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Posts Tagged ‘Jussie Smollett’

Special Prosecutor: Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx Lied To The Public In Smollett Case | ZeroHedge

Posted by M. C. on December 23, 2021

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/special-prosecutor-cook-county-states-attorney-kim-foxx-lied-public-smollett-case

by Tyler DurdenThursday, Dec 23, 2021 – 04:44 AM

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

Cook County special prosecutor Dan Webb has issued his report on the Jussie Smollett scandal with scathing findings of misconduct by the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office. The findings include a determination that Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx lied to the public about her communications and role in the scandal. Despite the highly improper handling of the case (including the dropping of the original charges against Smollett), Chicago voters still reelected Foxx who has an appalling record in office. For a native Chicagoan, it is an all-too-familiar pattern of corrupt or incompetent elected officials continuing in office. The question, however, is whether Foxx will face any bar action for allegedly lying to the public about the handling of the case.

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Tips on Fake News for Twitter’s New CEO – Taki’s Magazine – Taki’s Magazine

Posted by M. C. on December 3, 2021

Hey! That reminds me — the Jussie Smollett trial kicks off this week!

https://www.takimag.com/article/tips-on-fake-news-for-twitters-new-ceo/print

Ann Coulter

Twitter announced this week that Parag Agrawal will be the social media giant’s new CEO. (This is an incredible achievement for the Indian-born Agrawal, given that the selection process heavily favored people born in India.) He has a difficult job ahead of him, trying to maintain the site’s reputation for fast-paced, free-ranging commentary, while also keeping the platform free of dangerous misinformation.

Agrawal is probably aware of the mounds — and I mean mounds — of irrefutable SCIENTIFIC PROOF that conservatives are gullible paranoids, constantly falling for misinformation and hoaxes.

For example, consider these 100% objective academic studies: “All this blithering idiocy, about something that was an obvious hoax from day one, was posted on the very social media site that Agrawal is about to oversee.”

Conservatives More Likely To Believe False News, New Study Finds — Maggie Fox, CNN, June 2, 2021

Return of the Paranoid Style: Fake News Is Fooling More Conservatives Than Liberals. Why? — The Economist, June 3, 2020

Conservatives’ Susceptibility to Political Misperceptions — R. Kelly Garrett and Robert M. Bond, Science Advances, June 2, 2021

On the other hand, now that I think about it, even powerful Democrats, establishment news organizations and influential celebrities have been known to err when evaluating the news.

Hey! That reminds me — the Jussie Smollett trial kicks off this week! (It’s a good thing I remembered that while writing this column.)

Smollett, you will recall, is the half-black, half-Jewish gay actor formerly of the Fox TV show “Empire” who claimed, back in January 2019, that he left his Chicago apartment at 2 a.m. in the middle of a polar vortex to get a sandwich, whereupon he was viciously set upon by two white guys shouting racist and homophobic slurs. (Despite being racist, homophobic white guys, they were huge fans of “Empire,” recognizing Smollett immediately.)

They beat him about the face, put a noose around his neck and doused him with a “chemical substance.” (Yes, as luck would have it, the white guys happened to be carrying a noose and chemical agents. Duh. It was a polar vortex.)

For extra bonus authenticity, Smollett said his assailants yelled, “This is MAGA country!” Did I mention this was in Chicago? (Trump: 12.4% of the 2016 vote.)

Even a skeptic would have to admit, Smollett’s account had the ring of truth. When you add (to an already highly believable story) the fact that there have been dozens of “noose incidents” over the past few decades, and every single one of them, without exception, turned out to be a hoax, his narrative only becomes more convincing!

To leap ahead to the conclusion, the Chicago Police Department spent 3,000 man-hours carefully examining surveillance tapes of the neighborhood where the incident had occurred and determined that — please sit down for this — the “attackers” turned out to be two Nigerian extras on “Empire.” (That does explain how they were able to recognize him.) After their arrests, they admitted that Smollett had paid them $3,500 to stage the attack.

Liberals, those calm, dispassionate seekers after truth — not conservative dolts, with their “paranoid style” and “susceptibility” to “false news” — reacted to Smollett’s alleged attack with the cool detachment we have come to expect from them.

“What happened today to @JussieSmollett must never be tolerated in this country. We must stand up and demand that we no longer give this hate safe harbor; that homophobia and racism have no place on our streets or in our hearts. We are with you, Jussie.” — Joe Biden |

“@JussieSmollett is one of the kindest, most gentle human beings I know … This was an attempted modern-day lynching. No one should have to fear for their life because of their sexuality or color of their skin. We must confront this hate.” — then-Sen. Kamala Harris

“The racist, homophobic attack … is an affront to our humanity. No one should be attacked for who they are or whom they love. I pray that Jussie has a speedy recovery & that justice is served. May we all commit to ending this hate once & for all.” — Rep. Nancy Pelosi

“This is a sickening and outrageous attack, and horribly, it’s the latest of too many hate crimes against LGBTQ people and people of color. We are all responsible for condemning this behavior and every person who enables or normalizes it. Praying for Jussie and his family.” — Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand

“There is no such thing as ‘racially charged.’ This attack was not ‘possibly’ homophobic. It was a racist and homophobic attack. If you don’t like what is happening to our country, then work to change it. It is no one’s job to water down or sugar-coat the rise of hate crimes.” — Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

“Regarding the heinous attack on @JussieSmollett, yet another reminder that Trump’s ascendance and the resulting climate of hate has meant that lives have been increasingly at stake since 2015. Smollett could have been killed by those thugs screaming MAGA. Let that sink in.” — Karen Attiah, Washington Post editor

“The horrific attack on Jussie Smollett has no place in a decent human loving society. Homophobia existed before Trump, but there is no question that since he has injected his hatred into the American bloodstream, we are less decent, less human, & less loving. No intolerance! No DT!” — Director Rob Reiner

“Jussie Smollett was violently attacked by two white men who poured bleach on him and put a noose around his neck. He was targeted for being black and for being gay. THIS is why we have to have zero tolerance against homophobia and racism. Jussie’s life matters.” — Actress Olivia Munn

“Heartbroken and furious reading about the attack on @JussieSmollett. I want Trump and all MAGA lunatics to burn in Hell.” — Actor Billy Eichner

All this blithering idiocy, about something that was an obvious hoax from day one, was posted on the very social media site that Agrawal is about to oversee. Nearly identical tweets from nearly identical liberals could be produced for similarly deranged takes on Nick Sandmann, Kyle Rittenhouse, Althea Bernstein, the NASCAR “noose,” the “Klansman” at Oberlin College, the “racist” bus attack in Albany, Trump supporters ripping hijabs off Muslim girls, racist graffiti at the Air Force Academy, the noose at Columbia’s Teachers College, the Duke lacrosse rape hoax, the University of Virginia gang rape hoax, the synagogue bomb threats and on and on and on.

Good luck to you, Mr. Agrawal.

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Memory Holing Morris Dees – Taki’s Magazine – Taki’s Magazine

Posted by M. C. on September 5, 2019

Yet, just a few months after all the bad publicity, there are no noticeable effects on how the wire services and The New York Times treat the SPLC as the objective authority on who are the Bad Guys you are obligated to hate.

https://www.takimag.com/article/memory-holing-morris-dees/print

by Steve Sailer

It’s widely assumed in thriller movies that if ever the truth is allowed to leak out about a powerful institution’s fundamental corruption, then its reputation must come crashing down once and for all.

But in real life, multiple disgraces can have negligible impact on an organization’s reputation in the prestige press as long as it continues to serve its function in furthering The Narrative.

I notice that among intelligent but naive young people of a scientific bent, there is a recurrent assumption that once the facts get out, then everything will change. If the 1887 Michelson-Morley experiment about the speed of light turns out negative, then the Newtonian model is shattered and eventually there must be a paradigm shift to Einsteinian relativity.

But that’s not the way it works in public affairs, where control of The Megaphone is what matters because most people can’t remember much. You have to repeat the facts over and over and over to have any chance of ever moving the needle.

For example, since the 1990s close observers of the Southern Poverty Law Center, one of America’s most profitable nonprofits (endowment in fiscal year 2018 was $471,000,000, up from $319,300,000 just two years earlier), have recognized that it is America’s most lucrative hate organization.

The SPLC’s legendary founder Morris Dees (currently on his sixth wife) is basically a sleazy Southern TV preacher type, but one who long ago figured out that poor Southern Baptists had less money to send him than rich Northern liberals. This junk-mail genius realized he could monetize the regional, ethnic, and class hatreds directed against his own people.

But isn’t it a little crass to whip up hatred of poor white Southerners among rich white Northerners? Morris had the perfect answer: He’s not the hater; it’s the people he hates who deserved to be hated because they are the haters.

This logic, such as it is, proved utterly convincing to the mainstream media, who anointed the SPLC as the grand arbiter of whom to hate. As the satirical Babylon Bee reported in 2018:

Southern Poverty Law Center Adds Itself To List Of Hate Groups

…After the announcement, major media outlets accepted the SPLC’s new distinction without question, but immediately ran into a catch-22—how to malign the newly-anointed hate group without citing the newly-anointed hate group. At publishing time, the press was still unsure how to deal with the paradox.

The SPLC suffered a disastrous March 2019 with three consecutive scandals exposing the SPLC, seemingly once and for all, as a clownishly transparent fund-raising operation that whips up hate for cash.

Yet, just a few months after all the bad publicity, there are no noticeable effects on how the wire services and The New York Times treat the SPLC as the objective authority on who are the Bad Guys you are obligated to hate. They simply assume most people won’t remember that the SPLC humiliated itself last March.

As you may recall, however, back in mid-March SPLC president Richard Cohen fired Dees for unspecified reasons, but which were rumored to be racism and sexism.

Cohen announced that Michelle Obama’s chief of staff Tina Tchen had been engaged to sniff out any remaining unwokeness in the organization.

But Cohen was soon out the door as well.

And within another week it turned out that it was Tchen who had made the phone call to Chicago DA Kim Foxx to tell her to let hate-hoaxing actor Jussie Smollett walk.

To have your founder disgraced could be seen as a misfortune, but to have your founder, CEO, and designated savior all shamed in two weeks bespeaks of venality.

You might think that these events would leave the SPLC permanently tarred with adjectives such as “scandal-plagued” or at least “controversial.”

But no, a few months later, it’s as if the SPLC has a spotless history, at least judging from all twelve New York Times articles published in August that cite the SPLC.

Here are the dozen:…

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Southern Poverty Law Center Says You’re Part of a ‘Hate ...

 

 

 

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The Great Awokening Conspiracy Theory – Taki’s Magazine – Taki’s Magazine

Posted by M. C. on June 14, 2019

https://www.takimag.com/article/the-great-awokening-conspiracy-theory/print

by Steve Sailer

What accounts for The Great Awokening that began in roughly 2013? Why did vast numbers of white Democrats suddenly subscribe to theories that only Grievance Studies majors took seriously before?

Over the past few weeks, two academics working separately, Zach Goldberg and David Rozado, have documented how extremist The New York Times, once known as The Gray Lady for its decorum, became during Obama’s second term…

Goldberg and Rozado are more or less extending to a much larger scale the methodology I invented for my 2018 Taki’s Magazine column “The Emmett Till Effect.” I pointed out that you could graph The New York Times’ use of politically tendentious terms to measure how hard the propaganda machine was pushing particular themes.

For example, Emmett Till was a black teenager murdered in the South in 1955 by whites, who were acquitted due to their white privilege. In 1980, the Times didn’t see any reason to mention Till, his having been dead for 25 years, whereas in 1990 his name came up twice, and in 2000 four times. But by 2017, a full 62 years after his tragic death, the name “Emmett Till” was referenced 72 times.

This winter, for example, the Times responded to the embarrassing Jussie Smollett hate hoax by cranking up the Emmett Till hubbub once again.

I’ve long argued that the chief problem of media bias is not “fake news,” but instead how The Establishment prioritizes what is news and what isn’t, what is emphasized in The Narrative and what is skimmed over. There’s an endless abundance of events in this world, so what makes the headlines versus what is relegated to the police blotter are politically important decisions.

To people who succumb to The New York Times’ worldview, Emmett Till is always late-breaking news.

Why? Because of course you hear about Emmett Till all the time! That’s because white privilege is the great issue of the current year.

And why is white privilege our central mania? Because of Emmett Till! Haven’t you ever heard of him?

It’s a seamless web of circular logic…

For example, according to Rozado’s new Media Analytics website, which graphs how often a word appeared in the Times from 1970 to 2017, the word “trump” only began to increase in 2015, before shooting up to insane levels by 2017.

In contrast, the recent low point for usage of the word “racism” was that innocent year of 2011. But then, according to Rozado, the NYT began to use “racism” about 20 percent more often in each year from 2012 through 2014, followed by huge jumps in 2015 and 2016. By 2015, “racism” as a percentage of the total words printed in The New York Times was appearing three times as often as in 2011.

Was racism really three times as bad in 2015 as in 2011? Of course not. The New York Times had merely decided to honk the racism horn three times as loudly.

Why?

That’s a big question. I can think of quite a few possible answers, but I don’t know which one was most important…

In his new Tablet article, “America’s White Saviors,” Goldberg points the finger at the rise of social media:

Thus, by all indications, the first half of this decade appears to have been a watershed for white liberal racial consciousness. The picture that emerges from the various points of data is one in which white liberals and social media created a kind of outrage feedback loop. White liberals started spending ever increasing shares of their time in a medium—social media and internet news sites—at the same moment that, for multiple reasons, that medium produced a higher volume of race-related moral outrage stories relative to other forms of journalism.

But was lowly social media the driving force? Or was it that the old prestige media, such as The New York Times, was using its Megaphone to promote the dumbest ideas on social media? For example, the Trayvon and Ferguson fiascos were due to The Establishment taking Black Twitter seriously.

Now, you know and I know that you can’t trust Black Twitter to get a story straight. But has The New York Times learned that lesson yet? If you were an NYT editor, would you dare point out that excited black people on Twitter have an unfortunate record of getting stories disastrously wrong? Or is that just laying your neck on the chopping block for your ambitious underlings?

Another possibility that has been mooted is that the birth of wokeness, which I recall as beginning in early 2012 with Obama declaring Trayvon to look like the son he never had (although in reality the triracial George Zimmerman looked far more like the son Obama might have had with his half-white/half-Asian girlfriend Sheila Miyoshi Jager) was a devious response to Occupy Wall Street in late 2011…

For anybody interested in researching trending fads among Woke Capital, Davos generates vast numbers of web pages annually. But just don’t ask me to read through them. One look at Davos’ annual themes, such as 2013’s “resilient dynamism” (or perhaps “dynamic resilience,” I forget), and my eyes glaze over.

So I shall leave that inquiry to scholars more resilient and/or dynamic than me.

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'Welcome to 'All Sides of the Issues.' Here's our panel of commentators -- a communist, a socialist, a liberal, and a progressive....'

 

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Jussie Smollett’s ‘Community Service’: 18 Hours with Jesse Jackson’s Organization

Posted by M. C. on March 27, 2019

A picture worth a thousand words.

https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2019/03/26/jussie-smollett-community-service-18-hours-with-jesse-jackson/

by Joel B. Pollak

Jesse Jackson (Scott Olson / Getty)
JOEL B. POLLAK

Cook County, Illinois, prosecutors dropped 16 felony charges against left-wing Hollywood actor Jussie Smollett on Tuesday based on his prior record of community service.

That record reportedly consisted of 18 hours’ volunteering for Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH Coalition on Saturday and Monday…

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Hillary Furious - Thousands Send Cigars to Her Campaign ...

 

 

 

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Hate Crime Hoaxes – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on February 27, 2019

Here’s the good news about the racial hoaxes on the nation’s college campuses: Left-wing college students have a difficult time finding the actual racism they claim permeates college campuses. Thus, they have to invent it.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2019/02/walter-e-williams/hate-crime-hoaxes-the-bad-and-the-good/

By

…Racial hoaxes have been a major part of the leftist agenda going back decades. In 1987, the Rev. Al Sharpton created the Tawana Brawley hoax, wherein four white men were falsely accused of rape. For perpetrating the hoax, Sharpton was rewarded by receiving national recognition, millions of dollars and a career as a television/radio talk show host, and he ran for president in 2004. He also received 82 invitations to advise Barack Obama’s White House on matters of race.

Most of the nation’s racial hoaxes take place on college campuses. Recall the 2006 Duke lacrosse rape case, in which three affluent white male Duke students were falsely accused of raping a black female stripper. Police exposed Bowling Green State University student Eleesha Long as a liar after she complained about being attacked by Trump supporters the day after his election. At Goucher College in Maryland, scrawlings depicted swastikas and also spelled out the N-word and the names of four black students — including the perpetrator. The Maryland police found out that the perp was a 21-year-old black lacrosse player seeking victimhood. Nonetheless, the incident led to protests, demands for designated safe spaces and demands that incoming freshmen and transfers be required to take a “cultural competency” course… Read the rest of this entry »

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