{"id":35589,"date":"2019-02-21T19:58:45","date_gmt":"2019-02-21T19:58:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=35589"},"modified":"2019-02-21T19:59:39","modified_gmt":"2019-02-21T19:59:39","slug":"another-entertainment-career-appears-to-have-tanked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=35589","title":{"rendered":"Another entertainment career appears to have tanked"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/BBTUbZE.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-35590\" src=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/BBTUbZE-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/BBTUbZE-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/BBTUbZE-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/BBTUbZE.jpg 799w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll be totally candid: I had never heard of Jussie Smollett until the young man reported a few days ago that he had been the victim of a hate crime. I don&#8217;t watch &#8220;Empire,&#8221; so the actor slipped under my TV-watching radar.<\/p>\n<p>It was in all the papers.\u00a0Now I know far more about this guy than I care to know.<\/p>\n<p>He has been accused of fabricating the incident and of paying two brothers to orchestrate a &#8220;crime&#8221; that the alleged &#8220;victim&#8221; made up.<\/p>\n<p>I was struck by a couple of aspects of this morning&#8217;s announcement that Smollett had been arrested and taken into custody by the Chicago Police Department.<\/p>\n<p>One was the absence of the word &#8220;allegedly&#8221; by the police superintendent, Eddie Johnson, who appeared to my eyes to be <em>furious <\/em>at what his detective division uncovered about Smollett&#8217;s supposedly phony involvement in this incident.<\/p>\n<p>Smollett said someone attacked him and threw racial and homophobic slurs at him; Smollett, who is African-American, also is openly gay. The alleged attackers were supposedly wearing &#8220;MAGA&#8221; hats and passed themselves off as Donald Trump supporters.<\/p>\n<p>The police superintendent also took pains today to say how much time, money, manpower and emotional energy was wasted by the phony accusation. Smollett had leveled a serious charge of a hate crime. The police took his complaint as seriously as it takes any such incident.<\/p>\n<p>As I watched the press conference today, I was struck by the utter certainty in the voices of Johnson and the head of the CPD detective division. They believe they have solved this matter.<\/p>\n<p>Jussie Smollett is presumed to be innocent. I get that. However, just as all the entertainment and media powerhouses who&#8217;ve been accused of sexual misbehavior also are presumed innocent, their careers are toast. I&#8217;m betting so is Smollett&#8217;s career.<\/p>\n<p>To think that he supposedly set this &#8220;crime&#8221; up because he wanted more money for his acting gig on &#8220;Empire.&#8221; My strong hunch is that his entertainment income is about to dry up . . .<em> rapidly!<\/em><\/p>\n<p>And let us all hope that Smollett&#8217;s reported fakery will not hinder others from reporting <em>actual <\/em>hate crimes when they occur.<\/p>\n<p>As for the brothers, it likely turns out <em>they<\/em> are the victims.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ll be totally candid: I had never heard of Jussie Smollett until the young man reported a few days ago that he had been the victim of a hate crime. I don&#8217;t watch &#8220;Empire,&#8221; so the actor slipped under my TV-watching radar. It was in all the papers.\u00a0Now I know far more about this guy &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=35589\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Another entertainment career appears to have tanked<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[5661,2076,8403],"class_list":["post-35589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-entertainment-news","tag-chicago-pd","tag-hate-crimes","tag-jussie-smollett"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35589"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35589\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35591,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35589\/revisions\/35591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}