Special to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

Just when you think that the media couldn’t lower their journalistic standards any lower, you have the whole Jussie Smollett debacle, where the Empire actor claimed that he was attacked by two MAGA hat wearing white men who happened to be carrying rope and a container of bleach on the streets of Chicago, which they called “MAGA Country.” As soon as this “assault” was reported, the media jumped all over this without showing an ounce of skepticism or objectivity. Yet from the very start, I believed it to be nothing more than a hoax, perpetrated by some B-List actor begging for attention.

There were a few red flags that seemed fairly visible to me and just about anybody who had the ability to look at the situation objectively. Starting with the fact that Smollett decided to walk the streets of Chicago at 2:00 am because he had a craven for a Subway sandwich. I suppose stranger things have happened, but I found it odd that Smollett would chose to satisfy his craven when the temperature outside was four below zero. I found it even more unlikely that you would have two white supremacists who were willing to freeze to death, while waiting for a random victim to show up at that time of night. I also found it convenient that these two jokers would have bleach and rope on them when a random black/gay man who was willing to brave such a harsh temperature for a sub, just happens to come cross their path. Though what really made me doubt this narrative were the MAGA hats. It seems like the media is always trying to its very best to portray anybody wearing a MAGA hat as an evil racist, which is why they portrayed those Covington kids as villains and ran with the fictious story about a Muslim woman who claimed to have her hijab taken by a group of Trump supporters. I am not even going to go into the absurdity about how anyone would call Chicago MAGA Country. Though I will say that no matter how many times I hear it, I can’t help but laugh hysterically.

I knew that it was only a matter of time before this whole story came unraveled and sure enough it turned out that the two white MAGA hat wearing men were actually two Nigerian brothers who had found themselves in debt up to their eyeballs after owning a failed party store. Desperate for money, they accepted a job from Smollett that involved staging a fake hate crime. The final nail in the coffin came when it was discovered that Smollett had written the brothers a check for their services. To paraphrase Charles Barkley, “If you are going to pay somebody to stage a crime, you probably shouldn’t write a check.” Now, Smollett is facing charges for filing a false police report.

What I really find amusing about this particular case of fake news is the way that you have people who are willing to double-down on the insertion that this was a legitimate hate crime. There are some who still believe that the Empire star was attacked, despite the confessions of the fools he hired to stage it and the check that he paid them with. You have to be in serious denial to believe that this was a real hate crime. Then there are those who acknowledge that the Smollett case was fabricated, but refuse to condemn him because hate crimes actual do occur in our society. This was the same absurd logic that a Rolling Stone reporter used when her story about a university student being gang-raped by a group of pledges in a fraternity ended up discredited. The reporter still defended her story, saying that while this particular instance may have been fabricated, it still brought light to a growing problem on college campuses. The problem with that logic is that phony rape claims actually take credibility from legitimate cases. The same goes for hate crime cases despite what the organizations such as The Southern Poverty Law Center would tell you, these crimes are becoming rarer every day. Another reason why the media jumped all over this story so quickly is because they want everyone to believe that hate crimes and hate groups are on the rise, so they can make all the minorities in this country believe that they are victims who can’t walk the streets without looking over their shoulders. That is how race hustlers such as Al Sharpton and obsolete organizations such as The Southern Poverty Law Center stay in business.

Update: The prosecutor who is known for her ties to the Obama family decided to drop all charges against Jussie Smollett on the basis that there were more important cases to prosecute. She even made sure that all evidence against Smollett ended up sealed from the public. As expected, various officials in the Chicago PD who didn’t like having their resources wasted to go on a wild goose chase were outraged by this decision. What did surprise me is that Chicago mayor and Obama crony Ron Emanuel actually shared the same outrage as those in the Chicago PD. Apparently, he didn’t like how foolish the city looked when they went about chasing phantom white supremacists when they actually had real cases to solve. I guess the actions of the prosecutor shouldn’t have come as any surprise since people who fake hate crimes rarely face repercussions, but I was hoping that the Smollett case was one of those rare occasions where the fakers actually do face real consequences for their actions.