Jessie Smollett


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I do not have any personal involvement with Mr. Smollett.  My only contribution is that his pursuit in life is that of an actor.  I believe him to be accomplished in his craft.  I believe his trial was legal and according to our law and therefor he is guilty as charged and found by the court.  I am uncertain what part he will play in his next act.

 

The Traveler

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42 minutes ago, Traveler said:

I do not have any personal involvement with Mr. Smollett.  My only contribution is that his pursuit in life is that of an actor.  I believe him to be accomplished in his craft.  I believe his trial was legal and according to our law and therefor he is guilty as charged and found by the court.  I am uncertain what part he will play in his next act.

 

The Traveler

What staggers me is that the NAACP and BLM leadership both wrote letters to the court pleading for clemency on his behalf.

I mean, this guy’s behavior is a major reason that some of us have a reason taking these organizations’ claims and proposed solutions at face value.  You’d think they’d be eager to throw him under the bus.

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There's a small part of me that likes to occasionally play with the "what if" scenario of his innocence, but golly, I can't find the evidence to really support it.

My guess is he keeps proclaiming his innocence because at this point admitting deceit is probably just too late. He carried on the story this long.

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"You are now a permanently convicted felon. Your family loves you and supports you... But you have to live with the fact that you really put them through a ringer. You embarrassed your valuable friends in high places, elected public officials, people in the media. You've embarrassed them. You have to live with that.

"I don't know if those relationships can be repaired. You've become toxic in your own workplace. Your career, future is very uncertain at the very best. It was really on a rocket ship to success and now you've turned yourself into a riches to rags [story] and it's so unfortunate.

"Your very name has become an adverb for lying, and I cannot imagine what can be worse than that... You're the butt of jokes. Comedians, mainstream talk show hosts, they make jokes about you. They do sketches about you. I can't imagine anything worse than that.

"This is all self-inflicted. These are things you did to yourself. This is self-damage. Some people may think that what you did is funny, that there's some room for humor and jokes about it. But I assure you this court does not.

"I don't think that there's anything funny at all about hoaxing and faking racial hate crimes or hoaxing and faking homophobic hate crimes. I think that it's disgraceful and there is nothing funny about it. There is no humor in what you did whatsoever, all because you're selfish, arrogant, narcissistic, at least you have that side of you."

"Your performance on the witness stand... This could only be described as pure perjury. You got on the witness stand. You didn't have to. You did and you certainly have a right to. But you committed hour upon hour upon hour of pure perjury and I find all those to be ample factors that this court can decide that the things you did, that any kind of probationary sentence would deprecate the seriousness of the offense, that you need to go to the penitentiary. The record is clear and it would support it...

"I agree with what was told to me today—you can't judge everybody by one bad thing they've done in their life. I don't know if it's the only bad thing, but it's the only bad thing that I'm concerned about now. And you do have quite a record of real community service...

"I'm mindful of the pleas for mercy, particularly from people that are in the arena of dealing with social justice issues, that are seriously fighting—not playing around, not doing games like you were doing. But seriously fighting for matters involving hate crimes of all sorts. And they're asking for mercy...

"So I'm trying to consider who you are as a person, how you got here, how somehow you strayed away from your family values, you let that dark, narcissistic, selfish, arrogant side come out. And you persisted with it for years in this case."

-  Judge James Linn

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1 hour ago, Backroads said:

There's a small part of me that likes to occasionally play with the "what if" scenario of his innocence, but golly, I can't find the evidence to really support it.

My guess is he keeps proclaiming his innocence because at this point admitting deceit is probably just too late. He carried on the story this long.

The best guess anyone has is that he was likely in danger of being let go from the TV show he was on at the time, so he staged the attack to gain sympathy while making it too dangerous for the network execs to consider cutting the cast. 

Instead, independent media outlets and commentators like Tim Pool almost immediately pointed out how his story was implausible, causing the public to put pressure on law enforcement to investigate. 

The revelation that he'd faked the entire thing instead led to the show he was on being cancelled and Smollett himself being radioactive as far as the mainstream entertainment industry was concerned. At that point, he pretty much had to keep up the charade and keep the sympathy rolling in or else it would be the end of his entire career. 

The best he can hope for now is that his time in prison passes in peace, and that when he's released he can find some quiet but substantive - and likely menial - employment from where he can rebuild his work history and his reputation. He *might* convince people on the indie scene to give him another chance after people start to forget, but trying to rush into anything the moment he's out behind bars will just destroy his reputation further.

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2 hours ago, mikbone said:

"You are now a permanently convicted felon. Your family loves you and supports you... But you have to live with the fact that you really put them through a ringer. You embarrassed your valuable friends in high places, elected public officials, people in the media. You've embarrassed them. You have to live with that.

"I don't know if those relationships can be repaired. You've become toxic in your own workplace. Your career, future is very uncertain at the very best. It was really on a rocket ship to success and now you've turned yourself into a riches to rags [story] and it's so unfortunate.

"Your very name has become an adverb for lying, and I cannot imagine what can be worse than that... You're the butt of jokes. Comedians, mainstream talk show hosts, they make jokes about you. They do sketches about you. I can't imagine anything worse than that.

"This is all self-inflicted. These are things you did to yourself. This is self-damage. Some people may think that what you did is funny, that there's some room for humor and jokes about it. But I assure you this court does not.

"I don't think that there's anything funny at all about hoaxing and faking racial hate crimes or hoaxing and faking homophobic hate crimes. I think that it's disgraceful and there is nothing funny about it. There is no humor in what you did whatsoever, all because you're selfish, arrogant, narcissistic, at least you have that side of you."

"Your performance on the witness stand... This could only be described as pure perjury. You got on the witness stand. You didn't have to. You did and you certainly have a right to. But you committed hour upon hour upon hour of pure perjury and I find all those to be ample factors that this court can decide that the things you did, that any kind of probationary sentence would deprecate the seriousness of the offense, that you need to go to the penitentiary. The record is clear and it would support it...

"I agree with what was told to me today—you can't judge everybody by one bad thing they've done in their life. I don't know if it's the only bad thing, but it's the only bad thing that I'm concerned about now. And you do have quite a record of real community service...

"I'm mindful of the pleas for mercy, particularly from people that are in the arena of dealing with social justice issues, that are seriously fighting—not playing around, not doing games like you were doing. But seriously fighting for matters involving hate crimes of all sorts. And they're asking for mercy...

"So I'm trying to consider who you are as a person, how you got here, how somehow you strayed away from your family values, you let that dark, narcissistic, selfish, arrogant side come out. And you persisted with it for years in this case."

-  Judge James Linn

The past few years we have seen some examples of very poor judges (one wonders how they are still employed as such). We have also seen some great ones, and this is an example of the latter. Judges cannot mince words, and must not treat snowflakes as such. The words rang true, and were honest, not punitive. I believe the overall sentencing was also fair; not too harsh, and not too lenient.

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On 3/11/2022 at 1:45 PM, NeuroTypical said:

Sometimes it's possible to learn from our mistakes.  Jussie hasn't seemed to learn anything.  I wonder if any of these folks will:

image.thumb.png.3c89318609fd622f6baf6bd0a6e9faf3.png

When someone has a hidden agenda - the lesson has very little to do with anything that happens. 

 

The Traveler

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