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A famous television actor is attacked in a public restroom by two MAGA-hat-wearing thugs, who scream racial and homophobic slurs, beat him, pour bleach over him, and leave him bleeding on the floor with a noose around his neck.
Celebrities, television personalities, and presidential candidates, and Donald Trump all issue support for the victim and decry the attack.
I have no idea whether Vixen Strangely is her real name. It is possible. After all, my first name is Burr.
What I have known for years is that she writes thoughtfully and well. In many ways, she really is a fount of wisdom. Even she is stunned, then puzzled, after the story falls apart. Jussie Smollett is arrested for filing a false police report.
She writes of the serious damage that accompanies the news.
Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson is blunt:
Comedian Stephen Colbert has a similar reaction:
…what a dick!
Vixen wonders why anyone who has labored for the well being of others would do such a thing.
That is the question, isn’t it?
There were skeptics from the start. Not all were engaged in the sort of denial some have about all hate crimes. What sort of white racist hoodlums would roam the streets of Chicago during a period of massive sub-zero arctic cold, looking for a black gay public figure to attack? How likely that the two were fans of a show featuring hip-hop music with a cast made up mostly of African-American actors, and that they watched it often enough to be familiar with Mr. Smollett’s character?
I confess that I was among the skeptics, although for a more superficial reason. It seemed like a re-run.
I am old enough to be often reminded of the late Morton Downey Jr. He was the right-wing scourge of all things liberal back in the 1980’s.
He once had a young man stand on a stool with a noose around his neck as he yelled to the audience:
His television show would bring on controversial guests for him, and his loyal audience, to bully and abuse. Some of his episodes have seemed like the model for a few Fox News segments. I think of one-time host Bill O’Reilly yelling at the occasional guest to shut up, or Tucker Carlson screaming obscenities at a guest in an interview that went viral, but was never aired.
But Morton took things to a level Fox hosts could only hope to reach.
A couple of times there were skuffles. Mostly he liked to stand inches away as he harranged those he did not like. He was a chain smoker and he liked to blow smoke in the faces of some guests as he yelled at them:
Get outta here!!
I Puke on you!!
He loved the idea of puking on his adversaries. Even more, he liked to envision his enemies as reguritating rather than speaking. Pablum puking was a recurring obsession:
As he introduced his second season on the air, he listed some of those he would confront:
His career went into the stratosphere. He started with a local show in Secaucus, NJ. The show went into national syndication. Nearly 200 stations subscribed. There seemed no limit.
But after a while it got predictable. Ratings went down, then went into a nosedive. Advertisers were cautious about being associated with controversy. Stations began to drop his show.
He was going down.
In 1989, he was attacked in a public restroom. His hair was cut. A Nazi swastica was drawn on his face. After filing a police report, a brief hospital stay, and a night of rest, he was interviewed by reporter Matthew Schwartz of WWOR Channel 9 News, Secaucus.
I did ask them not to hurt me.
Next thing I knew I was reaching for something blunt that I felt against my face.
They pulled my hand down again.
You know it’s really hard to resurrect it sometimes.
Pulled my hand down again.
Wrote something on my face, And cut my hair off.
And then said Now you’re one of us, Seig Heil.
And they were gone.
There were odd coincidences. Witnesses saw him go into the restroom. Several recognized him and waited for the famous person to come out. But nobody caught a glimse of his assailants. Nobody.
Except Morton Downey, Jr.
The story fell apart. His audience dwindled. Advertisers were gone. His show ended.
Morton Downey Jr. eventually was treated for lung cancer. He told reporters that he was touched by letters, cards, and visits by noted liberals. Conservatives, he said, pretty much ignored him.
And then he died.
I thought of Morton Downey, Jr. as I watched the Chicago Police Superintendent repeat the question posed by our favored blogger.
How could someone look at the hatred and suffering associated with that symbol and see an opportunity to manipulate that symbol to further his own public profile?
How can an individual who’s been embraced by the city of chicago turn around and slap everyone in this city in the face by making these false claims?
We who continue the human struggle toward a good living, working for a few possessions or, for some, existence itself, the answer has another dimension. How can someone with so much fame, so much quickly accumulated wealth, want to take such an action?
A Janice Joplin song includes an old adage:
That isn’t true, of course. Those with nothing must fight hardest for daily existence.
But the inverse may hold some truth. I think of someone with little, someone who achieves rapid success at a level most of us experience only in dreams, then watches it begin to slip away. Perhaps they also experience a temptation most of us will never feel.
To have everything.
To have everything to lose.
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