Former "Empire" actor Jussie Smollett is found guilty of five felony charges for lying about a fake hate crime https://t.co/MXCUtkuDhZ
— CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) December 9, 2021
Jaybird
Jaybird is Birdmojo on Xbox Live and Jaybirdmojo on Playstation's network. He's been playing consoles since the Atari 2600 and it was Zork that taught him how to touch-type. If you've got a song for Wednesday, a commercial for Saturday, a recommendation for Tuesday, an essay for Monday, or, heck, just a handful a questions, fire off an email to AskJaybird-at-gmail.com
We have been experiencing some system resource issues. We believe the problem may be resolved, but if it is not please bear with us.
on Open Mic for the week of 4/15/2024Most of the crackdowns are against things that aren't speech. As they should be. We need to get away…
on Open Mic for the week of 4/15/2024That is not the dictionary definition of tantrum. A tantrum is "an uncontrolled outburst of anger an… on Open Mic for the week of 4/15/2024Definition of "Tantrum" : an uncontrolled outburst of anger and frustration His prescribed solution…
on Planning The Annual Trip Around The WorldHaving been to Iceland in the current year, I can't imagine what it might have looked like back then…
on Open Mic for the week of 4/15/2024Holy buckets! A successful union drive in the south?
on Weekend Plans Post: The Aftermath of Catching UpHeh, I don't really keep track of directors... but looking at IMDB I liked Sherlock and Man from UNC… on Open Mic for the week of 4/15/2024Update about yesterday's missile attack on Iran: There have been no missile attack on Iran tonight,… on Weekend Plans Post: The Aftermath of Catching UpWe always keep out two hoodies and two sets of fuzzy pajamas per person. We have a throw blanket for…
on Weekend Plans Post: The Aftermath of Catching UpI find that I’m much less extroverted now than I used to be... Kept granddaughter #3 on Wednesday wh…
on Weekend Plans Post: The Aftermath of Catching UpI'm skeptical of the reviews. It's solidly fresh on RT but even the good ones from the top critics s…
On the Way To The Dressing Room After The Game
April 20, 2024
Planning The Annual Trip Around The World
April 19, 2024
April 18, 2024
April 17, 2024
on Weekend Plans Post: The Aftermath of Catching Up on Weekend Plans Post: The Aftermath of Catching Up on Weekend Plans Post: The Aftermath of Catching Up on Weekend Plans Post: The Aftermath of Catching Up on Open Mic for the week of 4/15/2024 on Open Mic for the week of 4/15/2024
on Open Mic for the week of 4/15/2024
on Weekend Plans Post: The Aftermath of Catching Up
on Open Mic for the week of 4/15/2024 on Open Mic for the week of 4/15/2024 on Open Mic for the week of 4/15/2024 on Open Mic for the week of 4/15/2024 on Open Mic for the week of 4/15/2024 on Open Mic for the week of 4/15/2024
on Open Mic for the week of 4/15/2024
Good. Once it became clear he did this to himself, he lost any credibility he had much less sympathy.Report
Here’s where we talked about this case in February 2019.
Here’s March 2019.
I forgot that the DA originally dropped charges against Smollett claiming “Alternative Prosecution”.Report
Black Lives Matter released a statement that is getting a lot of criticism online:
Report
So facts don’t matter, only the narrative and backing our guy is important.Report
They are saying the “facts” as presented by CPD and the Prosecution are not to be trusted in this case because of a long history of CPD and other police agencies not actually sharing the facts. They do have a point.Report
BLM merrily continues on their way to utter irrelevance. What a pity. For such a huge movement to have achieved so very little is quite depressing. But at least it spurred some employment for a modest number of highly educated minorities.Report
How did you vote?
I mean, in the election where the guys who own the BLM website were elected to the Ruling Council of Negroes.Report
Nope, BLM is decentralized similar to how Occupy Wall Street was decentralized. That means that one can, as you are, dismiss any dissonant elements as unrepresentative of the movement as a whole. It also means that one can, as conservatives do, magnify dissonant elements as representative of the movement as a whole. On balance the latter activity is more effective than the former.Report
I’m not the first to note how white people, of all political persuasions, tend to latch onto one black person as King Of The Negroes and use them to either valorize or villainous the entire race.
In this instance Smollett is the Ambassador for Negrotania and his case justifies why racism is really just a big scam.
In conclusion liberals should do some soul searching.Report
Smollett is an obvious self-seeking fraud/idiot and only represents himself.
Dr. Melina Abdullah (author of that statement), i.e. the Director of BLM Grassroots and Co-Founder of BLM Los Angeles, is a different story.
For that matter blacklivesmatter.com is the first link if you google “black lives matter” and is clearly trying to be the organizational backbone and “central” authority to the degree BLM has such a thing.
Neither of them represent all blacks, but the Director of BLM Grassroots is clearly trying to represent BLM.Report
Eh, I mean sure Conservatives do that (and as usual they should probably be ignored on this subject) but outside the right-o-sphere no one was holding up Smollett as a paragon of BLM and, thankfully, everyone with any sense started squinting pretty hard at Smolletts’ story after the cracks rapidly started appearing. I think hard lessons were, thankfully, learned after the Rolling Stone/Sabrina Erdely debacle.Report
I remember the very earliest days where activists would show up at brunch and ask everybody for a minute of silence. This was… 2015ish?
I remembered thinking “going up against the brunch crowd? That ain’t gonna work.”
Say what you will about Jussie’s event, it allowed the brunch crowd to fully participate while feeling good about it instead of being asked to feel bad about their own participation.Report
I, uh, don’t think I get what you’re saying; nor what your point is.Report
Jussie’s event allowed all sorts of people to fully participate in how much Black Lives Matter.
I mean, compare to the whole brunch interruptions.
Jussie allowed *EVERYBODY* to participate in the BLM movement and take a stand against White Supremacy.
All that to say: They’re not making themselves more irrelevant. They’re making themselves more welcoming.Report
I don’t remember the brunch thing, nor do I think that many people championed Jussie after the first month or so. There have been some ritual statements made along the way, but nobody was looking to peg their reputation to Smollett’s story.Report
It was somewhat scandalous back in 2015. You know, the whole “why are you yelling at us? We’re the good guys!” thing that the brunch crowd likes to feel.
It’s not about pegging their rep to his story… it’s about taking his story as an opportunity to take it to the White Supremacists. Which, seriously, it totally was.Report
Your link says the brunch issue was over police killings; not Smollett’s fabulous adventure. He’s not even mentioned.Report
The link was from 2015. Was Empire even on in 2015? (Season one, I guess… checking IMDB.)
When BLM was in its infancy, it took its message directly to the Brunch crowd. This was *EXCEPTIONALLY* confrontational.
Since then, BLM has learned many things.
First of which is that the brunch crowd is a strong, strong group of allies*.
It just requires stuff like Jussie Smollett rather than stuff like die-ins.
Jussie is an example of BLM being *INCLUSIVE*.Report
I mean, even now. Even given this verdict.
This allows more people to come in and say “well, you know, whether or not Jussie faked it, the important thing is how real the thing he was faking actually *IS*.”
(I will retract this take if the BLM statement is retracted. “We were hacked by White Supremacists” or the like.)Report
The official statement from leader of one of the two large BLM organizational groups is presumably representational on where their heads are.
So there is no “whether or not”, he clearly didn’t fake it.Report
OK, I guess I’m also lost as to the point you’re making.Report
The same point as every night, Pinky.
To Try and Own The Libs! Report
A presumption of liberty would mean that people begin by owning themselves.
Whether they can sell themselves is up for debate. (Though many certainly seem to try.)Report
That and he really hates brunch for some reason.Report
Is brunch something you eat, or is it a metaphor here? I can understand the latter; metaphors give me indigestion.Report
I’m not the one to ask.Report
I’m mostly referring to the “brunch crowd”.
If you don’t like the WaPo article discussing the phenomenon of interrupting brunch (and upsetting th brunch crowd thereby), here’s Vox.Report
I hate to say it, Jay me lad, but I must join Pinky in a bipartisan expression of incomprehension.Report
Okay. I’ll try to make explicit.
When BLM started, like at the very beginning, they interrupted diners enjoying meals in various restaurants asking for stuff like a moment of silence while they read the names of people killed by the police or doing a die-in or something like that.
The liberal response was indignation. Something to the effect of “why are you making *ME* feel guilty? I’m one of the good guys!”
This created tension between the good liberal people and the even better BLM people and there was a lot of incredulous liberal types (“the brunch crowd”, as I’d put it) that didn’t like the criticism.
I am comparing that to the Jussie Smollett thing that allowed the brunch crowd to stand up with one voice and say “We Support Jussie“.
There was no tension anymore. The Jussie Smollett incident allowed them to stand together, arm in arm.
Part of the problem, however, is brought up by Dave Chappelle in his 2019 comedy special Sticks and Stones where he discussed why the Black community was not as supportive of Jussie as the LGBTQQIP2SAA community would have liked.
(cw: racial slurs, homophobic slurs, general insensitivity)
My argument is that BLM has figured out how to bring the brunch crowd into the tent and allow them to be the allies that they feel like they are.
Something the old “die-in” days didn’t have going on.Report
Hmmm well I suppose I get your point even though I don’t agree with it since, by and large, the number of people expression unreserved belief in Smollett is, utterly tiny. The only examples I’ve seen are elements of the BLM crowd, not the “Brunch” crowd.Report
I’ll try to dig up a better example for you:
I only have screenshots of Kamala Harris’s tweet where she called it an attempted lynching.
Wikipedia also has a short section dedicated to the initial public reaction.Report
Finally, at long last, white people have found the anti George Floyd.
Instead of the Negro who irks their conscience and prods the to action, they now have Jussie Smollet, the Negro huckster who allows them to sigh with relief that was all just a sham all along.Report
Finally?
When I was a student or at least lived close to campus, there were a number of activists who IMHO staged attacks on themselves.
The most absurd was “someone” left a swastika made of feces. The group he was trying to oppose didn’t view themselves as Na.zis.
This is a standard and obvious way to bring attention to yourself and your group.Report
I’m not sure what the “sham” would be referring to.
“Racism”? “Institutional Racism”?
I’m pretty sure that George Floyd demonstrates that Institutional Racism is still very much a thing.
And, indeed, the police need to be reformed.
But if I were looking for relief from the thought that there were White Supremacists wandering the streets of Chicago in February looking for famous Subway afficionados, I think we can rest just a little bit easier.
Maybe even boggle a little bit of how much of a sociopath you’d have to be to set up a couple of friends who happened to be immigrants and make them look really, really bad.Report
They weren’t set up.
The plan wasn’t for this to happen.
He was totally sure no one would question his story. And heck, BLM still isn’t questioning it.Report
How so?
His killer was found guilty of murder. There’s an argument he should have been fired from the police a lot earlier, but that seems like a “reform” argument.Report
“How so?”
Remember how the police department defended Chauvin until the footage surfaced?
That’s how so.Report
That’s “my tribe” or something in action. The policeman’s union doesn’t care about the victim’s skin color.
If Floyd had been white they still would have tried to spin this so their guy could get off. It’s what they do.Report
Institutional Racism allows for Racism without Racists.
You don’t have to care about the skin color of the victim. You just have to not notice that the cops were called about a counterfeit $20 (hey, did that bill ever materialize? Was it ever confirmed to be a fake?) and the arrest resulted in kneeling on the guy’s neck.
And such arrests only happen in the crappy part of town.
Color has nothing to do with it.Report
A store employee called the police to report that Floyd had passed “fake bills”, was “awfully drunk”, and “not in control of himself”. We have video showing that Floyd wasn’t able to have a conversation.
IMHO we want, or should want, the police to be summoned when people that high tries to get behind the wheel of a car.
If it’s “racism” when ever a black man is killed, what should we call it when a white man is?
“Institutional Racism” seems to be a Rorschach Test and say more about the observer than the observed.
If race isn’t on your radar, then you can look at Chauvin and say that the 18 official complaints, disciplining, and reprimands are a problem.
If racism is the lens by which you view the world then the cops shouldn’t have been summoned against Floyd and Smollett must be telling the truth.Report
See, I pointed out that the George Floyd killing (a particularly egregious example of a bad apple spoiling a barrel) and you turn that into “when ever a black man is killed”. (Did that fake bill ever show up? Was it ever validated as being fake?)
“Institutional Racism” seems to be a Rorschach Test and say more about the observer than the observed.
The system is one that has a lot of rot. Did you follow the story about Chauvin’s tax issues? How many cops in the precinct would have similar going on, do you think? Those 18 official complaints, disciplining, and reprimands resulted in the department circling the wagons for 3-4 days before sighing and agreeing that maybe a grand jury should get involved.Report
You’re the one calling it “racism”. If you’re not claiming that, you should probably find a different word.
So what? Are you claiming people so high they can’t form coherent sentences should be allowed to drive?
If you’re not claiming that then I don’t understand why you keep talking about the fake bill.
The police got involved over that (and the whole, seriously high thing), then found him behind a wheel. Without the bill, should they have let him drive off?
Somehow they were claiming Florida residency. I’ve no clue if that passes anything like a smell test but my wife and I live in different states so weird stuff can happen.
Now there’s the whole “general scum in one field is likely to be scum in another”, but on the whole I have no opinion.
You’re not being cynical enough. I expect those 18 had no impact at all on the department’s decision. A video of open murder resulted in the department deciding that a grand jury needed to get involved.
Before that, every single one of those complaints (etc) did effectively nothing. So that was 18 times nothing, which is nothing. Looking at them collectively, i.e. a total of 18, would be an improvement.Report
While it’s true that I’m using the word “Racism”, I’m also putting the word “Institutional” in front of it in an effort to distinguish it from “Personal Racism”.
Like, I even mentioned the “Racism without Racists” paradigm that this is operating under.
So what? Are you claiming people so high they can’t form coherent sentences should be allowed to drive?
If you’re not claiming that then I don’t understand why you keep talking about the fake bill.
Well, I bring up the fake bill because it’s one of the reasons the cop was called in the first place. As for whether Floyd should have been allowed to drive, I’d probably say “yeah, he shouldn’t have driven” but they were in a “throw him in the back of a cruiser” situation and not a “put all of your weight on his neck for more than 8 minutes” situation.
There were four cops there when that happened. Three of them were watching Chauvin kill Floyd.
Is being high a capital crime? The cops there that day sure seemed to think that it was.
If there are styles of policing that get used in that part of town that don’t get used in this part of town, then that’s a problem with the institution.
Even if every single cop is black, has black friends, and lives in a black part of town themselves. Because it’s not personal racism. It’s Institutional.Report
This is like describing someone arrested for “Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking” as only arrested for Jaywalking.
The situation demanded police involvement. Not because of “racism” on behalf of the store employees nor even the cops.
If it’s “Institutional Racism” to arrest everyone too high to drive then we shouldn’t care and it’s a dis-service to describe it as “racism” because that implies it’s morally wrong.
The only thing you’re pointing at is the color of Floyd’s skin and his Bad non-existing bill.
The argument you’re trying to make is “a white man wouldn’t have been arrested over a bill that the cops didn’t care about”.
That’s not “Institutional racism”, that’s the real deal. I.e. that we have laws which we only enforce against blacks.
If you are going to try to claim “Institutional racism” for police murder then you can’t just point to one dead body.
Especially not if you’re also going to claim it doesn’t matter what skin color his killer had.Report
The injustice of unjust societies always falls hardest on those who are the outgroup.
No one is really free, but some are more free than others.
Without having see Chauvin’s record, I will bet anything that the bulk of those he abused were poor, or nonwhite, or both.Report
I can’t think of any “just” societies which weren’t also seriously mono-cultural.Report
I can’t think of any society that was monocultural.
The reason I say that is, no matter how monolithic a culture looks like from the outside, to the people who live there, its anything but.
So point to any society past or present and you can be assured that it was riven with clan or linguistic or religious or ethnic divisions.Report
Are there degrees of mono/multiculturalism?
Like, can we say that the US is more multicultural in the current year than it was in 1870?
Is there no way to judge?Report
I know you’ve heard that joke about two people who discover they are both Christian.
And both Protestant.
And both Lutheran.
Both Missouri Synod.
And on and on until they discover some trifling difference in denomination whereupon one recoils and hisses “Heretic!”
Looking at those two from a distance in time or space, most of us here would lump them into a monoculture.
That’s the thing about “culture” is that the boundaries can be defined by either outsiders or insiders, and they draw them very differently.Report
I have.
But I still don’t know what your answers to my questions are.Report
The answer is, whatever metric you use to judge “monoculturalism” will be arbitrary and subjective and almost certainly rejected by the people in question.
So, no.Report
So there are not degrees of multiculturalism, we don’t know whether the US today is more multicultural than 1870, and there is no way to judge.
Gotta say, I prefer definitions of “multiculturalism” that allow people to make comparisons.Report
We can make any comparisons we want.
Just realize they are arbitrary and subjective.
Like, for census purposes we can just lump all “Europeans” into a category.
And that might be convenient for whatever purpose we have in mind.
But it doesn’t make them a “monoculture”.Report
This seems like an effort to claim cultural differences aren’t a thing.
Wiki has a page on the definition of monoculturalism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MonoculturalismReport
I’m asserting the opposite.
I’m saying cultural differences ARE a thing, and exist everywhere to the point to where there really isn’t any such thing as a “monoculture”.
The Wiki page seems deeply confused. It asserts the definition as one culture dominating over the rest.
But this definition is usually called a “caste” system, or maybe “apartheid” where one culture oppresses the others.
Which seems definitionally in opposition to your assertion that only monocultures are “just”.Report
I’m pointing out that we’ve gotten rid of Jim Crow and that presumably makes us more “just” than we were then.
I doubt you accept our society as “just” because much of structural racism seems to be a measure of inequality, which in turn is the expected outcome of multi-culturalism.
As long as “just” and “equal outcomes” mean the same thing, you can have multi-culturalism or you can have a just society but you can’t have both.
Further this attempt to claim that there is no such thing as monoculturalism seems wrong on the face of it. You’re increasing the resolution on the microscope to where you find differences and then claiming that “differences” is a binary thing.
Different cultures with different levels of crime, focus on education, marriage rates, etc are expected to have different economic outcomes. Different economic outcomes seems to be the current definition of “not just”.Report
Can you give any examples of “just” societies?Report
LOL of course not!
I seriously don’t think there has ever been one that was “just” for everyone who lived in it.
All societies have some level of injustice- its like the tooth decay of nations, present always and everywhere.
But just as there is a difference between a single cavity and a mouth without teeth there are more and less just societies.
If pressed I would say that about the only ones that might qualify are the North American, European and ANZAC nations, of the post WWII period with Japan and South Korea tossed in, but each of them gets a big flaming asterisk leading to some really big caveats and provisos and exceptions.
And none of them could seriously be called monocultural.Report
It’s really hard for me to think that modern America is less just than post-WW2 America.
I think we’re doing a lot better by whatever metric you could name.Report
Without even arguing the point, asserting that modern America is a “just” society puts a big dent in the “only monocultures are just” thesis, don’t you think?Report
We can’t really measure multi vs mono without falling into the pits of arbitrary/subjective but we’re able to measure justice?Report
Who said that justice could be objectively measured?Report
Nobody, I guess.
If it’s as unobtainable as multiculturalism, if there’s no way to measure it that doesn’t rely heavily on being arbitrary/subjective, then I guess I’m wondering why it’s seen as an imperative.Report
Because most imperatives are?Report
It certainly brings terms like “xenophobic” into stark relief.
I always thought that the term was intended to be read as negative. Now I know that it’s just, you know, arbitrary. Subjective.
Anyway, be careful with a weaponized skepticism. You think you’re warming yourself but that’s a forest fire.Report
I’m pretty sure that George Floyd demonstrates that Institutional Racism is still very much a thing.
Well, sort of. Something very similar happened to a white person, and nobody cared. The fact that there were nationwide riots over this happening to a black person and total indifference to it happening to a white person may be indicative of institutional racism, but not the kind the media are telling us permeates our society.Report
Sure, hordes of liberals fell for it in the initial week or two. Do you have any follow up tweets from them echoing the unreserved faith in Smollett that Black Lives Matter expressed in your original link? If not then my objection stands.Report
My point isn’t that the brunch crowd *STAYED* with Jussie.
Heck, I’m pretty sure that most of them would say something like “What about some other topic entirely?” if asked about it today.
The point is that BLM has evolved and learned that stuff like Jussie gets everybody on board when stuff like a challenge at brunch just alienates some really good check-writers.
This Jussie thing? A hiccup, little more.
If there’s a hoax tomorrow, everyone will join hands again, like Jussie never happened. BLM Leadership has learned its lesson.
Even now, they’ve done nothing wrong by standing with Jussie. BLM will be just as strong tomorrow and anybody who brings up this particular statement will be accused of, at best, pulling an “All Lives” kinda move.Report
You seem to want to extract a Big Point to this, very badly.
And there just doesn’t seem to be any Big Point here, other than that good people can be fooled by hucksters.
We all have watched countless videos documenting real acts of horrific racism across almost every city in America.
So when people heard Smollett’s story, it sounded believable.
So, when you replay those early tweets, what, are we all supposed to think this makes those people look bad?
I think it makes them look, well, just like regular people with regular instincts.
You are seeing some sort of Big Point that maybe just doesn’t exist.
Good people are easy to fool.Report
A big point? No.
But you know the suspicion that you have that Team Evil is looking at the Jussie Smollett “so-called” hoax and pouncing on it as if it proves a point?
There is this mirror image when it comes to when Team Good didn’t know that Jussie’s story was fishy yet. Pouncing, if you will.Report
Its…not a suspicion.
I just file this entire post and comment thread as People’s Exhibit A.Report
Be sure to include the part about how it was a hoax.
And not just the pouncing.Report
BLM is still at it. That statement supporting Smollett is the lead on their website.Report
And I refer you back to my first comment on this thread regarding BLM. Nothing has been presented that has changed my opinion from that.Report
That was the day it happened, and was unlikely to have been actually written by Biden himself.
My view from the city where the hoax was perpetrated is this is a tempest in a teapot. He’ll be sentenced appropriately, and life will go on.Report
Please don’t think that I’m arguing “This has *CHANGED EVERYTHING*!!!”
It’s more that I’m arguing “if you think that this means that BLM is moving towards irrelevance, I think you should, instead, compare where they are to where they started and measure their ability to adapt.”Report
Were they ever relevant, though?
I think someone in another comment makes the point that BLM’s actions since Floyd have been nothing but a series of own goals. What a tremendous waste of a great opportunity.Report
…*I* thought they were relevant.
Was I mistaken?Report
Where they (BLM) were? A nascent social movement full of promise capable of rallying vast numbers of people (even some from the right) in support of police reform and collecting mountains of money. Where they are now? A fading movement, cliche and generally disregarded which has accomplished nothing except pioneering some political slogans that cost its own side dearly, imported a collection of empty jargon into corporate, academic, nonprofit and media common use and has comfortably employed a whole lot of over educated minorities who would otherwise have gotten different comfortable jobs while improving things on the ground for your average minority not a jot. Where are they going? Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson wave cheerfully and suggest pooling office costs. I don’t think the future is bright.Report
I would like to (sadly) say I called this right here at OT in 2017.
https://ordinary-times.com/2017/12/11/thoughts-on-the-acquittal-of-philip-brailsford/Report
BLM (the movement not the website) is chiefly responsible for the election of George Gascon, the head of one of the largest district attorney’s office in America, and the election of several other reformists in other cities.
There are in fact people walking free today who might have been railroaded to jail but for that change.
If you are hungering for some dramatic transformative leader like MLK, OK fine, but keep in mind that MLK was the most hated man in America right up until the day he was shot.
And if you are curious as to why he was so hated, you can probably dug up a whole lotta essays and op-eds from the era which were along the lines of “I strongly supported Dr. King when he was talking about the bombing of that church, but now that he is anti-war, well, I just can’t support him anymore”, or “boy those protests were really just riots!” and pretty much just about every other thing we’ve heard recently.
Because that’s what he wrote about, the moderates whose support of civil rights was always fragile and conditional, subject to withdrawal on the slightest pretext.Report
If you’d like to credit the DA to BLM I’ll grant it. I’ll even credit them with hauling some truly awful statues out of the public eye (but also blame them for overreaching and beclowning themselves with other statues and murals). For all the potential BLM had that’s pretty small beer and if you think that BLM has any prospect of going any direction from here but down then you’re a far more optimistic person than I.
As to your MLK references, I generally reject them because I don’t blame BLM for the opportunistic violence that follows protests. (And yes, you can find various BLM flag waving idiots that embrace/defend the violence. In a decentralized movement like BLM you can find an idiot espousing anything). That’d be like blaming chemotherapy for leukemia for allowing infections in your body. The problem is the defective immune system. The chemo is part of the cure.Report
Your opinion of the BLM.org guys is largely irrelevant.
What I’m talking about is this:
Since the death of George Floyd and the protests that followed, are you more or less inclined to support a city candidate that wants to reform the police?
Who wants to end cash bail?
Who wants a citizens review council?Report
Same, same and same but I was always in favor of them and never in favor of abolishing the police which was where BLM’s emphasis was.Report
No. I don’t live in a large city, I live in a crime free sub-urb.
IMHO I don’t have a dog in the race because our local police seem fine.Report
It wasn’t just the war.
King’s popularity began to wane after he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. Carson said that King began to lose his momentum as he moved his attention from civil rights in the south to the north— to Chicago to tackle segregation and poverty among black Americans.
https://www.newsweek.com/martin-luther-king-jr-was-not-always-popular-back-day-780387
Basically he shifted to anti-war, full integration everywhere, and economic equality.Report
Right.
As soon as the horrific images of protesters being beaten and mauled by attack dogs began to be replaced with images of inner city riots and as Dr. King started challenging systemic injustice outside of the Jim Crow South, moderate white people lost support for civil rights.
Everything old is new again.Report
I think that BLM will come into play *AGAIN* the next time that there is a major incident involving the newly refunded police.
I suspect it will result in another host of streets renamed “Black Lives Matter Boulevard” once the brunch crowd gets finished with turning the “reform the police!” message into something like “DEFUND THE POLICE!”, but we’ll see their political relevance again. Next year, even. Prior to the election.Report
We shall see. I am deeply skeptical that mass protests like we say after Floyd are likely and even more skeptical of BLM being relevant to them if they do occur. I have no doubt, however, that whatever events occur BLM will sprint to the head of them and try to appear to be leading them. It’s kind of the model they’re sliding into.Report
IMHO their inability to see that Smollett is guilty is a weakness, not a strength.
Where their narrative reflects reality they can do useful things. Where their narrative doesn’t reflect reality they can’t.Report
Unlike Trumpists, who are most effective where their narrative is complete lunacy.Report
“Effective”? Their goal was to keep Trump as President by… something.
I never understood phase 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tO5sxLapAts
That this is the comparison to make doesn’t suggest good things of BLM’s future.Report
I commented above that it didn’t last more than a month before people stopped bringing up Jussie Smollett in conversation. At least, his likely supporters. The other side saw the case as a hilarious opportunity to expose press bias and general gullibility. So whatever left-side unity it may have inspired didn’t last long.
And that’s not a bad thing. This didn’t turn into an OJ trial, with people feeling compelled to repeat a transparent fiction. Even SNL took a few shots at Smollett.Report
Ah yes, the “why do YOU care so much about this stupid thing that nobody cares about” phase of gaslighting.Report
I don’t follow. Are you accusing me of gaslighting? I don’t see any side gaslighting on this topic. If liberals are trying to drop the subject, I don’t think it’s out of any attempt to trick conservatives; I think it’s just a bad subject for them. I’m a little troubled by the number of things that get called “gaslighting” these days.Report
Weren’t the two brothers that were arrested for attacking Smollett black? Don’t two brothers’ lives matter as much as one brother’s?Report
I think they’re Nigerian, thus potentially running afoul of the multiracial whiteness line.Report
Well, I guess it makes sense that Georgia is removing any black people from participating in county elections.Report
Sen. Bob Dole’s funeral service set to take place at Washington National Cathedral.Report
Speaking of hate crime hoaxes, I came across this delightful passage in the police report on the Althea Bernstein hoax:
Report
This site became the Drudge Report with comments so gradually I hardly even noticed.Report
Anyone with posting privileges can post a headline that they find newsworthly and/or likely to spark discussion. Just check both “sidebar” and “ten second news”.
Maybe we could make this a combination of Drudge and Smirking Chimp!Report
I wonder if anyone with posting privileges thinks that the plans by the Trump Administration for overthrowing a free election are worthy of a post.
Maybe not as gripping as an actor behaving badly but I’m sure there is a niche of commenters who would find it interesting.Report
Is there a news link you want me to use? I’ll throw it up there.Report
Start with this one:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/dec/10/trump-powerpoint-mark-meadows-capitol-attack
Former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows turned over to the House select committee investigating the 6 January Capitol attack a PowerPoint recommending Donald Trump to declare a national security emergency in order to return himself to the presidency.
The select committee is certain there was at least some coordination between the Trump White House and the organizers of the 6 January rally.
Capitol attack committee issues new subpoenas to two ex-Trump aides
Read more
The fact that Meadows was in possession of a PowerPoint the day before the Capitol attack that detailed ways to stage a coup suggests he was at least aware of efforts by Trump and his allies to stop Joe Biden’s certification from taking place on 6 January.
The PowerPoint, titled “Election Fraud, Foreign Interference & Options for 6 Jan”, made several recommendations for Trump to pursue in order to retain the presidency for a second term on the basis of lies and debunked conspiracies about widespread election fraud.Report
There you go.Report
Wow. Great link.Report
You do realize that Drudge became the most anti-Trumpist site online?
The sad truth is that OT has maybe 3 articles per day, many non-political, and the sidebar posts hardly get any action. (I usually only notice them when I check Recent Comments.) I’m often frustrated at the number of news stories on the right that don’t make it onto OT.Report
I haven’t looked at Drudge in probably a decade and have no idea what Shirking Monkey is. I *am* on Twitter now, for better or worse, which means I see most of these boilerplate news stories there first, and the discussions they spark tend to be people talking past each other.
My issue isn’t that I think we have too many right wing news stories or too many left wing news stories. It’s that I was first attracted to the site becasue we had long-form thoughtful pieces in which really intelligent folks worked through their nuanced thoughts on some complex subject. And, to be sure, we still get those. But I’d be okay if the site was one big think piece per day and maybe a few lightweight palate cleansers a week. Although I have no idea what that would do to the volume of comments.Report
Smirking Chimp is Jeff Tiedrich’s news aggregation website. Instead of right wing propaganda, his site is fair and balanced. (He named it in tribute to George W. Bush.)
And there are still thinkpieces that get posted!
The problem is that there are usually comments that say something like “BUT WHAT ABOUT NEWS STORY!”
And so we have a sidebar for the people who want to talk about the news stories.Report