The Jussie Smollett claim of a racial and homophobic attack in late January in Chicago by two white men wearing MAGA hats is falling apart.
The story was suspicious from the start. While not impossible, it was improbable that two white guys were running around Chicago in the middle of the night during a sub-zero Polar Vortex wearing MAGA hats while carrying bleach and a noose and just happened to find a high-profile gay black actor to attack.
Democrat politicians ran with the story as a cudgel against Trump and Trump supporters.
Yet even more fervor was shown by the mainstream and entertainment media, who fell all over each other to amplify Smollett’s claims without critical analysis. The media out-hustled the politicians on this story to tell an anti-Trump narrative smearing Trump supporters, particularly those who wear MAGA hats, as racist, homophobic and violent.
Non-liberal media is pointing the finger at the media role. As Sean Davis noted:
News media hopped from the laughable Steele dossier, to CNN’s bogus Don Jr. emails scoop, to BuzzFeed’s bogus Michael Cohen scoop, to the vile Covington smears, to the obvious Jussie Smollett hoax, and yet journos wonder why people say “Learn to code” when they finally get fired.
While the current specific hoaxes and accusations are new, the media tactic is not.
I covered the media mistreatment of the Tea Party starting in 2009, and the same pattern took hold: An act or alleged act of violence immediately was blamed on Tea Party supporters in the absence of actual evidence that the alleged perpetrator was a Tea Party supporter, and in many cases where there was evidence the alleged perpetrator was liberal or leftist.
It all was for the purpose of portraying Tea Party supporters specifically and the “right-wing” more generally as “eliminationist,” people who were prone to political violence:
It started with Bill Sparkman, the part-time Census worker who went missing and then was found dead, setting off an avalanche of mainstream media and left-blogosphere accusations that he was the victim of anti-government “right-wing” hate. It turned out that Sparkman killed himself, but there were few if any apologies coming.The Sparkman accusations were based on nothing more than a desire to demonize the newly formed and rapidly growing Tea Party movement as terrorists and un-American. It was as if they were hoping for an act of Tea Party violence.
The false eliminationist narrative directed at the Tea Party went on for years, aided and abetted by Democrat operative groups like Think Progress and by establishment Republicans who hated the Tea Party.
The prolonged — to this day — attempt to blame Sarah Palin for the shooting of Gabby Giffords by Jared Loughner was one of the worst examples, but just one of many that we covered.
In each of these cases, when the hoax or false narrative was exposed, the mainstream media no longer was around, they had moved on, leaving the false perception that Tea Party supporters were dangerous and violent.
Nothing has changed, other than the names and faces. The media still plays the role of creating false narratives that ordinary law-abiding Americans who oppose liberals are dangerous and prone to violence.
Watch how they will run from their complicity in the Jussie Smollett story, how they will try to blame Smollett and society at large for their own journalistic malfeasance and political bias.
[Featured Image: Rachel Maddow Show, September 2009, via Crooks and Liars]
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