Why are we trying to compare the two? Both suck and one doesn’t excuse or mitigate the other.
As to equal coverage, it isn’t just about race—Smollet is a celebrity. Why does Kim Kardashian get more coverage than a ton of other things? I highly suspect that if some no name, angsty gay black dude did this that it wouldn’t have received anywhere near the coverage.
I will agree with Nesrie’s point that this ultimately comes back to the public (as almost all things do): the media’s coverage of the Smollet story lines up with what the public craves—sensational celebrity news. I don’t see any sign that the media, in general, is pushing this story harder due to their own agenda, rather than public demand.
You make a good point about his celebrity, but you can bet that the crowd that denigrates the SPLC will be comparing the two cases, implying that real White Supremacist domestic terrorism is overblown because “look at this!”
Literally the only way they could do that is to ignore the attempted mass murder by the other guy… which goes back to my point. These are not equal at all but the racists and everything is fine crowd will try to pretend the other one didn’t just happen.
This should change nothing, and if it is does, it’s on them, not him.
If it wasn’t Smollett, it would be something else. At least Smollett allows you to point how fucking stupid they are considering the severity of the two episodes. Rest assured they have some other thing in their backpack for it anyway, they always do. Usually it’s some obscure local story, but they’ll have it.
I don’t think the whataboutism is the biggest damage from Smollet. The extreme right doesn’t care about defending coast guard guy. Hell, as Nesrie has pointed out, the public is sort of numb to it.
Smollet’s major damage is the next time a gay black man gets beat up, harassed, etc. Smollet will be raised to say, well, maybe/probably it’s a false accusation. Coast guard guy will be long forgotten by then, but Smollet won’t be.
And that’s the public’s choice, that’s what they want, that is not on Smollet. There are millions of Smollets out there, but for some reason, because Smollet is black that changes is everything… except it doesn’t. If a woman drives her kid over a cliff, we still help the next mother who says her kids are missing because to do otherwise is unthinkable. It doesn’t matter how many mothers or father’s lied before them.
You keep ignoring the celebrity angle. There are not millions of Smollets out there. Yes, celebrity fascination is “the public’s choice”, but you might as well rail against why the sky is blue.
To be clear, I’m not arguing for Smollet being punished more for being a celebrity—it’s just that the damage is greater because he is. The whole celebrity as some sort of role model should be it’s own other thread.
I’m not ignoring it. It’s irrelevant. Do we even have a single day out there where some celebrity hasn’t lied about something? You want this to be about celebrities. I am refusing that explanation. This is another example off the public demanding all people who are not white be perfect. It’s an unreasonable expectation that is forced upon minority groups.
This will probably get more play than Liam Neeson admitting he wanted to murder someone… I’ll give you a couple of guesses as to why one will be forgotten and the other will be pushed for years. You won’t need a couple of guesses.
I had no clue who this person was before this story, so he could have been some random guy for all I know. Wouldn’t have made a difference in the story for me.
And to put it another perspective, remember that one time when someone lied and said some black guy hurt them, attacked them or otherwise assaulted and robbed them, the police rounded up every black person within miles, racial profiled them, turned out it was a hoax and then that never happened again because it turned out we can’t trust white people anymore…
You don’t? Yeah because that doesn’t happen. They still do it, almost every damn time. It’s a one-sided claim.
It really depends on what you’re looking for. these kind of stories pop-up all the time, all the time… but the other way around. This one went viral… no celebrity involved.
Maybe it’s just me, but I never heard of that story. It went locally viral or nationally? Either way, you don’t think it would have been even bigger had it been a celebrity?
I’m still struggling with why you’re so adamant about this being purely/mostly because Smollet is black, rather than having at least a huge dob of “it’s because he’s a celebrity”. Is your position that Smollet being a celebrity had little impact on coverage of this story? Any no-name gay black guy doing the same would get substantially the same coverage because the public is out there trying to find any example they can of black guys committing crimes?
On your point of Liam Neeson, that story made the rounds for a fair bit. Moreover, Liam committed (or at least admitted to) no crime. Admittedly, Neeson is a much bigger celebrity. Still, Smollet went off and pulled a conspiracy, hired co-conspirators, and filed false police reports. To me, what Smollet did is a bigger deal (and more sensational) than Neeson, by a lot.
Further, you had the whole mystery crime part of it. I remember this story getting a fair amount of coverage before there was any hint of Smollet being the criminal—it got a huge amount of coverage when he was just seen as the victim. Stories stay in the news cycle longer when there’s new info coming out over an extended time. Neeson was a single event and then done.
The story about some person being assaulted by a member of some minority group, any minority group for a white person, and it being a blatant lie, a complete fabrication is so common that society has pretty much become numb to it. It barely makes the news, but it still makes Social Media circles due to the outrage of the original attack, the lie.
So the idea that any group should be able to point and see look, someone lied, and now we don’t have to take these situations seriously anymore is a cover and a lie itself.
The fact that Smollet did what he did should change nothing, like it changes nothing for the other groups.
When, someone says they were assaulted, attacked,kidnapped… you treat it seriously. It doesn’t matter if it is a mother who says her children were taken from her car, even if some other mother just drove hers off a cliff yesterday. If a man says he was jumped in an ally by Neo-Nazis, you respond as if he was jumped in the alley by Neo-Nazis. If kid says he was beat up in the bathroom by thugs, you treat him like he’'s telling the truth and then the police need to do their job, find out the facts.
Neeson’s was not a single event even by his admission. He tried to murder someone for an entire week. 10 years from now, we’ll probably be talking about Smollet’s lies and not Neeson’s struggle to admit his past racism. Neeson isn’t even in the news anymore and the racists and the whatbout oh my god stop playing the race card group… they’lll be on this like starved dogs… and ignoring the fact that these kind of lies aren’t even uncommon… but of course Fox News won’t play them.
And no one tells white people, well gosh, you guys blew it, now we can’t believe you anymore.
