That seems to be the argument being presented; only straight White men in positions of authority are credible.
Everyone else requires mountains of proof before anyone will even consider believing them.
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OK, once more with feeling.
You seem uncomfortable with the way that the discussion keeps circling Donald Trump, so forget about that part. Focus instead on what was done - the beating, the bleach, the reference to lynching.
Jussie Smollett is the victim of a hate crime, the rates of which have risen every year for the past three years, and which increased by 17% in 2017 alone. Is that not something to be upset about, or do we still need more corroboration?
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My bad. I did leave out âstraight.â Now it makes total sense. /s
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You know, sometimes when I think about how we treat sexual assault victims I think, âImagine if we treated assault victims like that.â But apparently thatâs what weâre doing now. A person was beaten into hospital and itâs ârashâ to listen to their account of what happened.
I understand the unreliability of eye witnesses, but holy crap, a personsâ descriptions of events that happened to them is more reliable than the opinion of a stranger across the country⌠isnât it?
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Can you point me to Mr. Smollettâs account of what happened please?
Based on the comment immediately preceding this one, I guess I shouldnât have made the assumption that this question was rhetorical.
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Thatâs not particularly clear.
So first thing law enforcement donât tend to offer or confirm details in the press that they donât have firm backing for. Itâs both a general policy, PR thing. And a legal thing. You donât want to confuse things by giving information that later turns out to be inaccurate.
Likewise Smollett seems to have stuggled over whether to file a formal report or give a formal statement.
He did, obviously describe his attack to some one. And the details hit the press before the PD could comment. When they did they confirmed the identity of the victim, the reported details of the attack, and the slurs and threats as reported but they declined to confirm the"MAGA Country" detail.
There might have been a number of reasons for this. If Smollett had yet to give a statement, and the details were given to hospital staff. Who are required to report shit like this to police. They may not have gotten a direct statement on that detail by the time of the press conference. If Smollett was less than cogent due to his injuries, he may not have been clear on that point. Or his initial statement to officers may not have been considered definitive. Or he may even have requested the police not publicly address it out of fears about itâs impact.
But Smollett did provide that detail, thatâs how it made it into the press. And once he provided a formal statement confirming that detail to police they confirmed it to the press.
That (short) timing gap, between the full details hitting the press and the PD confirming that one detail. Gave enough space for assholes to jump in and claim that detail was added later. Or that thereâs something suspicious in the delay.
That was in the reporting as soon as it hit the press. The cops didnât deny it, they just didnât 100% confirm it till hours later. There is nothing odd or suspicious about it. This is an entirely normal sequence of events.
Thus far all of the details from the initial reports, appear to have been confirmed. And appear to have come directly from Smollett. Immediately after his attack.
In terms of hate crimes we always have.
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Hereâs what People magazine (well, he is a celebrity, after all) had to say, which clears up some of the timeline and reasons for any delays:
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Interestingly, police reports arenât automatically a matter of public record, and hospital records are certainly not readily available for public consumption.
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Iâd like to add here, in the most petty way possible, that one of those assholes was Reason, trying to repeat the Devilâs Advocate douchebaggery they achieved with the MAGA hat kids.
It would be great if they just changed their name to Rationalize.
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After you wrote this, @chgoliz linked to a story in people with a quotation from the police where they say Smollett reported this part of the attack. It was up at 10:37 AM. It was easily found on Google by anyone who wanted to check the facts themselves, well before you suggested that it was âsmugnessâ that led us to believe what had already been confirmed.
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Googling this leads me to a ton of click bait copycat articles, twitter posts by virtue-signaling celebrities, etc. That People article was actually excellent and very useful at establishing what is known about the case. Will be interesting to see how this unfolds.
Despite their ability to have some good, skeptical science coverage when they feel like it. Reason has always been an explicitly political, capital L Libertarian publication.
They call themselves âReasonâ because âWell Actually Magazineâ probably wouldnât conseal their agenda as well.
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Itâs still a Koch-funded outlet headed by an intellectually dishonest editor. If a major story suggests that their MAGA-hatted white allies/suckers are acting like fascist thugs theyâll fire up the FUD machine and start JAQing off.
Same here. No Google-fu necessary,
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Something something Reason Magazine.
Oh for sure. Its just that the occasional bit of decent science reporting and the general air of skepticism they wrap themselves in seems to have convinced casual observers that theyâre a credible publication dedicated to , you know, reason.
Which is the whole fucking idea.
Cato Institute pulls the same shenanigans. Occasionally well conducted scientific review articles from them crop up, and they fund some credible research. So you see them cited in that context. And they have institute in their name. So they must be a credible research institute right?
Nope, right wing Libertarian think thank that spends most of it time pushing abject bullshit and classic far right policy positions. Backing it up with âresearchâ that sounds plausible in a headline, but seldom holds up in anyway.
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A person of interest has been found on one of the surveillance tapes:
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Chicago is pretty solidly blue. Like anywhere, thereâs a mix of ideas, but by and large itâs blue. Mainly because thereâs almost a 100% chance you work with and like at least one immigrant, and as is always said, itâs pretty hard to be racist when you know a glaring exception to that âruleâ.
That said, you donât have to go more than an hour outside of Chicago to get to some seriously racist areas. Thereâs a lot of glorious farm country in Illinois, and they hate Chicago and anything Chicago likes. When going to visit my kid at UIUC from Chicago, I always pass cars with the sticker in the window that says how âIllinois is more than Chicagoâ or the one where Cook county is removed.
There are people who are living on a tight budget because of some white guy in a suit, but that same guy told them it was because of a brown person. Since they feel this âfriendâ wouldnât lie to him, they believe it. As a person who has a mixed family, I can tell you it literally happens both ways. One of the biggest scumbags I ever met was a Mexican real estate agent who used to scam other Mexicans. One of the victims was a family member, and when I asked him why he signed a deal he obviously couldnât afford and thus was basically signing a ârepossess this house in a yearâ note, he said to me âwhy would he cheat me? Heâs just like me!â.
Illinois is a deeply divided state, thatâs had a run of complete crap Governors, taking down what should be a vibrant state. Politicians as a whole (we had, for example, the legendary Joe Walsh and of course Mark Kirk) stoke these feelings to make themselves powerful.
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TL;DR = Research is hard 
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