US prosecution dropped the charges brought against Jussie Smollet and this news has incited discussion, opinion and has entered the public discourse. Do you even know what is going on here? Don’t worry. Here is a simple explanation just to get you caught up.
Let’s start with the definitions.
What is a Jussie and when does it Smollet?
I could say Jussie Smollet is a scheming, spoiled, selfish brat who thought he could use justice for his own unjust ends but that would not be an informative opening.
He is reputed to be a very handsome young man, but that opinion is a shaky one. It doesn’t take into account the devious rattiness in his eyes. Smollet’s eyes, particularly the left one, which is usually the one that counts the most, hides a suspicious amount of untrustworthiness. I would not lend him money if I were you.
Fortunately he doesn’t need our loans, or didn’t for a while. He was gainfully employed as an actor in an international hit TV series called ‘Empire’. ‘Empire’ starred Terence D. Howard and Taraji P. Henson so it was worth watching.
Taraji is always worth watching. Even though her movie ‘Proud Mary’ was a big slimy flop, the kind of flop you get when you overturn a bowl of cold porridge that had been over flavoured with too much milk, and the milk had gone bad, and the porridge had gone cold, and there were dead flies floating their little gross corpses underneath the surface, it was still watched because Taraji’s talent is so massive it would make me watch her do a YouTube commercial for those same porridge flies. I would not even skip ad.
Smollet, on the other hand, was not as great an actor. In fact, there was speculation that he was going to be dropped from the cast of the show. Hopefully, his character was to be killed off like King Joffrey and filmed satisfactorily out of our misery.
He was not going out without a fight, or at least without what sneaky rodent-eyed liars chose to deploy in lieu of a fight.
Jussie Smollet is in America, a barbaric and savage place, desperately lacking in civilised behaviour and therefore full of hate crimes.
Smollet decided to produce one such hate crime. Only instead of attacking another black man who lives an alternative lifestyle, he decided to attack himself.
What follows is insight into why he was probably being fired. He hired a couple of people to beat him up in a public place, under watch of closed circuit cameras, with the eventual aim of garnering public sympathy that he could use to negotiate away his dismissal from his job. This is the popular theory.
Only he got two Nigerians and had them shout out support for Donald Trump and his infamous racism.
He got Nigerians. Nigerians are black. And they are immigrants. Black immigrants who not only support Trump, but are also prepared to risk committing racial assault on camera in his name? This shows that Smollet doesn’t understand casting for camera. No wonder he was being dropped from ‘Empire’.
All this is alleged, claimed, reported, and should not be stated as established fact because this week, in another hard-to-believe twist in the narrative, the black American beat the case.
The American legal people dropped the 16 counts of felony fraud brought against him.
Which doesn’t mean he did not do it. Trump did it, OJ did it. People do it and don’t get convictions. This just means R. Kelly has a chance of not going to jail either.
American courts are just bad porridge.
Will Smollet return to ‘Empire’? Will the Nigerian actors lose their chance to make it in the industry after bombing so dismally in their first major role? Will R. Kelly hire Smollet’s lawyers?
That remains to be seen. At least now you are all caught up with Smollet-Gate.
editor@newtimesrwanda.com