sexual misconduct allegations, the Covington Catholic High School students smeared over falsehoods, and now the Smollett "hate crime" hoax. All are based on well-known and predictable outcomes for those who make this stuff up, and all are based in the presupposition that the U.S. is fundamentally bigoted.
The good news is that we are not. Apparently, the demand by the media and the left for racist/sexist/homophobic actions far exceeds the supply. When there is no supply, something must be manufactured. Felony charges for filing false police reports should be the norm.
Will any of those stories ever really have a "happy ending"? In Hollywood now, just being accused scares men more than anything. The next James Bond movie puts him in the most unpredictable peril of the movie franchise: He is called into British Intelligence's Human Resources Department to discuss something they heard happened 10 years ago.
Contact Ron Hart, a syndicated op-ed humorist, at Ron@RonaldHart.com or @Ronald-Hart on Twitter.