As though 1994 were alive and well again (though unfortunately not in the sense that a Clinton is in office), Jussie Smollett (who no one knew up until now unless they watched Empire) decided it was time to one-up the antics of Tonya Harding’s ex-husband, Jeff Gillooly, with a bit of goon-hiring of his own–with one major difference, of course: a racially motivated fake attack.
For those who now easily remember what spurred Gillooly to do it thanks to I, Tonya, it was from a place of love–even if it was deranged love. For he just wanted to ensure Tonya would win the Olympics, didn’t he? Or was it more from that dark place of hate-love, where you not so secretly just want to sabotage the person in the relationship that’s doing better than you? Whatever the case between those possible motives, the premise of a love-induced crime is always better in coming across as more interesting to the public than money or race–or worse, a combination of the two. It’s not classic enough to most, and it certainly isn’t going to pull at the heartstrings of White America.
What’s more, Gillooly had the vague fortune to intuit that the only thing people enjoy more than deifying prim bitches like Nancy Kerrigan is watching them fall (in this case, rather literally). And, by the same token, looking for a villain mold to blame for that fall–in this case, Tonya Harding, the polar opposite of Kerrigan in every way.
Smollett, on the other hand, decided to hire two brothers and pay them $3,500 to capitalize on the evermore intense divide in American politics for the sake of another zero on a paycheck. Considering that MAGA supporters are already bloodthirsty to point out that they’re right (not just politically) in balking at the “fake news” of the liberal media, Smollett’s bizarre means to grab attention have proven unfortunate for those who will actually be attacked in a hate-motivated crime inevitably at some point this year, and likely be looked upon with even more doubt than before as a result of this. Another boy who cried wolf for the sake of a better piece of meat, Smollett is arguably even worse than Gillooly and his henchman, Shawn Eckardt (Harding’s “bodyguard”), the two of which were not directly involved in the attack, so much as the goons they, too, hired to do their bidding.
Shane Stant and Derrick Smith were not nearly as effective as Smollett’s brothers, who were able to carry out specific instructions–including which racial slurs to spout–with ease. Unlike Stant, who ended up initially going to the wrong skating arena when he first tried to seek out Kerrigan (starting in Massachusetts only to realize she was training in Detroit), Smollett’s goons followed directions to the letter. And all much to the extreme delight of the Chicago Police Department, soon quick to write off the attack as Smollett taking “advantage of the pain and anger of racism to promote his career.” In effect, Smollett made things much worse for those black folk already terrified enough as it is of having any dealings with a police force notoriously not on their side.
Yet, surprisingly, Terrence Howard, deliverer of the famous, “You embarrass me, you embarrass yourself” line in Crash, has publicly defended Smollett in his apparently protective role as his TV father. Much as Harding stood by Gillooly back in the day by saying, “I continue to believe that Jeff is innocent of any wrongdoing. I wish him nothing but the best.” So it is that we have numerous examples of Christ-like behavior in pop culture, no?
