Chicago Police And Media Treating Jussie Smollet's Story Like The Lies of a Child

I can’t recall a large crime story where there was a bigger gap between what the police and media are saying publicly, and what they expressing behind the scenes, than the saga involving the recent alleged hate crime against actor Jussie Smollett. 

Similarly, there may not be a story where you can tell more by what has not happened, in comparison to what actually has occurred. 

The current public stance of the Chicago police is that earlier this month, at 2 a.m. on a very cold Chicago night, Smollett was the victim of what appears to be a heinous hate crime where he was physically attacked by two men, and humiliated due to his race, homosexuality, and possibly his opposition to President Donald Trump. 

The Chicago media, in official reports, has largely treated that narrative as legitimate, while chronicling the complete lack of suspects and corroborating evidence as more of a frustration than any indication that something else might be going on here. 

Behind the scenes, however, based on conversations I have had with multiple people covering the story, there is a radically different take on what really did happen to Smollett. 

In short, there is near unanimity among police sources that Smollett’s story is very likely not true. And that even the media outlets still regurgitating the current “party line” don’t really believe it. 

In my experience, most people are very bad at reading the tea leaves in these types of situations, and it often leads to very inaccurate interpretations of what is really going on. 

This case has several important elements which, if you know what to look for, make evaluating the actions of the police and news media really rather easy. 

The first thing you need to understand about this situation is that, because of Smollett’s persona and the nature of his allegation, no one in law enforcement or the news media wants any part of publicly questioning his story. 

Everyone knows that if they make any sort of negative implication against a black, gay, liberal, celebrity, victim of a horrible hate crime, that they will be roundly and severely attacked, regardless of whether they turn out to be correct. 

As a conservative, I look at this as his Political Correctness Force Field. Smollett’s protection here is literally about as strong as it gets, especially in Chicago, a city that has a large black population and is extremely liberal. 

So, in this hyper-sensitive media environment, any sort of deviation from the accepted storyline by the police or the news media, much like if your seven-year-old kid is showing subtle signs they no longer believe in Santa Claus, must be given exponentially greater significance than it normally would. 

Here, both the police and news media in Chicago have provided plenty of those types of veiled indications, both publicly and privately. 

Among other things, the police have made it very clear they have not yet found any proof of an attack, despite having almost all of Smollett’s movements on surveillance video. 

They have disclosed that Smollett would not give over his cell phone to verify his timeline of events. They even published photos of “persons of interest” that they had to know were going to be universally mocked for being obviously irrelevant.

GO READ THE WHOLE THING.