I just watched a documentary about Jusse Smollet, the gay black actor who claimed to be a victim of a hate crime, a simulated lynching at 0200 in downtown Chicago several years ago. Smollet became a joke, a rehearsal for George Santos who was such an accomplished liar that he was elected to Congress. Smollet’s lie–if that’s what it was–only led to him being charged with filing a false police report.
But here’s the twist: there were two independent witnesses who corroborated, in whole or in part, Smollet’s story. Those facts never made it to the press. Another fact left out of the public record is the fact that one of the Nigerian-American (they grew up in Chicago) brothers whom he supposedly hired had a prior conviction for agg battery, knocked down from attempted murder and had a bag full of assault rifles and other weapons in his home. Making a deal with the police, he was never charged with this violation. (Parenthetically, note that Trump, as a convicted felon, can’t possess weapons either.) I don’t know if this evidence was disclosed to the defense. We’ll never know: Smollet’s conviction was overturned by the Illinois Supreme Court on other grounds. He has pretty much lost his career; he’s trying to climb back.
Santos’ lies far outrace Smollet’s, if Smollet did indeed invent his tale. The New York Times discovered the fact that Santos was not a college graduate. In all the accompanying noise, the fact that Santos was a high-school dropout was left by the side of the road. Santos started a charity for dogs and cats, knowing that animals don’t file fraud complaints.
When the press proudly announced that there would be investigations into Santos’ claimed $750,000 campaign contributions I laughed. The number was purely fictitious, the source of the number being Santos himself; the funds didn’t exist, that investigation fizzled, another dead end. Santos is Brazilian, so he claimed N.Y. latino status; not being Jewish did not prevent him from claiming (non-existent) Holocaust survivors in his family tree as well as family who died in 9/11. Brazenly shilling for sympathy, he had his mother die twice. Finding one box unchecked, he came out as gay.
Santos’ vote was needed to pass the debt ceiling the penultimate time the issue came up. Now that he’s out of Congress, look what happened, the government shut down. All in all, Santos is no worse than most Congressman, a fact perhaps recognized by Trump, who commuted his sentence.
Another recent twist is the claim by Candace Owens that Harvey Weinstein is innocent. She makes a convincing case. On the other hand, Candace also claims that Brigitte Macron is transgender. The Macrons don’t understand the “Barbra Streisand effect”: by protesting Candace loudly, people who might never have heard of the controversy have been drawn in.
I don’t know whether Brigitte is or was (not sure of the correct nomenclature here) a man. But as to Harvey, Candace makes some valuable points: it is not common for victims of sexual assault to later go on dates, text and send letters to, arrange for gifts, etc. from their assailants. All of which tend to show that the encounters, while tawdry, were consensual.
Candace has at least been busy. She’s found evidence that the Charlie Kirk assassination (it was upgraded from “murder” almost immediately) is the result of a far-reaching conspiracy based on inconsistencies in the reported evidence. And in our 1st Amendment America, roughly 150 people have lost their livelihoods after posting sometimes private messages using social media which commented on various aspects of the Charlie Kirk case.
I have to confess, until he was murdered I had no idea who this soon-to-be- immortalized man was. I don’t think I exaggerate; Roman coinage is scrutinized to corroborate history and the Trump government announced that Kirk will be commemorated on American coinage. George Washington is still (I think) on American quarters, he will be joined by Mr. Kirk. A thousand years from now, detectorists will pull a mud-encaked coin from the earth and report that it bears the likeness of one Kirk who is believed to have been a political figure of some kind in the early 21st century.