THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. – Live Standup Comedy on the Hill returns Saturday, March 9 at 8:00 pm at the Hillcrest Center for the Arts, 403 W. Hillcrest Dr, across from The Oaks Mall. March’s lineup includes Forrest Shaw, Stephanie Blum, Lee Levine, and Gali Kroup. Professional local comedian Jason Love produces this monthly show in collaboration with the Hillcrest Center for the Arts. The show features a new lineup each month with some of Hollywood’s funniest headliners. All shows are 8:00 pm with doors opening at 7:30. Due to the popularity of the shows, which sell out each month, all tickets are now reserved seating and are available three months in advance. The hour and a half show is for eighteen years and up only, and beer and wine may be purchased with valid ID.
Stephanie Blum
Stephanie Blum is a mother and professional stand-up comedian who has performed in clubs throughout New York, L.A. and Las Vegas. She stars in the TLC series, #WhatSHESaid and Discovery Family Channel’s Babies Behaving Badly. She guests on shows like Comics Unleashed with Byron Allen, The Marie Osmond Show, Country Music Television’s 20 Funniest Videos, and wrote and produced Road Mamas for MTV Networks. Her web series, MOMS RULE, is an irreverent look at motherhood.
Forest Shaw is a stand up comedian and writer (The Jim Jefferies Show). His stand-up has been featured on Conan and Live at Gotham. As an actor he has appeared on FX (Legit), Comedy Central (The Jim Jefferies Show), and Animal Planet (Swamp Wars). His album Mister Grizzly, recorded with Comedy Records, can be heard on Sirius/XM Satellite radio, Pandora, and Spotify. He is co-host of The Jim Jefferies Show Podcast. Forrest is also co-writer (and lead actor) of the award-winning web series, Labor Days. He has also been featured in numerous festivals such as Comedy Central’s South Beach Comedy Festival, Bridgetown, the Boston Comedy Festival, Comedy Central’s Clusterfest, and the Moontower Comedy Festival.
Forest Shaw
Producer and host Jason Love has appeared on HBO, Comedy Central, America’s Got Talent, and over 20 national broadcasts. He has performed overseas for the troops and on the seas for cruise lines, and was a finalist at the Cabo Comedy Festival. Jason’s non-profit, Love & Laughter, brings free shows to cancer support communities and others in need.
Standup Comedy on the Hill tickets are $15 for reserved premium seats and $12 for reserved seats presale. All tickets at the door are $15 on the day of show. Tickets may be purchased at the Hillcrest Center for the Arts Box Office or by calling (805) 381-1246 or www.hillcrestarts.com.
Hillcrest Center for the Arts | Situated on the Hill overlooking The Oaks Mall and the beautiful city beyond, the Hillcrest Center for the Arts is an epicenter of arts activity in the Conejo Valley. The Hillcrest Center for the Arts is staffed by the Conejo Recreation and Park District, owned by the City of Thousand Oaks, and houses the Arts Council of the Conejo Valley – it is truly the intersection of Community and Art!
The Hillcrest Center for the Arts is proud to function as the Conejo Valley’s connection to professional and quality community theatre, performing and fine arts classes for youth and adults, and music and dance performances of all kinds.
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Ventura County Sheriff Department – Incident Press Release
Eric Manzano
On March 2nd, Sheriff’s deputies and detectives from the Fillmore Police Department identified and arrested 32-year old Eric Manzano after determining he was responsible for setting at least one fire in the city of Fillmore.
During the last three months, the city of Fillmore has experienced a rash of fires to trash cans, porta potties, a shopping cart and three structures. These incidents occurred during the late night and early morning hours. The incidents were deemed to be suspicious in nature and all resulted in minor damage.
In the early morning hours on March 2nd, another fire was reported to a building at the Fillmore Historical Society, located at 350 Main Street. Detectives responded to investigate and discovered video footage captured a subject approach the building at approximately 3:30 AM. The images captured the suspect’s face and distinctive attire. Additionally, the surveillance video captured the suspect’s attempt to light a fire in several places on the building.
The surveillance video was shared with patrol deputies assigned to the Fillmore Police Department. Later that evening, an observant deputy saw Manzano in a public place and noticed he appeared to match the description of the suspect in the video. The deputy initiated a conversation with Manzano and detectives who were in the area investigating the arsons responded to assist in the contact and confirmed Manzano was the subject captured in the video. Furthermore, a search of Manzano found him in possession of items that linked him to the crime. Deputies also noticed that he displayed signs of drug use and they determined he was under the influence of a controlled substance and in possession of drug paraphernalia. He was arrested for arson and drug related charges.
The investigation into the previous arsons is ongoing and Manzano remains a suspect in these crimes. The Fillmore Police Department is seeking the public’s help with information concerning the fires that occurred throughout the city between December and March.
Anyone with any information about these crimes is encouraged to contact Det. Meixner at (805) 947-9391.
Ventura County Crime Stoppers will pay up to $1,000 reward for information, which leads to the arrest and criminal complaint against the person(s) responsible for these crimes. The caller may remain anonymous. The call is not recorded. Call Crime Stoppers at 800-222-TIPS (8477).
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Ventura County Sheriff Department – Incident Press Release
Eric Appel
On 3/3/2018, at approximately 03:15 AM, deputies responded to St. John’s Hospital reference a shooting victim that had just arrived. The victim was stabilized by medical staff and transported to the Ventura County Medical Center for further treatment for his injuries.
During the course of an investigation conducted by the Sheriff’s Major Crimes Unit and the Sheriff’s Gang Unit, detectives learned the victim had become involved in an argument in the 2500 block of Balboa Street in the unincorporated community of El Rio. During that incident, a male suspect shot the victim once in the chest.
Detectives were able to identify the suspect as (S) 26 year old Ventura resident, Eric Appel. At about 11:15 AM, the Sheriff’s Gang Unit located and arrested Appel. Detectives also served a search warrant which resulted in the recovery of a firearm, ammunition and a large quantity of narcotics.
Appel was arrested and booked at the Ventura County Pre-Trial Detention Facility for numerous charges, including one felony count of Attempted Murder, one felony count of Possession for Sales of a Controlled Substance, one felony count of a Prohibited Person Possessing a Firearm, and one misdemeanor count of Driving under the Influence of Controlled Substance.
Appel is currently being held in custody with bail set at $505,000.00. He is scheduled to appear in Ventura County Superior Court on 3/5/2019.
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Trinity Pacific Christian School in Thousand Oaks is the winner of the 2019 Ventura County Mock Trial for the second year in a row. The Mock Trial results were announced this evening at an awards ceremony at the Oxnard Performing Arts Center. Here is how the top eight teams placed:
Trinity Pacific – Silver Team
St. Bonaventure
Santa Susana – Locke Team
Oaks Christian – Gold Team
Westlake
Adolfo Camarillo – Scorpions Team
La Reina
Oak Park – Black Team
Thirty teams from more than two dozen local high schools participated in this year’s competition. Trinity Pacific will go on to the state mock trial contest March 22-24 in Sacramento. Ventura County has taken first place at the state level in 2008, 2011, 2012 and 2013.
About the 2019 Ventura County Mock Trial
Mock Trial brings courtroom drama to life as students take on the major roles of a criminal case, including attorneys, witnesses and even bailiffs. The students present their cases before actual local judges who volunteer for the competition. Local attorneys volunteer as coaches and scorers. The competition is coordinated annually by the Ventura County Office of Education. This year’s fictitious case is People v. Klein, which involves a defendant accused of making threats on social media and making a false report of an emergency to police.
High schools participating this year are: Adolfo Camarillo High School, Agoura High School, Buena High School, Calabasas High School, Channel Islands High School, Fillmore High School, Grace Brethren Jr/Sr High School, La Reina High School, Newbury Park High School, Nordhoff High School, Oak Park High School, Oaks Christian School, Oxnard High School, Rio Mesa, Royal High School, Saint Bonaventure High School, Santa Paula High School, Santa Susana High School, Simi Valley High School, St. Augustine Academy, Thousand Oaks High School, Trinity Pacific Christian School, Ventura High School, Villanova Preparatory School and Westlake High School.
This year’s Ventura County Mock Trial logo artwork was created by Alexandra Clark from La Reina High School in Thousand Oaks.
Additional information about the 2019 Ventura County Mock Trial is available at vcoe.org/mocktrial.
About the Ventura County Office of Education
The Ventura County Office of Education provides a broad array of fiscal, training and technology support services to local school districts, helping to maintain and improve lifelong educational opportunities for children, educators and community members. VCOE also operates schools that serve students with severe disabilities and behavioral issues, provides career education courses, and coordinates countywide academic competitions including Mock Trial and the Ventura County Science Fair. Learn more at: www.vcoe.org.
The Ventura County Office of Education provides a broad array of fiscal, training and technology support services to local school districts, helping to maintain and improve lifelong educational opportunities for children, educators and community members. VCOE also operates schools that serve students with severe disabilities and behavioral issues, provides career education courses, and coordinates countywide academic competitions including Mock Trial and the Ventura County Science Fair. Learn more at: www.vcoe.org.
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Newly-confirmed Attorney General Bill Barr laid out in stark terms the negative effects of a porous border, in a Monday speech before the National Association of Attorneys General.
Barr preceded his warning by noting the rising number of opioid deaths in the United States, particularly the effects of Chinese fentanyl, which is used by Mexican drug cartels to augment the effects of their heroin supply. “The DEA has stated publicly that the Mexican trans national criminal organizations are the greatest criminal drug threat to the United States,” Barr declared, adding “the DEA tells us that the majority of the heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and fentanyl in this country got here across our southern border.”
“Having a porous southern border makes every state more vulnerable to these drugs,” Barr continued, saying that “the problem with the porous border is not limited to drugs,” and that “it creates opportunities for human trafficking, one of the most heinous criminal acts there is.”
Barr’s comments come amid a high-profile fight between President Donald Trump and Congress about the current situation at the U.S. southern border. The United States detained approximately 70,000 migrants at the southern border in February, a dramatic spike from the previous month.
Trump declared a national emergency at the border in February, which authorizes him to appropriate approximately $3.6 billion to begin construction of his proposed wall.
The senators each say they oppose the move because they believe it to be an unconstitutional action by Trump to circumvent the congressional appropriations process. Trump, however, has vowed to veto any disapproval legislation which would effectively end the process as the Congress does not have the necessary two-thirds majority to override the president’s action.
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An aquifer beneath the Mojave Desert could reliably provide water to 100,000 households in drought-stricken California for the next half-century, The Washington Post reports.
Publicly-traded water company Cadiz owns about 35,000 acres of property inside the Mojave Trails National Monument, designated in February 2016 by former President Barack Obama. Cadiz plans to tap into the Fenner Basin aquifer beneath the desert and pipe water to the Colorado River Aqueduct, less than 50 miles away, if the company can get the proper permits and approvals from California.
California is one of the most environmentally strict states in the U.S. and any significant change to the landscape is fought by environmental groups and Democrat lawmakers. Environmental assessments and studies must prove that harm to the environment will be minimal before any large infrastructure project is completed. (RELATED: Trump Says ‘Bad Environmental Laws’ Made Deadly California Wildfires Even Worse)
“This is an extremely difficult space in which to do business in this state,” Cadiz chief executive Scott Slater told WaPo. Cadiz has pushed for the project’s approval for more than two decades.
“These legacies shadow everything we do, and so we have to make sure what we are doing is right,” Slater said, referring to the 1913 diversion of the Owens River to Las Angeles. The project killed Owens Lake and Owens Valley’s agriculture economy.
Cadiz has completed the environmental assessments required to get approval for the project, but California has hesitated to consent. Environmental groups dispute Cadiz’s assessments and say the water project would harm the desert environment and ecosystem. Environmental groups are increasingly worried that the Cadiz project will finally be approved with help from allies in the Trump administration.
“[Cadiz has] tried unsuccessfully for years to take this water and move it to market,” National Parks Conservation Association California desert director David Lamfrom told WaPo. “Now the threat has taken a new shape given how advantageously Cadiz has been treated by the Trump administration.”
President Donald Trump took an interest in California’s water politics last year after deadly wildfires scarred the state. Trump blamed California’s “bad environmental laws” for filling vast California forests with tons of dry fuel and for diverting available water to the coast to preserve habitat rather than using it to fight fires.
The Trump administration threatened punitive action against California if the state refused to reform its environmental laws and make more water available for businesses and households.
Mojave Trails National Monument,, National Parks Websie
President Donald Trump continued his tradition of serving fast food to athletes visiting the White House, this time offering the North Dakota State University (NDSU) Bison football team Chick-fil-A chicken sandwiches, McDonald’s Big Macs, and french fries.
Trump, clearly unperturbed by the media’s coverage of the Clemson visit, opted to bring out fast food again Monday for the NDSU players, who recently won the Football Championship Subdivision title.
Fast food spread at the White House for North Dakota State University Football Team. Big Macs and Chick-Fil-A. pic.twitter.com/B3iTtSHbW2
— Laura Figueroa Hernandez (@Laura_Figueroa) March 4, 2019
Trump joked that he could’ve served fancier food, but said, “I know you people,” and “we like American companies.”
Clemson quarterback Trevor Lawrence said the fast food spread he experienced in January was “awesome,” but it’s not clear yet if the NDSU players feel the same way.
The abortion conversation in America is changing, and quickly. The euphemisms that have dominated and distorted the debate are falling away, and in their place, Americans are beginning to acknowledge the reality that abortion destroys a human life.
In January, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit pulled the curtain back when it decided Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas v. Smith. The case began in October 2015, after the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) released a series of undercover journalism videos showing that Planned Parenthood was apparently violating the law in several ways — particularly by selling fetal tissue, which is illegal in Texas. Based on the videos and a state investigation, the Texas Health and Human Services Commission ended Medicare agreements with Planned Parenthood.
Planned Parenthood sued, and in 2017, a trial court judge issued an injunction requiring the state of Texas to continue funding Planned Parenthood. The state appealed the decision to the 5h Circuit.
The 5th Circuit sent the case back down to the lower court, ordering further review of the evidence that Planned Parenthood had sold fetal tissue — and particularly noted that the lower court was wrong in saying that the Center for Medical Progress videos had not been authenticated. And in that published decision, the court included a color still from those authenticated CMP videos: a grisly, heart-wrenching snapshot of a dead, aborted baby — its dismembered parts jumbled in what looks like a casserole dish.
The battle to publicize the Center for Medical Progress videos has been a long one. They were first released in 2015, and they document a months-long undercover investigation of Planned Parenthood employees, including senior officials, that uncovered apparently illegal activity, including Medicare fraud and organ trafficking. The videos are difficult to watch. In one frame, a Planned Parenthood director sips wine and discusses pricing for babies’ heads, livers, lungs and intact corpses. In another, a physician chats with journalists while poking through a glass dish of baby parts.
CMP knew they were up against a giant, and they knew that Planned Parenthood and its allies would stop at nothing to ensure their footage never saw the light of day. Astoundingly, Kamala Harris, then attorney general of California, ordered a raid of a CMP journalist’s home and seized some of the unreleased footage. Planned Parenthood and its allies continue to adamantly and falsely assert that the videos were selectively edited, but an independent forensic analysis group authenticated the videos.
A House Selective Investigative Panel was formed in response to the evidence from the videos and found that Planned Parenthood had broken multiple federal laws. But despite this, pro-abortion advocates have continued to downplay and deny the gruesome reality the videos exposed.
It is a cliché that a picture is worth a thousand words, but clichés are repeated because they are often true. Countless words have been spilled about abortion, but this one picture from the 5th Circuit’s decision cuts through the euphemistic mist like a million-candlepower spotlight. What we see in that dish is not a lump of tissue. It is not a vestigial scrap like an appendix or a tonsil. The parts are unmistakably human: tiny feet; perfectly formed hands. We can count the fingers and toes. The 5th Circuit showed in the most graphic terms the most disturbing truth: Abortion is a brutal human death.
Yet this picture speaks far more than a thousand words: It speaks some 61 million (and counting) words — each one of them the name of a child who should be among us today.
When we see this picture, we cannot escape the question: Who was this baby? Would she have been Sophia, Olivia, or Emma; Alexis, Kayla, or Laila? We’ll never know, because that baby human ended her days hacked to pieces in a cold glass dish in a Planned Parenthood building.
But now, because of the 5th Circuit’s opinion, her death does not go unseen.
This is a victory for Americans who cherish life. But it is a painful victory, for it reveals an almost unthinkable reality. Just as many people struggled to cope with the reality of the Holocaust as its horrors unfolded, it is difficult to contemplate the reality of the mutilated baby in the dish.
In 1945, flickering black-and-white newsreels showed footage of long lines of German civilians being herded—sometimes forcefully—through the death camps. The singular purpose of that footage was that they might see the truth. The camps had sprung up in their midst, barely noticed. Unquestioned, these camps operated for years, blackening the sky with the smoke from the incinerators. Millions of people vanished into those camps, unheeded.
The filmmakers who entered those camps in 1945 saw such horror that they feared being disbelieved—so much so that famed movie producer John Ford, then serving as a Navy captain, was brought in to authenticate the films. At last, no one could deny the truth that perhaps they suspected all along: Those grisly grey buildings dealt death, hour by hour, for all the years that people stood by and did nothing. At last, the world knew.
And at last, the seal on the truth of abortion is broken. As a nation, we cannot say that we do not know the truth: The gleaming “clinic” down the road is dealing death, hour by hour.
But the fight is far from over. The 5th Circuit will reconvene en banc in the coming days, with all of the circuit’s judges reviewing the three-judge panel decision. Meanwhile, other states seek ways to sever Planned Parenthood’s tax funding, stop its fraudulent conduct, and send taxpayer dollars to real clinics that provide actual healthcare to women.
Those of us who love life must redouble our efforts to defend it. The brave CMP journalists went where no camera had gone before. They heard the callous wheeling and dealing, saw the casserole dish on the counter. And they confirmed what many of us have long known in our hearts: Planned Parenthood is a merchant of death.
We must do yet more: We must continue to support and defend pro-life pregnancy centers and organizations that serve women, to defend the rights of pro-life healthcare professionals to work in accordance with their conscience, and to uphold the dignity of every human person at every stage of life. For if the picture in the opinion can be said to have a last word, it is this: Every baby should find a home in loving arms, not be left torn apart in a cold glass dish.
Kristen Waggoner (@KWaggonerADF) is senior vice president of the U.S. legal division for the nonprofit Alliance Defending Freedom, which has prevailed in eight recent U.S. Supreme Court victories, including Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission and National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.
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The CO2 Coalition offered Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez an open invitation to come and debate them.
Dr. Caleb Rossiter, the coalition’s director, made the offer at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference.
Rossiter challenged the global warming “catastrophe” endorsed by Ocasio-Cortez and others.
Skeptics of global warming “catastrophe” have an extended an offer for Green New Deal champion New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to come and debate them.
Retired statistics professor Dr. Caleb Rossiter offered a standing invitation for Ocasio-Cortez, and others who have attacked the CO2 Coalition, to come and debate climate science and energy policy.
Taking a page from his early anti-war activism days, Rossiter put a piece of paper with Ocasio-Cortez’s name, and the names of other “alarmists,” on an empty chair next to panelists during a Friday panel at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).
Rossiter said anti-war activists would have empty chairs at events reserved for Defense Department officials who, though invited, would never show up.
Ocasio-Cortez and Maine Democratic Rep. Chellie Pingree recently went after big tech companies for sponsoring an event at LibertyCon, a conference put on by a libertarian student group, at which the CO2 Coalition also sponsored an event.
Dr. Caleb Rossiter invites New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to debate. Michael Bastasch/TheDCNF
Ocasio-Cortez and Pingree said tech companies’ “implicit” support for the CO2 Coalition was “dangerous to our society” because it allegedly spread misinformation about climate science. However, NASA attributes much of the observed “global greening” in the past 30 years to elevated CO2 levels.
The CO2 Coalition is often labeled as spreading “climate denial” by their opponents for arguing global warming will likely be beneficial because increased carbon dioxide levels stimulate plant and crop growth.
But the CO2 Coalition is made up of dozens of scientists and policy experts who reject the “carbon dioxide catastrophe” narrative as Rossiter called it Friday, but they don’t reject greenhouse gas theory.
Alongside Rossiter at Friday’s panel were Cato Institute climate scientist Patrick Michaels and Manhattan Institute economist Mark Mills, both of whom are CO2 Coalition members. Michaels criticized the “alarmist” climate change narrative, and Mills laid out his case for why sweeping plans, like Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal, wouldn’t work.’
Though, Michaels did say there were common areas where both sides of the climate change debate could work together to improve policies, including flood insurance reform.
“There are things that we do, that everybody can agree on, that aren’t necessarily related to climate change,” Michaels said during the panel.
Michaels also said reducing black carbon emissions is another area where common cause is possible. Black carbon is small, sooty particles that result from fossil fuel combustion.
“There is pretty strong literature on black carbon, carbon particulates, being an agent involved in the warming business,” Michaels said. “You get those out of the air, you probably have a positive health impact and it’s easy. That’s a common route we could take, if we wanted to.”
Rossiter said allowing Africa to develop fossil-fueled energy resources was another he believed both sides could embrace.
“We can certainly agree that Africa should be held as harmless,” Rossiter said. “Only a quarter of the people in Africa have electricity and the result is a life expectancy of about 59 years.”
“You need electricity in your house or you’re going to breathe black carbon that’s coming off of the cow dung that you’re burning or the wood or the charcoal that you’re burning,” Rossiter said. “Also, you need that electricity to clean the water so your children won’t drink dirty water, get diarrhea and die.”
There have been so far about three general reactions to the concocted psychodrama.
One, and the most common, has been apprehension that Smollett’s lies will discredit future real incidents of hate crimes against gays and minorities. This could be a legitimate concern, given the tensions within a multiracial society.
Yet, in fact, there is no evidence in the past that false reports (some lists of such fake hate crimes put the number at around 400) have had such an effect—either on spiking real hate crimes, suppressing reporting, discouraging police investigations, or preventing even more race-crime hoaxes.
As Heather Mac Donald has recently once again noted, the 2017 upswing in reported hate crimes from the prior year may well be largely because an additional 1,000 police agencies were for the first time reporting such crimes. Mac Donald also notes that a “hate crime”—a micro percentage of reported violent crime—is narrowly defined not to include general interracial violent victimization, a category in which African-Americans on average commit 85 percent of such crimes.
From Tawana Brawley to the Covington kids, fictive accounts of race-based bias and violence have not stopped purported victims from believing that they, too, could invent such incidents and win credibility—to say nothing of profitable attention. After all, the publicity of the Duke Lacrosse or Covington hoaxes did not suggest to Jussie Smollett that he would not be found credible. In fact, the opposite may be true. The more we hear of fake hate crimes, the more we will likely hear of future fake hate crimes.
Nor did the spate of prior fake racist crimes discourage quite influential media and celebrity grandees from rushing to embrace the unlikely narrative. After all, Americans were asked to believe without evidence that two venomous white men, with red MAGA hats, hooded, and deliberately prowling about at 2 a.m. in subfreezing temperatures, in a liberal neighborhood of liberal Chicago (that went 83 percent for Hillary Clinton), were on the hunt for random minorities and gays, replete with customary ski-masks, lynching rope, and bleach.
And then, once the MAGA devils instinctively recognized a random early-morning passerby as a rather minor actor from a Fox TV series “Empire,” they would grow enraged and shout out racial and homophobic slurs and MAGA rah-rahs (“This is MAGA country!”)—incensed by their sudden recognition that their target was, in fact, the obviously world-famous Smollett (who said his white thuggish assaulters first yelled out “Empire!” then, to add clarity about their white fears of such a hit series, they added “F—ot Empire n—er!”).
Smollett, however, insists he stood defiant (“I don’t answer to Empire. My name ain’t Empire.”), in his role as a supposedly all-too-well known and despised actor in the alt-white world.
Further, we were asked to believe that in between blows from two much larger white demons, the relatively diminutive Smollett did not break off his phone call transmission. Instead, as he later described the fracas, he fought heroically back (“So I punched his ass right back. We started tussling”) and drove off the Trump-fueled monsters (“And I want a little gay boy who might watch this to see that I fought the f— back. I didn’t run off. They did.”), even as he was oblivious to the attempted lynching (“I noticed the rope around my neck and I started screaming”).
In addition, we were asked to believe that Smollett’s prior criminal conviction for providing police with false information during a DUI arrest, and the strange coincidence of receiving a recent death threat in the mail packaged with mysterious white powder (“In the letter, it had a stick figure hanging from a tree with a gun pointing toward it: ‘Smollett Jussie, you will die, black [bleep]. There was no address, but the return address said in big red letters, ‘MAGA.’“), would provide no useful context for these strange events.
Discrediting Hate Crimes? Instead, Smollett fought off the racists for the greater good of America: “I have fought for love. I’m an advocate. I respect too much the people—who I am now one of those people—who have been attacked in any way. You do such a disservice when you lie about something like this.”
So do not dare question either the courage or the mettle of the crusading Smollett: “For me, the main thing was the idea that I somehow switched up my story, you know? And that somehow maybe I added a little extra trinket, you know, of the MAGA thing. I didn’t need to add anything like that. They called me a f—ot, they called me a n—er. There’s no which way you cut it. I don’t need some MAGA hat as the cherry on top of some racist sundae.”
Amen, Jussie.
Yet much of the nation believed all that and more. Politicians and celebrities did so within minutes. Many did not give up such credence, even as Smollett refused to hand over his cell phone records, which he had cited as electronic proof of the attack, given he supposedly was on the phone at the time with his manager, thus memorializing the attack. If you had any doubt about Smollett’s fiction, he reminds us again that such unbelief says more about you than him: “It feels like if I had said it was a Muslim, or a Mexican, or someone black, I feel like the doubters would have supported me much more. A lot more. And that says a lot about the place that we are in our country right now.”
Again, amen, it does say a lot, Jussie.
None of recent concocted racially motivated attacks have had any effect in demolishing public credibility about even the most improbable allegations of such assaults. Indeed, in our Orwellian world of racial melodrama, those who rushed to judgment to condemn Donald Trump and his supporters for Smollett’s suffering, turned 180 degrees on hearing the news of the Smollett fabrication. They now soberly and judiciously warned us not to do what they had just done. Instead America was “to wait for all the facts” and not “rush to judgement” in assuming that Smollett was guilty of fraud.
Smollett has shown that the most absurd narratives imaginable will continue to gain credence because they fill a deep psychological, cultural—and, yes, careerist—need for millions in the country to believe that hate crimes are epidemic, that they are the currency of the Right, and that they can only be addressed by more government scrutiny of a particular class of victimizers such as the Duke Lacrosse team, the Covington kids, or Smollett’s mythic red-hatted Trump racists.
(A cynic might have advised Smollett to have first checked that the anticipated surveillance cameras under which he staged the attack were pointing in the right direction, and that he should have ensured his “Empire”hirelings did not buy their sundry assault gear—masks, hats, etc.—all at the same store or at least not on film, and that Smollett himself should have not written them a traceable check for their services, and that he should have written into his script antifreeze dousing instead of household bleach that freezes at about 5 degrees.)
In 2019 America, the number of those likely victimized far outnumbers the shrinking pool of likely victimizers. The rewards and publicity for being a concocted victim of a frenzied Trump supporter far outweigh the possible downside of fabricating the entire incident. As we saw with the Kavanaugh and Covington fiascoes, if a crime could or should be true, then it more or less is.
Wasted Time and Money? A second reaction was the far more legitimate worry that thousands of hours of careful police work were squandered, as resources were diverted from real crime investigations. Although so far, the overburdened Chicago police have been careful in downplaying this redirection in limited resources, it was no doubt gargantuan.Yet Smollett’s supporters almost immediately questioned the police department’s ethics when authorities ever so cautiously hinted that the facts and Smollett’s own behavior did not line up with a racist attack.
Smollett’s probable preemptive O.J. Simpson-like defense will run contrary to facts, but he has learned that ginning up popular furor against the police can, at worst, lead to leverage in plea bargaining and, at best, turn potential local jurors into nullifying social justice warriors.
In lieu of either defense, he could turn to fallback defenses that he acted in a drug-induced diminished capacity and was not responsible for his actions—or that his jealous “Empire”duo secretly scouted out his nocturnal routines, were all the time covert Trump/MAGA converts, and, as traitors to their race and class, in envy of Smollett’s success, and as ingrates pounced despite receiving such generous financial help from him in the recent past.
Racism Against “Racists” Is Not Racism Yet the third, most important, and most ignored reaction was that in some sense Smollett himself was a racist and had committed a hate crime.
His farce is yet another example that it is now largely permissible to slur and smear millions of purported Trump supporters, as either defined by their stereotyped race and gender or their red hats (with or without a logo). As pundits and talking heads nearly wept on screen in their worries about future potential hate crimes that might now not be taken seriously, they abjectly ignored the real hate crime that had just occurred. In truth, Smollett had done his best to ignite some sort of popular racially driven vendetta against conservative white male voters, previously known as “clingers,” “crazies,” “deplorables,” and “irredeemables” who, our elites warn, smell up Walmart, gross America out with toothless smiles, and should be swapped out for new immigrants.
Or as courageous Smollett described the motives for the faux-attack of his two Nigerian-American contractors, supposedly dressed up as Donald Trump’s white ogres, “I come really, really hard against 45”—that is, Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States—“I come really hard against his administration, and I don’t hold my tongue. I could only go off of their words. I mean, who says, “f—ot Empire n—er,” “This is MAGA country, n—er,” ties a noose around your neck, and pours [frozen?] bleach on you? And this is just a friendly fight? I will never be the man that this did not happen to. Everything is forever changed.”
In fact, no one says that, Jussie, and no one ever did say that except you who scripted the dialogue.
Given that the Smollett myth followed so closely after the Covington kids fiction, we can surmise that Smollett counted on two popular reactions: the left-wing public was still thirsty for more “proof” of MAGA white hatred, even if poorly scripted and logically implausible; and, second, Smollett was not much worried about any serious consequences if he should be caught once again in a made-up hate crime.
To paraphrase CNN anchorwoman Brooke Baldwin, who in careerist fashion immediately sought to gin up popular outrage over the Smollett “hate crime” attack: “This is America, 2019.”
Baldwin is right in her inference that we really are suffering from a national illness—and her own fact-free, careerist-driven editorializing and others like it are the proof.
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Photo: Jussie Smollett at the Los Angeles special screening of `Alien: Covenant` held at the TCL Chinese Theatre IMAX in Hollywood, USA on May 17, 2017. Dreamstime
Victor Davis Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow in Residence in Classics and Military History at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, a professor of Classics Emeritus at California State University, Fresno, and a nationally syndicated columnist for Tribune Media Services…. READ MORE
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