The Jussie Smollett Incident

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to Hoax, a production of iHeart Podcasts. Folks.
It's a hug.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
No I haven't seen when us have a lot to
see this last Welcome to Hoax, a podcast about the
lies we wish were true and truths that sound like lies.
I'm the ghost of Danishchwartz.

Speaker 1 (00:27):
And I'm the evil twin of Lizzy Logan. Welcome to
the show, Dana. It's our last hoax of season one.
It's our last Hoax. I'm very excited. You've been teasing
a very long episode via text, A long episode, a
juicy and that is an easter egg episode. And I

(00:48):
also just wanted to give us time to like talk
about what the season has meant to us, talk about
what we've learned, say thank you to the fans, and
we're going to keep been every tangent and every digression
in the whole episode. I love it so yes, buckle up,
buckle long episode. How do you feel about season one

(01:12):
of Hoax?

Speaker 2 (01:13):
I have had a blast researching hoaxes. I think what
I've been most dazzled by is the joy of like
nineteenth and eighteenth century court cases, because over ridiculous things
like I'll tell you these hoaxes that are seemed like
so silly, and then I'm like, and it was a
court case that lasted months. Yes, yes, yes, So that

(01:36):
was very fun for me to dive into these hoaxes.
And I also think the main thing I learned is
that even at the time, people didn't always believe them totally.
And I'm like, there are people today who fully believe
very dumb things.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
Oh yeah, people have not gotten significantly more or less
like trickable.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
Yeah. I passed a scientology poster on the way. Oh boy,
I'm just I'm getting political.

Speaker 1 (02:03):
No, I was about to say, just a boy scientology.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
Yeah, but I just mean I think that's part of
the fun of researching hoaxes is realizing that, like the
press coverage they got back then was also because it's
fun to cover hoaxes the same way today people love
covering scammers. And that doesn't mean just because we all
wrote about Annadelvi or read about Annadelvi, doesn't mean everyone

(02:26):
would have fallen for it.

Speaker 1 (02:28):
Yes, and I've been impressed by the creativity that goes
into some of these hoaxes, like people really put a
lot of effort into them. Yeah. I've also been really
excited by and thankful for the reception that this podcast
has gotten. I mean, you obviously like had a lot

(02:49):
of built in goodwill and fans from Noble Blood. I
am much newer to the podcast game, so I just
want to say thank you everyone who has sort of
stuck by through me. I've had, like, you know, just
maybe some growing pains of me learning how to be
a pot You were a natural. Thank you. I think

(03:09):
I think I started like pretty strong, but just I
was not as practiced as you were.

Speaker 2 (03:15):
That's this is a totally new animal. And I also
want to say for people who listen to Noble Blood,
thank you for trying something completely different. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (03:25):
Absolutely, And people have so kindly written in with so
many suggestions for hoaxes we do, like have we have
noted them. We haven't really gotten to any have a
running list, but we have made a list of them,
and people have very kindly written in with like small
corrections and you know, just suggestions of ways that we

(03:47):
can be more accurate with our word choices.

Speaker 2 (03:50):
I'm really grateful when fans have sent photos they've like
visited sites that I can't get to. Someone sent a
photo she visited Anna Anderson's grave. I should have said you,
I should have shown you these photos.

Speaker 1 (04:04):
Oh it's okay, and I will.

Speaker 2 (04:06):
I just am very very grateful for the way people
are engaging with these stories. So thank you, thank you. Yes,
we will find a future for this podcast, so stick
with us, follow on Instagram, and we will tell you
exactly where that future is.

Speaker 1 (04:19):
Yes, and don't don't unsubscribe from this feed please.

Speaker 2 (04:23):
Yeah, it's nothing's going to happen. Don't worry. You're if
the next episode that comes up will be a hoax episode,
So just just chill up.

Speaker 1 (04:31):
All right. Today's topic is Jesse Smollett, WHOA Okay.

Speaker 2 (04:39):
Oh I cannot wait because this is a story truly
that I did not really engage with.

Speaker 1 (04:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (04:44):
I just kind of was like, I'm out.

Speaker 1 (04:46):
Yeah. Similarly, I followed it for a little bit, and
then when it was revealed that there were major inconsistencies,
I had the reaction that I think a lot of
people had, which is like, this is not white people's business.

Speaker 2 (05:02):
This is not my business.

Speaker 1 (05:03):
Yeah, but you know, I am a pop culture writer
and we have a podcast about hoaxes. This is my business.
This is a major hoax. This is a major hoax.
So trigger warning racism, homophobia, police brutality, descriptions of attacks
by strangers.

Speaker 2 (05:21):
Those are good and important trigger warnings.

Speaker 1 (05:24):
Also disclaimer. There's gonna be more disclaimers. Great, Like, we're
going to be doing a lot of table setting throughout
the episode. Yeah, we're going to go through it pretty slowly.
If you're someone who wants us to get to the point,
we're not going to get to the point right away.
We're going to go through it quite slowly.

Speaker 2 (05:42):
There's a lot of table setting to be done to
do this correctly.

Speaker 1 (05:44):
Yeah. I wanted this to be the last episode that
I brought to the podcast because I wanted to be
the best podcaster I could be by the time we
got to it, Wow, Lizzie, because it's a complicated story. Yeah.
And I wanted us to be like in our hoax groove.

Speaker 2 (06:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (06:06):
And I also thought that it was an interesting sort
of bookend to the first topic that I brought to
this podcast, which was balloon Boy. Yes, so both were
modern media hoaxes where all of the participants are still alive.
They are both about people who had already been on TV.

(06:27):
The balloon Boy family, you might remember, was on wife'swap
reality TV and then were essentially like potentially using these
hoaxes just to get on TV more. They had a
lot of media coverage and then got called liars who
did it for publicity. In both cases, the people who
are involved still claim innocence okay. And in both instances

(06:51):
there was like minimal jail time served and the charges
were essentially dropped and it was basically trial by media.

Speaker 2 (06:58):
Yeah, it does seem like some times for these hoaxes,
except when the seventeenth Senten Day of the eighteenth century.
Most of the time people are like, well, what are
we going to put them on trial for? Right?

Speaker 1 (07:08):
Obviously this is much more serious. Yeah, but the general
shape of it is actually quite similar. So speaking of seriousness,
Jesse to this day maintains his innocence okay. And so
if you're listening to this and you believe him, you
might be thinking, like, where do these two straight white

(07:29):
girls get off going on their mostly sort of light
hearted podcast and calling this gay black guy a liar
about a hate crime? So, like, you know, fair's fair
skip this episode. Yeah, his perspective will be taken into
account in this episode. We're going to give him his say.
I'll also say, listen, a lot of very smart people

(07:50):
think he's lying. And we're not saying that we don't
believe hate crimes happen. We're saying this story is questionable.
But if tomorrow it's proven beyond a shadow of a
doubt that it happened exactly how he said that it happened,
then I'm a jerk, Like I own that. Then I
then you know what canceled me, Lizzie, Like, that's just

(08:13):
on me.

Speaker 2 (08:14):
I will also point out that because hay crimes are
real and legitimate, when people don't tell the truth about them,
it muddies the water and makes things much harder and
messier for people who really do experience that violence. So
also just keep that in mind.

Speaker 1 (08:30):
That's going to be a big thing.

Speaker 2 (08:32):
Yeah, that's something that makes me very frustrated people who
especially online now that this is a rel I actually
don't know much or anything about this case, but it
does make me very frustrated online when I see people
sort of like spinning a narrative of victimhood that isn't
accurate and smells fishy, because then it just muddies the

(08:57):
water and makes it harder for people with legitimate grievances
to find voice.

Speaker 1 (09:01):
But my last two points of like why I think
this is sort of a legit topic for our podcast
are my big ones? Number One, Jesse's okay. Yeah, so
he got sober a few years ago. He's engaged, he's
making music, he was recently on a reality show. His
whole family supports him, Like, we're not kicking a man

(09:21):
who is down. Great, We're not like making content about
an incident that ruined his life.

Speaker 2 (09:30):
Like he's good, sober, engaged, surrounded by loving family.

Speaker 1 (09:35):
He has a life. So this is this is a
man who's like out there and I don't know if
he's thriving, but he's certainly doing fine. Great And as
part of that, he's talking about this. He participated in
a documentary about it, He's given at least two podcast
interviews about it, and he knows that if he talks
about it, the media is going to talk about it. Yeah,
like he brought it up, you know, he's giving the

(09:58):
media permission to talk about it. He knows how the
game is played, so like, this is not an incident
that he's too traumatized to talk about. And he knows
that if he talks about it. He's giving the media
permission to talk about it, and he knows that the
narrative is that it was a hoax. So we're covering
all sides of it.

Speaker 2 (10:17):
Sorry, Like I'm actually very excited to dive in.

Speaker 1 (10:22):
All right, So who is Jesse Smollett An actor? Yes,
he is one of six siblings born to a black
and Irish mother and a white Jewish father in the
Bay Area.

Speaker 2 (10:34):
White Jewish father already common Grid and the Bay Area.

Speaker 1 (10:39):
So he's technically like a quarter black. Okay, So I
would say that he is light skin black. Kind of
the way he looks is like if he told you
he was something else, you might believe him. He looks black.

Speaker 2 (10:52):
Yes, I know I know this actor, and I know
his sister. I think was on Lovecraft Country and I
did watch that and love that book. Okay, yeah, yeah,
I don's a good looking guy. I don't know whether
I know him from like the media related to this
or to be honest, if I have seen anything he's
been in.

Speaker 1 (11:12):
He was mostly just on Empire.

Speaker 2 (11:14):
Yeah, I didn't watch Empire.

Speaker 1 (11:15):
The reason that I'm describing his skin color so specifically,
and I'm going to describe other people's skin color throughout
the episode is that I believe that it speaks to
like potential motivations and is relevant and him being perceived
as black is very important to him. Yeah, And like
claimed by the black community, the siblings are raised primarily

(11:38):
by their mother and they all get into acting as kids.
He has a small part in The Mighty Ducks, Oh,
the original, Yeah, first one. It's his second role. But
here I already want to go on a tangent because
that is sort of like touted is like his breakout,
but it's technically yeah, so it's technically his second role.

(12:00):
His first role is in one of the most insane
made for TV movies I've ever come across. And I
just need to tell you about the first thing he
ever heard.

Speaker 2 (12:10):
Okay, his first ever made for TV movie.

Speaker 1 (12:12):
So it's called a Little Piece of Heaven. It stars
Kirk Cameron and Chloris Leachman. Great, Okay. It's directed by
Mimi Letter, who directed Deep Impact, Wow, and the like
Ruth Bader Ginsberg movie on the basis of sex. Yeah,
but in nineteen ninety one she directed this made for
TV movie. And I'm just going to read you the

(12:34):
log line from IMDb. Okay, Will Loomis lives with his
mentally handicapped sister, Violet, who wants a younger child to
play with. So Will kidnaps one and then another from
the local children's home and tells them they're dead and
have gone to heaven.

Speaker 2 (12:51):
Ah.

Speaker 1 (12:52):
Will and Violet try to make their farm a little
piece of heaven for the kids, while the authorities wonder
what has happened to the kidnap children? Oh my god,
is this based on a true story? No?

Speaker 2 (13:04):
Wait, don't what if this was not based.

Speaker 1 (13:07):
On a true story? That is deranged?

Speaker 2 (13:11):
Who are we supposed to be rooting for? I mean,
I have no like I would hope. What's crazy is
it's like these parents have kidnapped children, and these children
are being violently traumatized.

Speaker 1 (13:25):
Well, it's the older brother who kidnaps children. Yeah, that's
pretty bad. And then at some point, like a judge
is like, you can't tell these kids that they're dead,
but you can, like, you can open up your farm
as like an orphanage.

Speaker 2 (13:41):
They get permission to be around children after they can.

Speaker 1 (13:44):
That's the same thing I've ever heard. It's like, but
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (13:48):
Lizzie, we have to do Okay, let's do a hoax
movie night. We'll do Anastasia. Yeah, and we'll do a
little piece of Heaven.

Speaker 1 (13:54):
But I was like, you know what, what if this
is where Jesse learned that, like, reality is just whatever
you want it to be.

Speaker 2 (13:59):
Wow, Israel is he one of the kidnapped children?

Speaker 1 (14:02):
Yeah, Okay, maybe he did.

Speaker 2 (14:04):
Maybe he learned that.

Speaker 1 (14:04):
I think he's the first kidnap child. And then the
little girl is like I wanted a little girl to
play with, not a little boy. It's the most insane thing.

Speaker 2 (14:16):
I'm like, I really can't even wrap my head around it.
We need to watch this movie and report back.

Speaker 1 (14:22):
It really just blew my mind when I read that.
All Right, So the family moves out to La and
all six siblings book a show together.

Speaker 2 (14:30):
Wow, because they're all a good looking, cute Yeah.

Speaker 1 (14:33):
And it's called on our Own and it's basically like
a very upbeat party of five. Great, but it's like
six siblings being raised by their older sibling. Yeah, And
the show ends and he stops acting for a little bit.
He went to high school, where he felt very out
of place. He attended mostly white schools, and he doesn't

(14:53):
go to college. I'm not sure like what he's up
to sort of during the years that he would have
been in college. But in twenty twelve he gets back
into acting. At this point, the rest of the siblings
have stopped acting, except for, as you pointed out, Journey,
who's his sister who has had a great career.

Speaker 2 (15:11):
Yeah, she's great. I've seen her in things.

Speaker 1 (15:13):
Yeah, she was on but she's had like a steady
career since being a little kid. Oh yeah, she was
on Cosby, she was on Friday Night Lights. You might
recognize her from eves By, You, Birds of Prey, love
Craft Country, And I'm gonna go on a little tangent here.
I have met Journey Smollett. Wow, she was lovely. She's

(15:34):
a very nice person. She's maybe the best looking human
I've ever met.

Speaker 2 (15:41):
Yeah, I can imagine that, like I've met.

Speaker 1 (15:43):
Movie stars where I'm like, oh, you're such a good
looking human, Journey Smollett. I was like, oh, you're an angel.

Speaker 2 (15:52):
Like little piece of heaven, little piece of heaven.

Speaker 1 (15:54):
Like if I had to be with a woman, yeah,
like she glowed, I do wonder.

Speaker 2 (16:00):
I mean, yeah, she's just like a stunningly beautiful woman.
When celebrities become famous, I think something they get some
skincare regimen that normal people aren't privy to because.

Speaker 1 (16:13):
They get other water.

Speaker 2 (16:14):
I think, yeah, okay, tangent, that's going to stay in.

Speaker 1 (16:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (16:18):
I was eating lunch and someone walked into the restaurant,
and before I even identified it as a person, I
was like, Oh, their skin is glowing, their clothes look different,
like you just knew it was a movie star before
they walked in. And it was Connor's story. Yeah, and
he has not been famous that long. Yeah, And it
was astonishing, just like the truly like celebrity glow, even

(16:42):
before I recognized who it was. Skin, hair, their clothes
fit different. I want to know what they're doing. Different waters,
I think, accurate different water.

Speaker 1 (16:51):
But also even because I've seen other celebrities, Journey was like,
she just was she's getting special water. Journey is getting
the most special She's bathing in the special water. Just
good for her anyway. But I also I'm just saying, like, man,
can you imagine being like the second most famous person

(17:11):
in that family. Yeah, might be kind of rough, but whatever,
they're close or great. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (17:17):
Sometimes I do think being siblings to a famous person
is great because you get a lot of the perks
without a lot of the downsides.

Speaker 1 (17:23):
Maybe I think Jesse wants to be famous.

Speaker 2 (17:26):
Yea.

Speaker 1 (17:26):
In twenty fifteen, he books a small but main role
on a little show called Empire, big show. Do you
remember Empire?

Speaker 2 (17:37):
Yeah? Huge too.

Speaker 1 (17:38):
Do you remember what Empire was about?

Speaker 2 (17:39):
A music dynasty family. It's like Succession but music.

Speaker 1 (17:43):
Yes, and it was on before Succession.

Speaker 2 (17:44):
Yeah, so, uh, Succession is Empire for media. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (17:50):
So it's King Lear with the record company.

Speaker 2 (17:52):
Oh yeah, great catch.

Speaker 1 (17:53):
It's Lucius Lyon played by Terrence Howard is the head
of a record and he finds out that he's dying
I think of als and he has to figure out
which of his three sons to leave his record.

Speaker 2 (18:09):
Label to gender swapped King Lair.

Speaker 1 (18:11):
Yes. And at the same time, his wife, Cookie played
by Traji p Henson just got out of prison. Fun
and she's coming for her piece. And it is a phenomenon.
It gets huge ratings in its first season. It's like
doing that thing where it gets bigger ratings every episode.

Speaker 2 (18:32):
Yeah. Word of mouth.

Speaker 1 (18:34):
Yeah, I'm a little bit of a what is he
one of the kids, Yes, so he's the middle son. Okay,
I'm a bit of a TV history nerd, and I
was going to do a whole history lesson about black
television in twenty fifteen with like Seona Rhymes and Tyler Perry,
but it was not strictly relevant.

Speaker 2 (18:50):
Interesting Now, we'll talk about that later, but.

Speaker 1 (18:54):
I'll just put this in here as a little if
anyone else is a TV history nerd and is wondering
why there were a lot of black sitcoms in the
nineties and then there suddenly stopped being black sitcoms. Yeah,
A big part of it is because the WB and
UPN merged and became the CW, which wanted a white audience.

Speaker 2 (19:13):
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Speaker 1 (19:15):
So all of it just to say in twenty fifteen,
when Empire premiered, it was not the first show with
an all black cast to be like the show of
the moment, but it was still very very rare. Yeah,
And most of these sort of must see network shows

(19:37):
of the moment were like all white shows like Desperate Housewives,
or they were these big ensemble shows like Gray's Anatomy
or Lost, which had diverse cast but the main characters
were like white people in a love triangle.

Speaker 2 (19:54):
And even something like Scandal which does have a black
female lead, a big ensemble, and it's she's mostly interacting
with white people. Our love interest is a white person.
It's a big, you know, diverse ensemble. I like, I
don't know if people would consider Scandal a black show.

Speaker 1 (20:15):
No, So again, like yeah, like How to Get Away
with Murder was sort of also riding that wave. An
empire broke through as unapologetically all black. Yeah, so it
was just very exciting. Jesse's dad dies the same day

(20:35):
the show premieres. Oh so, Jesse's dad had not really
been around during his childhood, but I think they had
reconnected during his adulthood. So he's dealing with overnight fame.
He's dealing with the loss of his dad. Jesse plays Jamal,
who is the middle son and who is.

Speaker 2 (20:52):
Gay, and he is gay in real life, and.

Speaker 1 (20:56):
The show creator Lee Daniels is also gay. Okay, So
even though Jamal starts as a small part, Lee Daniels
keeps putting more and more of his own experiences into
Jamal and sort of using him as an avatar to
like talk about gay rights.

Speaker 2 (21:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (21:13):
So yeah, so Jesse's also gay when the show premiered,
he just doesn't talk about his private life. But three
months after the show premieres, he confirms to Ellen that
he's gay, which had already been speculated.

Speaker 2 (21:26):
Oh coming out to Ellen what a moment.

Speaker 1 (21:29):
So basically what he says is, I was never in
a closet. So he doesn't really come out. He just
sort of says, oh, I've never not like I well,
I was never dating a woman. Like I've never not.

Speaker 2 (21:41):
I've never not been gay. I just haven't like talked
about it.

Speaker 1 (21:44):
A bunch, yeah, because he doesn't want to be seen
as not embracing who he is or hiding himself. But
he just doesn't want it to be a story.

Speaker 2 (21:52):
I I mean, as an actor, I find it very
interesting and legitimate the way that once Hollywood perceive someone
as gay, they are absolutely put into a box. I mean,
that was the whole thing with like people have speculated
that that's one of the reasons Matt Boehmer never got Superman,
even though he was considered a front runner and very

(22:13):
much looks like Superman. There's just a perception of actors
still to this day, of like a listers cannot be gay. Yep.
So I understand the sort of tight situation. Jesse, you
would have been in being like, well, I don't want
to not embrace who I am and be proud of myself,

(22:34):
but also I want to I want as much potential
for my career as possible, because Hollywood has these insane biases.

Speaker 1 (22:42):
Yeah, and I mean there's even like even you know,
straight white actors who don't do a lot of press
will say the more the audience knows about your real life,
the less they see you as a character. And they
just don't want you to think of them as whoever
they are. They just want you to see them as

(23:04):
the characters that they play. But so he says, you know,
my family embraces me. They've known who I was since
I was a teenager. I just don't want to make
it a story. Yeah. At this point, this is what
Queen Latifah is also saying. And you know, we've since
known her to walk red carpets with her like female

(23:24):
life partner. Three months after that, we get the Supreme
Court decision that legalizes same sex marriage federally.

Speaker 2 (23:31):
Wow, this is such a throwback. You're like, I cannot
believe that this was so recent.

Speaker 1 (23:36):
Yeah. Yeah, so, like things are rapidly changing. So from
the time he booked the part to the time the
show premiered, to the time he's giving the interviews, the
cultural value of him being an out black gay man.
You can see him doing the math of this might

(23:56):
be a huge negative all the way to this potential
might be a huge positive. Like could there be a
whole community that is begging to embrace me? You know,
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (24:07):
Yeah, it's like, is this historically this has been a negative?
Maybe this is the one moment where this might benefit me.

Speaker 1 (24:14):
Right, And he's so he's embracing it. So he becomes
friends with like the activist Array McKesson his Twitter bio
best guy, Yes, from the Black Lives Matter movement. His
Twitter bio at the time, is I am here to
save the world. Great. Yeah, I mean that's also just
very actory. It's very actory, and like you just have

(24:37):
to really you're saying throwback, You just have to really
think back to like Obama's second term. Yeah, we really
thought television was going to save the world.

Speaker 2 (24:46):
We really did.

Speaker 1 (24:47):
Orange Just the New Black was going to fix prison.

Speaker 2 (24:50):
And I the best of my knowledge, it did right.

Speaker 1 (24:52):
Transparent was gonna fix transrtes YEA in the most sincere way.

Speaker 2 (24:57):
It was a very earnest. It was peak woke. We
were so lived out, we were fully lived out. We
really thought it was gonna work.

Speaker 1 (25:05):
And so he goes from being this sort of quietly
queer brother of a successful working actress.

Speaker 2 (25:11):
The future is female?

Speaker 1 (25:12):
Is the future was female? Just so you remember everyone
was a man bun. He goes for being the quietly
queer brother of a successful working actress to being potentially
like one of the faces of the new civil rights movement. Yeah,

(25:34):
he's got a record deal.

Speaker 2 (25:36):
Is what sort of musician is he?

Speaker 1 (25:38):
Uh, like, I don't know, John Legend two point zero.

Speaker 2 (25:42):
Like, say, he's say a singer songwriter.

Speaker 1 (25:44):
He's performing at the White House for the Obamas.

Speaker 2 (25:47):
Oh so he's sort of lin Manuel mirandeing too.

Speaker 1 (25:50):
Yeah, like overnight, I can imagine he is under so
much pressure and he's got again. I would imagine such
a huge ego.

Speaker 2 (26:02):
Oh of course, this is my Taian gent. When I
worked at Entertainment Weekly, it was sort of anecdotally known
and very common. The actors who were the absolute worst
to work with were brand new actors on a huge
hit show. Yeah, whereas career actors were like humble and

(26:24):
lovely and wonderful. Like Brian Cranston. You interviewed him up
Breaking Bad and he's like, yes, you're a professional. I'm
a professional. Here's my time. Let's sit down where imagine
the cast of a high school good singing club. I
was gonna say, Glee. The Glee kids, it's like they
go from zero to sixties so fast that they're just

(26:47):
like it was. The ego was very hard to get.

Speaker 1 (26:50):
Every insecurity is blown. H Yeah, all right, we're gonna
make a hard left turn and talk about police brutality. Great.

Speaker 2 (26:58):
Yeah, did Glee address that police brutality?

Speaker 1 (27:04):
No?

Speaker 2 (27:05):
Okay, well I guess that's why it's not solved.

Speaker 1 (27:07):
Yeah, all right. Chicago a city, you.

Speaker 2 (27:11):
Know, a city I'm very familiar with.

Speaker 1 (27:13):
Did you know that Chicago has more cops than the LAPD?

Speaker 2 (27:16):
No, but that makes sense.

Speaker 1 (27:18):
I was surprised to find this out. Chicago has the
second biggest police force in the country after New York.
After New York, and then La is the third.

Speaker 2 (27:25):
Well we're the second city.

Speaker 1 (27:26):
Yeah, and I think it's because La is not as like,
does this make sense? La is not as big as
La La? Yeah, LA is not very dense. Well, LA's
not very dense and also like the LA area. Yeah,
like not everyone who works in LA lives in technically LA.
Like again, this is a tangent, but whatever are we

(27:47):
keeping it when we're recording this? It is only five
days after the mayoral primary, and just anecdotally, I kept
seeing online people talking about or like poll workers saying
that there were Republicans in Beverly Hills do you know
who were mad that they couldn't vote for They were like, hey,

(28:09):
why isn't Spencer Pratt on the ballot? On my ballot?
If you didn't know, is a Republican running for mayor
of Los Angeles And they didn't realize that Beverly Hills
is not technically in Los Angeles.

Speaker 2 (28:22):
Beverly Hills burbank West Hollywood's own city.

Speaker 1 (28:25):
Yeah, so okay, however you the listener feel about law
enforcement in this country, the fact is that the Chicago
p D just does not have a good reputation, does
not have a good reputation.

Speaker 2 (28:42):
From Chicago. I'm from the suburbs of Chicago, but I
can confirm that it does not have a good reputation.

Speaker 1 (28:48):
Like just even if we're just talking American police, like
Chicago's not the shining star of the law enforcement.

Speaker 2 (28:57):
Its reputation is bad on both sides. It's like it's
bad where it's like they're not enforcing crime. It's really
dangerous in certain areas, and it's bad where it's like
they are as the you know, perception goes very racist,
very violent, right.

Speaker 1 (29:12):
Like they're brutal and it doesn't even work. Let you
know what I mean, Like they're brutal and Chicago's dangerous.

Speaker 2 (29:21):
So Chicago's a beautiful city. It's my favorite city in
the country.

Speaker 1 (29:23):
Yeah, Chicago also great. Chicago's really clean.

Speaker 2 (29:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (29:27):
I want to say that Charlally nice Empires sat in
New York, but it was filmed primarily in Chicago. That's
why we're talking about the In the years that we're
going to talk about, Chicago's also going through little crime spike.

Speaker 2 (29:39):
Republicans love to talk about that.

Speaker 1 (29:41):
Little crime spike. So I couldn't find an exact filming
schedule for the first season of Empire, but I know
that they filmed the pilot in spring twenty fourteen, and
then the pilot premiered in January twenty fifteen, So I'm
assuming that they filmed season one through the rest of
twenty fourteen.

Speaker 2 (29:57):
Yeah, probably the fall.

Speaker 1 (29:58):
Yeah, so this is happening right when they're filming Season one.
October twenty fourteen, a white Chicago police officer named Jason
Van Dyke shot and killed a seventeen year old black
boy named Lakwan McDonald. Dana, do you remember any of this?

Speaker 2 (30:15):
I remember like the story, but not the details.

Speaker 1 (30:18):
Okay, So I'm about to describe the event. So if
you don't want to hear about this, just fast forward
like ninety seconds. It was nighttime. Laqwan had a small
knife and had been breaking into cars on the side
of the road, so someone had called the cops, and
there were other officers already on the scene, and he

(30:39):
had slashed one of the police car tires, and the
other officers were waiting for someone with a taser to arrive.
They didn't all have tasers, so they were waiting for
someone with a taser to arrive so that I assume
they could tase him. Laqwan and Officer Van Dyke and
his partner showed up, and Officer Vandyke gets out of
his squad car and immediately just like opened fire on

(31:02):
this kid. Oh my god, and he shot him sixteen times. Yeah,
and Lakwan was alive when the paramedics arrived, but dead
by the time they got to the hospital end of
description of murder. So the police claimed that the shooting
was in self defense, but the autopsy comes out and
says it's not in self defense, and the city agrees

(31:24):
to pay the McDonald family five million dollars. And then
the dashcam footage comes out as the result of a
journalist's Freedom of Information Act request and shows that it's
this like sort of brutal and very bizarre incident, and
the city erupts in protests. And because you know, it's

(31:45):
it's not just the murder, it's the cover up. Yeah,
because this has happened, it's taken over a year for
the dash cam footage to come out, and the chant
is sixteen shots in a cover up. And Kim Fox,
who is a black woman, uses this moment to get
elected the first black States Attorney in Cook County history.
So obviously, like for this podcast, I'm not going to

(32:07):
get into the exact details of like police reforms, but
this is a very big deal. There's a Department of
Justice investigation into the Chicago PD and the investigation finds
that basically like the Chicago police use unreasonable and excessive force.
They have a pattern of covering up their mistakes instead
of having transparency and accountability, and they're like violating people's

(32:29):
civil rights and it's unconstitutional. And this whole process is
taking a few years.

Speaker 2 (32:34):
They're in order to.

Speaker 1 (32:36):
Undergo various reforms, including a consent decree, which I won't
get into, but I know that I a little bit
know what's from the from the TV show Elsbeth Good job.
And the reason that I'm talking about all of this
is because the cops, just like even more than usual,
look so bad years leading up to this incident a.

Speaker 2 (33:00):
Real moment, especially for Chicago p D.

Speaker 1 (33:03):
Yes, Yeah, and like unlike other sort of oh there
was a shooting and we look bad moments that can
happen in various major cities, this one has like real consequences,
Like the Department of Justice got involved, there were court
reforms as a result, Like this one kind of stuck. Yeah,

(33:25):
you know, like the cops don't even look like evil geniuses.
They sort of look like evil idiots.

Speaker 2 (33:30):
Yeah, and that is sometimes the scariest thing in these
you know, you get the footage and you're just like
they're not even acting rationally, but they're on logic.

Speaker 1 (33:38):
Yeah, the mayor at the time, Robin Manuel, fires the
white superintendent of police and replaces him with Eddie Johnson,
who is black. And you know, he doesn't say, like
this is to stop the protest, but like there's sort
of a feeling that, oh, they just gave the job
to a black guy to appease us. Sure, but you know,

(34:01):
you can interpret that however you want.

Speaker 2 (34:03):
Yeah, though, it's like whether the chief of police should
be black is something that like I as a white
person with unfamiliar with, like intimate, like on a personal level,
the history of police violence. I'm like, that's not for
me to weigh in on.

Speaker 1 (34:16):
Right, Like activists have different reactions to that. Exactly that
does happen as a direct consequence of.

Speaker 2 (34:23):
This, yeah, And whether it was meant cynically or like
to genuinely try to make things better, that's who knows,
or a combination of both.

Speaker 1 (34:31):
January twenty nineteen, Officer Van Tyke, who originally had like
gotten away with it, had been a declared to justified shooting.
He's he had been indicted. He's convicted of murder good
and sentenced to just under seven years in prison. Great
and actual consequence, actual consequence. One week later, back to

(34:52):
Jesse Smollett. Okay, things are not going so great if
you're Jesse Smollett. Really not as good as they were
when we last checked in with him in twenty fifteen.
How long has it been now, it's been four years?
Four years? Okay? How old is he?

Speaker 2 (35:07):
Just for context, thirty five okay, so thirties, four years
since Empire premiered.

Speaker 1 (35:14):
Empire ratings are really far down, yeah, nose dive down.
He has been getting online threats the way I think
like any outspoken gay Black Lives Matter advocate probably does.
But he also recently received like a letter, like a

(35:35):
sort of classic threat letter with like cutout magazine like letters.

Speaker 2 (35:42):
That's so funny that these these people writing threats are
that lazy, yeah, with like cliche.

Speaker 1 (35:48):
A marker drawing of a guy with like a noose
around his neck.

Speaker 2 (35:52):
Oh yeah, I mean, I have absolutely no doubt that
his mentions at this time were horrific.

Speaker 1 (35:59):
Horrific, So you know, it's probably a rough.

Speaker 2 (36:02):
Time and it's not like, you know, he's on Empire,
but it doesn't seem I don't really have a memory
of this, but it doesn't seem like he's getting a
ton of other gigs.

Speaker 1 (36:10):
No, he is not. Yeah he's not Dana. Yeah he's not.

Speaker 2 (36:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (36:16):
He flies from la into Chicago and he lands around midnight,
and his creative director, Frank Gatson. When you say his
creative director, Dana, we're moving past it, right, His creative director,
Frank Gatson picks him up at the airport and drives
him back to his condo in Streeterville. WHI, she's a
neighborhood in Chicago. Yes, there's no food in the apartment.

(36:37):
So around two am, he goes out to the Walgreens,
thinking that it's open all night, but it's not, so
he goes another block to the subway sandwich. At this point,
it's January twenty ninth. I mean maybe it's like the
early hours of January thirty. Anyway, it's the end of January.
It's Chicago, it's cold. This is during a polar vortex.

(36:58):
It's like negative twine degrees. Yeah, but you know, there
are a couple other people at the subway sandwich. So
later someone will be like, no one in their right
mind would go out for food at this hour, but like,
you know, some people do.

Speaker 2 (37:13):
Also, I'm like, I don't know, you're hungry. People would
be like, what are you supposed to do for food?
Get delivery? That means someone else has to go outside.
I actually don't think this is crazy. I mean, I
think it's unpleasant, but sometimes you have to go out
for food, even when it's cold.

Speaker 1 (37:26):
I don't know what to tell. Yeah, he goes out
for food, but it is very, very cold out. While
he's in the subway sandwich, he texts his manager asking
just like hey, like can we talk. He gets his food,
he steps out, his manager calls him, so he's on
the phone. He hears this.

Speaker 2 (37:42):
Manager calls him at like two am.

Speaker 1 (37:44):
Yeah, well, I think his manager's in La where it's
probably like midnight whatever. He hears some guys yelling at him,
and he just ignores it and keeps walking. And then
they yell a little louder and they say, hey, Empire,
are you the Empire? F slur and slur.

Speaker 2 (38:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (38:04):
So they've called him a horrible name for gay people
and for black people. And he turns around and they say,
and he says.

Speaker 2 (38:10):
What is the race of the people harassing him?

Speaker 1 (38:14):
We'll get that, okay. In a sack, and he says,
what did you say to me? And they go, this
is Maga Country.

Speaker 2 (38:21):
Oh okay, I'm gonna guess who they are.

Speaker 1 (38:24):
He turns around and they start like punching him.

Speaker 2 (38:27):
It's absolutely not Maga Country. Good point, by the way,
I will say, it's Chicago.

Speaker 1 (38:33):
Put a pin in that.

Speaker 2 (38:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (38:34):
They start punching him.

Speaker 2 (38:35):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (38:36):
He tries to fight back, but they you know, it's
two on one. They beat him up and knock him down.
They're wearing ski masks so like balla clawas and all
he can see is the skin around their eyes, so
he can tell, like from their build and their voices
that they're men, and he can tell from the skin
that they're white. Okay, but that's all he knows. And

(38:59):
then they just like leave. He goes home. He still
has his phone and his sandwich. Okay, he realizes that
there's a rope around his neck and a chemical on
his sweater. Let's pause and talk about this horrifying thing

(39:21):
that has happened, and also some of the details that
are a little bit strange.

Speaker 2 (39:27):
Yes, I will say that to me, what is strange
not even that he still has his sandwich and phone,
because it wasn't a robbery. It was a hate crime there,
beating him up for being the gay guy on Empire.
What is slightly strange is okay, a few things to
me just on the surface. Uh huh. The balaclavas in

(39:49):
the middle of a polar vortex actually does not strike
me as weird. No, I'm like, actually, people would be
wearing face coverings.

Speaker 1 (39:55):
Also, if you're about to commit a hate crime, you
might cover your face.

Speaker 2 (39:57):
But the obviously wouldn't have known that he was walking around.
It seems like a crime of opportunity, seeing as he
just arrived back in Chicago, and it doesn't seem if
it is a crime of opportunity. The fact that they
would have a noose and chemicals seems surprising.

Speaker 1 (40:15):
Yeah, which will later be like discovered, Like the consensus
is that.

Speaker 2 (40:19):
It's bleach, but even still, like why would where would
they be walking around Bleach at two of your warning
if they just came across him. It's not Maga country,
So I'm like, why is why are maga people walking
around Chica? But people are everywhere, So this is a
more cynical one, maybe because he's a bigger deal in

(40:40):
the maybe like the MAGA community had sort of made
him a target. But it also strikes me as I
did not watch Empire. I don't think I would have
recognized him on site where I'm like, in the dark,
in the dark, just walking around Chicago, identified which which
sibling from Empire he was where I'm like, MAGA people

(41:00):
probably weren't watching Empire.

Speaker 1 (41:03):
It just seems to seem like four years into its
run when it was not that big vigal.

Speaker 2 (41:06):
That's why I'm like, I just don't think white non
fans of Empire would have recognized Jessie Smollett.

Speaker 1 (41:12):
Yeah, seems like really quite the coincidence.

Speaker 2 (41:16):
But the only counterpoint to that, I would say is
maybe like in the MAGA community, you know how they
sometimes have their like enemies. Yeah that I'm like, maybe
he was like really famous for being a Black Lives
Matter like punching bag in the MAGA community, right, But
I don't know if he was, I don't know. I
don't think they would recognize him from watching Empire season four.

Speaker 1 (41:38):
I mean. The other thing is like, Okay, obviously racists
can live anywhere, yes, and hate crimes can happen in
well to do areas Streeterville in particular, I like looked
up where all this happened on a map. My mom,

(42:00):
for work for a while, lived in Chicago. She lived
like two blocks from where this happened. And I've stayed
at her apartment. I've like walked by that subway sandwich shop.

Speaker 2 (42:11):
There is no like, no look up on a map
where this happens. I like to see, Oh, my grandpa
used to live around there. I just it's like by
Michigan Avenue, which is the main like shopping thoroughfare, where
like there's the Ralph Laurence Store and the.

Speaker 1 (42:28):
Very Mile if you know what that is. Yeah, if
you're like a skinhead looking for trouble, you don't go
to this area.

Speaker 2 (42:38):
Again, it's the most populous, like most touristy walk area.

Speaker 1 (42:44):
And it's like a rich area for like retires and yuppies.

Speaker 2 (42:50):
Again, Chicago River. It's like the Langham Hotel, which is
like a fancy hotel, and like an Apple store, like
the fancy Apple store, the big one.

Speaker 1 (43:00):
Like there aren't bars, there aren't sporting places where you
could find a lot of rowdy people. It would just
be such a bizarre place to like hang out looking
for trouble, looking for trouble. Yeah, so sort of the
only explanation that makes sense is that they were waiting

(43:20):
specifically for him. Yeah, and like you said, like that
he was a target.

Speaker 2 (43:26):
Because again, if you have a noos to, which is
a you know, hate indicated indication of a hate crime
against a black person, right, and Bleach ready to go
around where Jesse Smollett lives and they recognize him from Empire,
a show that they wouldn't naturally have watched unless they

(43:46):
specifically hated this person. Yeah, it does seem like they
would have needed specifically to stalk and wait for him,
which is possible. Right.

Speaker 1 (43:55):
But then it's like, okay, so they they did this
thing and they punched them and then they ran away,
Like I don't know. I mean, now I'm trying to
parse the logic of like white supremacists who like don't
really operate on like logic. They just like are fueled
by hate and I guess that'll keep you warm in

(44:15):
the negative twenty degree weather. But like, how would they
know he was getting back that night?

Speaker 2 (44:20):
Like, and they can they decided to do their hate
crime during a polar of vortex, which is true commitment.

Speaker 1 (44:25):
Which is true commitment, and like a little bit smart
because I guess there's not going to be a lot
of witnesses, but like to what end, And it's just
it just seems so unlikely.

Speaker 2 (44:37):
It's it's a challenging thing to believe, especially when you
know the context of Chicago. Like I think other people,
if you just said a hate crime happened at night
in Chicago, you'd be like, yeah, that's plausible. Yeah, And
then the location and the details and the specificity of
it leaves sort of.

Speaker 1 (44:57):
A sour taste in your mouth for you know.

Speaker 2 (45:00):
I think that the strangeness of it is especially because
no one wants to question a hate crime happening. Right,
if someone tells you a hate crime happened against them
for being gay and black, you want to of course
always be like that is horrific. How can I support you?

Speaker 1 (45:18):
Yeah, Like if he had just said, like, the craziest
thing happened, these white guys bumped my shoulder and then
we got into a fight and they punched me and
they called me the N word, I'd be like, yeah,
it sounds about it, Yeah, that sounds but right they
recognized me from my TV show and had props with them.
I'd be like, all right, sounds like they had a plan,

(45:40):
quite the plan, quite the plan.

Speaker 2 (45:42):
Also, now knowing where it is, I'm like, at two
am in this area, it kind of only makes sense
that they would have much waiting there. Thank god he
needed to get out to get food. Yeah, because this
is also not a neighborhood.

Speaker 1 (45:57):
Again, this is a very did they know as a
permit was gonna have food in it?

Speaker 2 (46:01):
This is a very populous tourist area. So it's like
if they were stalking him, if it was any other
time of day, there would have been a million witnesses.
So like, thank god he just happened to Let's wait
all night in case he needs to come out and
get food, because it's not like, you know, at six
am even you know people will be out.

Speaker 1 (46:19):
We can't and let's hope he doesn't have a friend
with him.

Speaker 2 (46:23):
Yeah, so okay, yeah, no, no, there there are details
about this story that are strange and require more context.

Speaker 1 (46:30):
Yes, all right, back to the tail. Yeah, he doesn't
want to call the cops. Sure, he just doesn't trust
the police. Fair, but his creative director calls anyway.

Speaker 2 (46:43):
I'm I guess we're just breezing on paste, you.

Speaker 1 (46:49):
Know, what I think it's like for his album or whatever.

Speaker 2 (46:51):
Okay, okay, okay, you can hear.

Speaker 1 (46:53):
The nine one one call of like in documentaries. He's like,
I work for an artist. There's been an attack and
he doesn't want me to call, but I think we
need to file a report. Two detectives show up and
Gatsen meets them in the lobby and he's like, all right,
like you're going to meet a celebrity. Do you guys
watch Empire? And they're like, oh, yeah, I've heard of it.

(47:16):
So they walk in. They ask him a few questions.
He's wearing the news okay, I don't like that. Yeah,
and they're like, oh is that do you want to
take that off? And he goes, well, yeah, I just
put it on to show you guys. Okay, and he
takes it off and then he goes, oh are you recording?

(47:38):
I don't want this recorded. So they turn their body
cams off because he asked them to. Okay. I got
the sense from the bodycam footage that he's like a
little bit embarrassed. Yeah, you know, he's been victimized and
maybe a little lamasculated.

Speaker 2 (47:54):
Yeah, if you're beaten up in any context, as a man.
You're that's you know, I don't think it's embarrassing, but
you know, I can understand why other people are in there.

Speaker 1 (48:01):
It's like it's just an awkward situation. Eddie Johnson, the
police chief superintendent, will later say that the noos being
on was suspicious because who sits around wearing the noose? Yeah,
it's traumatic, But Jesse will say he took it off,
but then he just put it back on to show
the cops.

Speaker 2 (48:22):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (48:22):
Eddie Johnson loves to say that all these things were suspicious.
He just calls everything suspicious in hindsight.

Speaker 2 (48:30):
Yeah, like it's weird, but I don't find that suspicious. Actually,
I am.

Speaker 1 (48:35):
Not gonna include all the things that he calls suspicious
because there's enough like good evidence that I'm just gonna
skip all the things that he calls suspicious that are
random and circumstantial.

Speaker 2 (48:47):
Like hindsight thing.

Speaker 1 (48:49):
Like he just loves to be like, and I found
that suspicious. I was on to him from the beginning
because this was suspicious and that was suspicious, and I'm like, no,
you didn't. You're just saying that because in hindsight, we
know that it was suspicious, but like you don't freaking know,
like whatever, I'm leaving out all of that, and so,
you know, whatever, but noted just in case you had

(49:11):
heard before, like in case you're coming into this episode
being like, but what about this thing that was suspicious,
Like I'm leaving I'm leaving out the suspicious things because
there's good evidence and we have enough to go on
with the good evidence. Great. So after he talks to
the cops, the cops are like, you should probably go
to the hospital and get checked out.

Speaker 2 (49:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (49:32):
He goes to Northwestern more a hospital, He gets an
X ray and CT scan. He's fine, it's just cut
some bruises.

Speaker 2 (49:37):
I think that's where I was born.

Speaker 1 (49:39):
And they're like, did you know about Dana?

Speaker 2 (49:40):
They're did you hear about Dana nineteen ninety three?

Speaker 1 (49:43):
Yeah, as you said, everyone is. Everyone has the reaction
that you sort of predicted of like, oh my god,
what a horrible thing.

Speaker 2 (49:55):
That's an abhorrent thing to happen to a person.

Speaker 1 (49:59):
The news gets out pretty much overnight immediately. If there's
any worry that this will kick off like a race
war in Chicago, like it doesn't, Everyone's just team Jesse.

Speaker 2 (50:12):
Yeah, everyone should be like that is a horrible thing
that happened to this person.

Speaker 1 (50:17):
Trump is like, that's awful. Yeah, he like kind of
just skims over the maga of it, and he's just like,
that's the worst. That's horrible. That shouldn't happen.

Speaker 2 (50:26):
That's nuts that.

Speaker 1 (50:26):
Even Trump is.

Speaker 2 (50:27):
Like, yeah, bad.

Speaker 1 (50:28):
No, He's like, that's despicable. You shouldn't do that. That's awful.
Reese Witherspoon gives him a shout out. Violet Davis, Zendaia,
Kevin Bacon, Jordan Peel, Kamala Harris, Andy Cohen, et cetera,
et cetera. Everybody, Yeah, giving shout outs to Jesse.

Speaker 2 (50:44):
Okay, I have to bring this up just because you
said Kamala Harris.

Speaker 1 (50:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (50:47):
The day that I saw Connor Story at lunch, oh,
I also saw Kamala Harris at that same restaurant. Just
a fun fact about me.

Speaker 1 (50:56):
I recently saw Jason Siegel at UCB waiting in the
lobby for hours because his fiance was in an improv show.
And I was like, dude, go to a cafe nearby.
You don't have to just wait in the lobby. Was
he working?

Speaker 2 (51:08):
He was already smoke. Oh, come on, Jason, And it.

Speaker 1 (51:12):
Wasn't even like proper UCB. It was the UCB annex.

Speaker 2 (51:16):
That's I wouldn't want my fiance waiting for me for
that long. That's like good, Yeah, go to a cafe,
all right.

Speaker 1 (51:23):
Anyway, whatever, you know what it is, suspicious, suspicious. Listen,
we have to lighten up the episode.

Speaker 2 (51:30):
We're lighting up.

Speaker 1 (51:31):
We're lightening up the episode. We're just talking about facts
and then we're making jokes about other things that are
not the facts.

Speaker 2 (51:38):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (51:38):
Four days after the attack, Jesse plays his show at
the Troubadour here in La.

Speaker 2 (51:42):
Great Great Theater.

Speaker 1 (51:44):
It's sold out.

Speaker 2 (51:45):
Yeah, I imagine a lot of support. He's been in
the news.

Speaker 1 (51:48):
That of support. It's very important to him that he
shows everyone that he's doing okay. It's also a Black
History month at this point. Yeah, he tells the crowd,
I'm not healed yet, but I'm going to I'm gonna
stand strong with you all, he says, be blacker, be gayer,
I love you.

Speaker 2 (52:06):
You know what.

Speaker 1 (52:07):
There's no right or wrong way to respond to these things,
and I'm just gonna put it out there. I am
a survivor of like a random stranger assault. I'm totally
fine and the guy who did it is in prison,
And if anyone came for me about the way I
reacted to that, I would like tell them to shut
the f up. So there's no right or wrong way

(52:30):
except Erica Kirk is reacting the wrong way. She is
reacting the wrong way to what a horrible, horrible thing
happened to her family. Yea, and she is reacting the
wrong way. I will say that Erica Kirk is being
weird at this show. He also says I'm the gay Tupac, okay,

(52:50):
which a lot of people are like, Now, that's an
interesting thing to say. That's a little much. That's just
an interesting like it's sort of when you try to
give yourself a nickname.

Speaker 2 (53:02):
We're all calling me the gay Tupac.

Speaker 1 (53:04):
Yeah, it's sort of like he wanted bloggers to start
calling him the gay tupac, so he said he was
the gay Tupac.

Speaker 2 (53:11):
Yeah, that's a stretch.

Speaker 1 (53:13):
And like all the coverage is like, he did not
elaborate what he meant by that. I think it's pretty
clear what he meant by it. I a tiny bit
get what he meant by that.

Speaker 2 (53:23):
I think I get what he was going for. I
don't think I agree.

Speaker 1 (53:26):
They Here's what I'll say. They both have ties to
the Bay Area.

Speaker 2 (53:31):
They both are in show business, and we're victims of violence.

Speaker 1 (53:36):
Yes, both of their mothers were involved with the Black Panthers.

Speaker 2 (53:40):
Oh cool.

Speaker 1 (53:42):
So if he grew up being like interested in Tupac's
music and knew that he died from sort of just
like a sudden act of violence, and then this thing
happened to him, he might I understand that he might
be looking for a role model. Yeah, he might be like, God,
who who do I like, I need to contextualize this

(54:05):
thing that happened to me. Oh my god, Tupac. Like,
that's how I can make meaning out of this horrible
thing that happened to me. Is Tupac's legacy. I'll be
the gay Tupac.

Speaker 2 (54:15):
I also think I'm gonna go on their record and
say this. Sometimes celebrities say dumb things people who are
a lot a lot I think like happens a lot
of celebrities are in weird bubbles. They get very arrogant
because people are waiting on them hand and foot on set,
like literally just being an actor on set, You're just like,
can I get you anything? What can I do? And

(54:36):
so that for years, I think distorts their brains, and
they're surrounded not by normal people but by other like
showbiz people and people who make money off them, And
I just think sometimes celebrities say dumb things.

Speaker 1 (54:50):
Yeah, it's a little as we talked about, this was
a little fishy from the start. Yeah, Dave Chappelle has
a pretty famous bit about how like black people didn't
believe this from the start.

Speaker 2 (55:05):
And I want to go on the record, fully normal
and fully non controversial comedian Dave.

Speaker 1 (55:10):
Dave Schapelle, who's right about everything. I'm just quoting him
as a source because it is very hard to do
like forensic evidence of like who believed it. You can't
like yeah, like I can't lexus nexus people's thoughts. So
I'm trying, like, this is my source of what people thought.

Speaker 2 (55:28):
So what it? Yeah, what was?

Speaker 1 (55:29):
So Dave Chappelle has a bit about gay people wanting
black people to believe this and black people not black people,
being like, oh, it's not that we're against him because
he's gay. We're against him because we know he's lying.

Speaker 2 (55:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (55:46):
If you go on Reddit, the sort of the sentiment
is like, oh, we all like Chicago wins always knew
this was fishy, but we didn't want to say that because,
you know, we didn't want to, Like, who wants to
call hate victim a crime victim alive? Yeah, Usually we
talk about why people believed it at the end of
the episode. I want to right now talk about why
people believed it. To me, this tell me if this

(56:09):
sentence makes sense, this is the Ruth Konda Forever of hoaxes.

Speaker 2 (56:13):
Yeah, white people wanted to live out.

Speaker 1 (56:15):
To me, this is this crime is a little cartoonish. Yeah,
if only racism and homophobia were this clear cut and obvious.
Like it's a horrible thing to believe happened, but it's
almost a fantasy that makes rich liberals feel really good
about how they voted.

Speaker 2 (56:36):
I will also say it kind of reminds me actually
of something that happens on the other side too. Have
you seen like Republicans occasionally or have you know, posted
on the internet like fake graffiti that like liberals supposed
that like Antifa supposedly did to their house, like bad
graffiti that's like Antifa forever with like weird misspelling, So

(56:58):
like Republicans can be like ah antiva and it clearly
is like a false flag that like they did to themselves.
That's sort of the same thing where you're right, it's
like a fantasy of what the other side does.

Speaker 1 (57:10):
Yeah, and it's like, this is such a neatly uncomplicated story.
There are no bystanders who didn't help. A noose and
a bleach are awful, but they're not guns, so we
don't have to have a debate. He didn't get seriously injured. Like,
obviously I'm against hate crimes, like obviously, Lizzie on the record,

(57:35):
on the record, but you know, real life is messy. Ye.
Usually when you attack someone, they punch back, and then
by the end of the fight it's not always super
clear who the victim is.

Speaker 2 (57:50):
And also in terms of making something a hate crime
versus just an act of random violence, these perpetrators said
the f slur, the en slur, They explained their motives. Yeah,
they said, we recognize you specifically the guy from Empire,
gay hate crime, black hate crime. Like because sometimes people

(58:10):
just attack people and it's horrible and horrific and there
is no clear cut motive. So, like you said, uncomplicated, uncomplicated,
and the noose again, very uncomplicated symbol. I mean, well,
a complicated but like no, no, a complicated yes, clear
clear symbol with a complicated, horrific legacy.

Speaker 1 (58:29):
And you know, in a lot of like homophobic attacks,
the attacker will use the excuse that their victim was
like coming on to them, which is horrible and like
almost always not true, but it does speak to like
a real anxiety about sexual safety. This time they didn't
have to deal with that. Yeah, very few people are

(58:52):
one hundred percent evil or one hundred percent good. So
when we deal with actual crimes involving actual people, the
narrative can get complicated. I don't know this one.

Speaker 2 (59:06):
It's so clear if you're interested in a complicated hate crime.
They made a movie of this, but the documentary is
more interesting. Marwin call. That movie is Welcome to Marwin
with Steve Carell. But it's based on a real guy toys.
It's based on a real hate crime.

Speaker 1 (59:23):
That's about a hate crime. Well that I think that
was about a guy who liked figurine.

Speaker 2 (59:27):
Yeah, because because he was an artist and he Okay,
I mean this is a real hate crime.

Speaker 1 (59:31):
That's about a hate I'm literally learning this in real time.

Speaker 2 (59:35):
So all Welcome to Marwin called Marwin call on our
hoax documentary hoax film. Watch. It's about an artist who
is attacked and he can no longer do his drawing,
so he turns figurines into his art and like makes
elaborate figuringes. But what's kind of interesting and complicated is
he is, in my recollection, a man who likes wearing

(59:58):
women's shoes, but he's not. He's just perceived as gay, okay,
and that's why they think he's gay and do the
hate crime. But he's not gay.

Speaker 1 (01:00:05):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:00:06):
It's a horrific attack, and it's a really interesting documentary
and it is a to the best of my knowledge,
and attack that did in fact happen.

Speaker 1 (01:00:13):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (01:00:14):
Yeah, watch the Marwin called documentary very interesting and nuanced.

Speaker 1 (01:00:18):
I'm losing my mind over here.

Speaker 2 (01:00:21):
You just thought it was toys and you're finding out
there's a whole hate crime subplot.

Speaker 1 (01:00:25):
They advertise that movie with no indication that it was
about a hate crime.

Speaker 2 (01:00:30):
Yeah, well, because it is kind of a complicated hate crime,
because can you do hate a gay hate crime against
guys not actually gay?

Speaker 1 (01:00:37):
Okay? So again, see, I that's complicated. This isn't okay.

Speaker 2 (01:00:43):
And see, this is why we're leaving the tangents in.

Speaker 1 (01:00:45):
This is why we're leaving the tangents, so okay to
get that to the pore. So this is why people
were eager to believe that this had happened, is that
it cast the world in a very clear good versus
evil light.

Speaker 2 (01:00:59):
Oh and they said this is Maga country, right, Yeah,
that also is like clear villain.

Speaker 1 (01:01:04):
Yeah, it's all just very like, hey, here's a really
obvious thing I can be against to show everyone that
I'm a good person. Is I can support Jesse Smollett.

Speaker 2 (01:01:15):
It's so easy to support Jesse Smollett that even Donald
Trump can do it.

Speaker 1 (01:01:20):
Even Donald Trump can do it. It's so easy that
you almost don't even look and see that it doesn't
make a ton of sense.

Speaker 2 (01:01:26):
And also, historians sometimes refer to this thing called the
criterion of embarrassment. It's actually more in ancient religious text,
but it's sometimes used by historians, which basically means, given
a historical text, if someone confesses or writes about something embarrassing,
you verge on the side of it being true because
you think, like, why would they write something embarrassing if

(01:01:48):
it's not true? And a man being beat up is
usually not something that someone wants to brag about. Yes,
but this is kind of the unique brief moment when
there would be maybe some social political capital to be
gained by this publicity.

Speaker 1 (01:02:06):
Yes. And he also, I mean, like it being two
against one, I think sort of gets him out of
the like embarrassment of losing the fight.

Speaker 2 (01:02:13):
Yeah, but yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:02:14):
He can be like I fought back, but you know,
two against one.

Speaker 2 (01:02:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:02:19):
All right, So, as I said, there's all these things
that people find suspicious, but the first thing that is
like actually suspicious is that Jesse won't turn over his phone. Okay,
so they want his phone because he says that he
was on the phone with his manager at the time
of the attack, and he says that he has like

(01:02:40):
private stuff on there, like his music and you know,
other stuff that he's working on. He later says that.

Speaker 2 (01:02:47):
And you know, people take photos from private photos from
celebrities sometimes, I mean, yeah, he.

Speaker 1 (01:02:53):
Later says that, like he was doing drugs, so he
just didn't want them to find that out.

Speaker 2 (01:02:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:02:58):
I'm also gonna just maybe this is none of my business.
I'm going to speculate this is a gay man in Hollywood. Yeah,
I would imagine that there's material on there from people
who are not out.

Speaker 2 (01:03:12):
I was gonna say the same thing. I was like,
this is a gay man in Hollywood. I fully understand
why he doesn't want his phone going to the police,
where all it would take is one person to like
leak embarrassing, compromising things like you said on drugs, engaging
with people who aren't out.

Speaker 1 (01:03:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:03:29):
Sure.

Speaker 1 (01:03:30):
So about a week later he gives them a PDF
of his phone records. Yea, but he has redacted some stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:03:37):
Yeah, maybe calls to people who aren't out, whatever, drug dealer.

Speaker 1 (01:03:41):
So yeah, so he's like cooperating in quotes, he's cooperating.
He's cooperating. But he's cooperating.

Speaker 2 (01:03:48):
You sure, But to this point, I actually am like
I understand that.

Speaker 1 (01:03:51):
Yeah, the attack itself took place right by a security camera,
but the camera was like facing the other way, so
they don't have footage the attack. But Chicago has a
ton of security foot cameras all around. So the what
the police do is they just collect security footage from
all around the area, and just.

Speaker 2 (01:04:12):
Looking at the Google map, there's like a lot of
banks around. It's like a very commercial area. It's like
there's a lot of banks, which seems a lot of.

Speaker 1 (01:04:19):
Hotels, yeah, which have a lot of cameras in the
lobby facing outwards so you can see if people are
passing in front of the lobby. So they don't find
any footage of the attack, but they do find two
figures who leave the scene right after the attack. And

(01:04:40):
again it's two am during a polar vortex, there's not
a lot of people around there, like this has to
be there. Yeah. By going from camera to camera, including
ring cameras. Remember your ring footage is not private, they
watch those figures get into a cab and go up
to the north side of Chicago, and that's where they
lose track of them.

Speaker 2 (01:05:00):
I mean, so they're working to find these guys.

Speaker 1 (01:05:02):
Oh yeah, absolutely, this is a international news story. The
cops do not have a good reputation. They want to win.

Speaker 2 (01:05:09):
Yeah, they want to find these guys.

Speaker 1 (01:05:10):
They want to find these guys. They do not want
to drop the ball on a hate crime against a
black celebrity in the city of Chicago. So they can't
find out who these people are, so they decide to
go like back in time, they retrace the steps. They
find what they think are the same two figures arriving
in the area and they basically run it back. They

(01:05:34):
find those guys getting out of a cab. They retrace
the cab. They find those guys getting into the cab
after getting out of an Uber.

Speaker 2 (01:05:44):
Hmm, okay, well this does sound suspicious.

Speaker 1 (01:05:47):
And then they retrace the Uber coming from that same
area on the north side. Okay, so it looks like
these two people got into got into an Uber, took
it down to sort of near where the attack happened,
got into a cab, took it to the area of
the attack, waded around a little bit, did the attack,
took a cab back to the north.

Speaker 2 (01:06:09):
It does seem like something someone doing a hate crime
would do.

Speaker 1 (01:06:11):
Yeah, Like, why would you go from a uber to
a cab unless you were trying to sort of cover
up your footsteps. So they call Uber and they're like, hey,
we need ride shared data and they say the and
again two am in a polar vortex. Uber says there
was only one ride called that night in that area,
and it was called by this guy, ola Osandero. Ola

(01:06:34):
Osandero is a Nigerian American. They in a lot of
press are called like he and his brother are gonna
be called like the Nigerians they're Nigerian American. They grew
up in America, but their families from Nigeria. Ola and
Bola are the brothers. Those are their nicknames. They are

(01:06:55):
Nigerian and so they are like dark skinned black like Jesse.
If you saw him very quickly, you might mistake him
for you know, he can be a Mexican, he could
be something else. Ola and Bola you would not mistake
for any other race. They are black yeap and fully
around the eyes, yes, any any part of them. Obviously,

(01:07:16):
black people can beat up other black people. Yeah, they
can be maga and I guess they could shout racial
epithets at each other. But it just it does seem
unlikely that Jesse would confuse them for white like. It
just it doesn't really line up that this would be them.
But this is where the evidence has taken the police
that these are the two guys who the only.

Speaker 2 (01:07:36):
Two guys who are in this area.

Speaker 1 (01:07:38):
Yeah, going through social media, the detectives see that they
have been extras on Empire.

Speaker 2 (01:07:44):
Oh.

Speaker 1 (01:07:46):
Interesting, they know Jesse. Interesting, but they can't do anything
yet because the day after the incident, Ola and Bola
flew to Nigeria out of the country. Interesting So the
cops do something I find kind of underhanded, which is
that they start leaking to journalists that they have suspicions
about Jesse's story.

Speaker 2 (01:08:05):
Yeah, that is not great too early. Yeah, you haven't
figured it out yet, especially because you're like, maybe these
people knew Jesse and wanted to do it a hate
crime against him, specifically because he said something mean on
the set of Umpire.

Speaker 1 (01:08:18):
Who knows, And this allows them to discredit him without
risking their own reputation because they're not saying it with
their chest, you know, they're letting the media take the fall.
People are also more likely to believe a leak than
an actual source because it feels like a scoop. Yeah,
it feels like someone is telling the truth off the
record that they're not allowed to say on the record.

(01:08:39):
And people are really suspicious of the police, but they're
going to trust like a dogged reporter that has the
real story.

Speaker 2 (01:08:46):
Yeah, especially if it's like one cop speaking out off
the record.

Speaker 1 (01:08:51):
When really this is just cops feeding journalists talking points
that the journalist will have to answer for, but the
cop doesn't have to stand behind it.

Speaker 2 (01:08:57):
Oh that's so smart. I never even thought of that.

Speaker 1 (01:09:00):
You're still right. So yeah. Back in twenty nineteen, this
is where I personally stopped following the story. I was like,
this is not white people's business. Yep, but it works.
The tide begins turning people feel more comfortable, saying, this
doesn't really add up, Maga. People don't watch Empire. People
are not carrying a bleachin rope with them at two am.

(01:09:22):
Doesn't really seem like skinheads would bother doing a whole
thing against this guy. Yeah. So Valentine's Day twenty nineteen,
two weeks after the incident, Fox tells Jesse, you need
to do some damage control.

Speaker 2 (01:09:38):
Fox the network that Empires are Yes.

Speaker 1 (01:09:40):
Yes, And so he does an interview with Robin Roberts
because she is black and gay. Yeah, and he sits
down with her and says, I want people to know
that I fought back and I'm not lying. He also
says that he thinks he would be more believed if
he had said that the attackers were Mexican or Muslim.

(01:10:02):
I don't know about that, but maybe maybe, he says,
you know, I want the little gay kid at home
to know that he matters. He's very he's like crying
and yeah, being a little righteous, but again, people can
react to things however they want.

Speaker 2 (01:10:18):
According to his Twitter, he wants to save the world.

Speaker 1 (01:10:20):
He is here to save the world. They show him
a they show a picture from the security footage of
the two dark figures. Yeah, and he's like, yeah, see,
I'm not making this up. There were two guys in
the area that I said. Those two guys did it, okay,
And the cops are like, I'm so glad he said
that on national television because those two guys are Ola

(01:10:43):
and Bola, and we are right now at the airport
picking them up. Great because they just flew back to
the US. They detain them as persons of interest and
they don't say anything until their lawyer gets there.

Speaker 2 (01:10:55):
Smart.

Speaker 1 (01:10:55):
Their lawyer is literally a woman that their mom met
when she was riving uber. I mean sure, yeah. She
shows them the Robin Roberts interview and she is like, look,
he's fingering you on national television. You're going to take
the fall for this, so you should probably start talking.

Speaker 2 (01:11:15):
Oh what did they say?

Speaker 1 (01:11:23):
Okay? So this is where there's like speculation. During the
raid of their home, the cops found guns and drugs
that they weren't supposed to have. So if you are
inclined to be anti Chicago p D, you could say

(01:11:44):
that the Chicago pe D used this to coerce a
false confession out of the brothers. Okay, if you are
inclined to be anti Jesse, you could say that no,
just cut a deal for a true confession.

Speaker 2 (01:12:03):
Yeah, and especially given the context of his phone records
were not given over and were redacted, that's additional context
that is just interesting but also very plausible.

Speaker 1 (01:12:13):
Just I'm just gonna report the facts, okay, the fact
like I wasn't you know, meetings with the lawyer are privileged.
I'm just gonna report the facts of what they confess, Okay.
Not how they got the confession, because I don't know.
What they say is they met Jesse on the set
of Empire, and they became his friends and his trainers

(01:12:37):
and his week dealers. Sure they show the cops at
text that one of them got from Jesse saying hey,
I need your help with something on the low, like
a few days before the attack, and that text referred
to a conversation where he asked them to beat him up.
He said that his plan was for them to beat

(01:12:57):
him up near a security camera and then he was
going to leak the footage onto the internet to become
a poster boy for like black Lives Matter and gay rights.
And the brothers also have a check from Jesse from
for thirty five dollars. So the cops call Jesse down
to the station and show him the mugshots of Ola
and Bola, and they're like, hey, we found the guys

(01:13:19):
from the security footage. They were the only people in
the area on the night of the attack. Would you
like to press charges against them for aggravated assault? And
Jesse's like, I told you it was two white guys,
and these are two black guys. You can't tell black
people and white people part you know, it's very progressive
of you. That's a joke. He's just mad and says no.

(01:13:42):
The brothers say that Jesse told them what to buy,
which the cops then leak.

Speaker 2 (01:13:48):
To a reporter.

Speaker 1 (01:13:48):
So then the reporter goes to every store that sells
ski masks, and sure enough he finds the store which
has a security camera, and there's footage of them buying
the ski masks. You know, it's cold in Chicago, person
could just want to buy a mask for their face.
But like it's really looking like their story checks out. Yeah,

(01:14:09):
and one of the brothers did call Jesse at one
am the morning of the incident. Yeah, there's like a
collogue of that. And then I mean the final nail
in the coffin, the king speaks, fifty Cent calls Jesse
a liar. Fifty fifty cent has weighed in. Fifty cent
has weighed in, he has spoken.

Speaker 2 (01:14:31):
Oh, and oh this all yeah, Oh my gosh, I understand.

Speaker 1 (01:14:35):
All of Like, oh, what are you groaning about?

Speaker 2 (01:14:41):
I just like I I know that as a white person,
it is not in my position to weigh in, not
on the facts, and I'm very, very grateful that you
have restricted yourself to the facts as they are known.
I just don't like someone taking advantage of a moment
where being a victim of a hate crime would lead

(01:15:01):
to attention and publicity. And it feels so ichy.

Speaker 1 (01:15:05):
It feels icky.

Speaker 2 (01:15:07):
But it's also like no one again, like you said,
no one got hurt.

Speaker 1 (01:15:11):
Yeah, Like, if we take away the attention and the
like social capital and the race of it all, it's
like it's just this weird like stunt gone wrong.

Speaker 2 (01:15:27):
It's a stunt gone wrong, but it was a stunt
also meant to and.

Speaker 1 (01:15:31):
You can't tie away those things, but if you could, it.

Speaker 2 (01:15:34):
Was a stunt meant to tug at the heartstrings of liberals,
And I'm like, oh, you got me.

Speaker 1 (01:15:41):
Yeah, I mean there's a good thirty rock line where
Liz is like, my white guilt should only be used
for good.

Speaker 2 (01:15:46):
Yeah, don't take advantage of my white guilt.

Speaker 1 (01:15:50):
Yeah, But also like, what did you get out of it?
No money? Like nobody actually did anything with their white guilt.

Speaker 2 (01:15:55):
They got to read a true badoor show and he
got more famous.

Speaker 1 (01:15:58):
If that had already been booked. Oh look good for
pe who just bought more tickets.

Speaker 2 (01:16:01):
He got more famous, and then he got unfortunately again,
the real victims aren't. And this is now me getting
on a soapbox. It's not white people who feel silly
that they were taking advantage of and tricked. It is
victims of actual hate crimes that I think then are
taken less seriously and are framed a little bit as

(01:16:22):
more of a joke. Like I think that genuinely is
the consequence of a hoax like this is it muddies
the water for real victims.

Speaker 1 (01:16:30):
And we'll get into like if that has come to pass. Yeah,
so he is charged with disorderly conduct and finding a
false police report. Oh, he's charged, all right. He turns
himself in and hands over a bond. Jesse's whole family
stands by him, but other than that, pretty much nobody
claims him.

Speaker 2 (01:16:47):
Yeah, it's a it's a tough story, especially once the
Olem bullet confession.

Speaker 1 (01:16:51):
Yeah, because they do.

Speaker 2 (01:16:53):
Can they confess that Jesse asked them to do this?

Speaker 1 (01:16:56):
Yes? Yeah, yeah, and he's getting made fun of on
us well, he's written out of Empire.

Speaker 2 (01:17:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:17:02):
He goes to set and like apologizes, but he doesn't
admit anything. He's just like, I'm sorry, this is happening.
He hires a lawyer from a law firm that represents
like Chris Brown and Andrew Tate. But whatever lawyers take
the cases they take. His lawyer goes on the offensive,
asking what I think are some pretty good questions, which is,

(01:17:23):
why would he hire black people to pretend to be
white people? Why wouldn't he just hire some white people? Yeah,
you know, to which I would say, like, probably didn't
think they'd get caught, But still.

Speaker 2 (01:17:33):
He didn't think they were caught. He was friends with them.
You don't want to like, maybe he didn't have two
white people that he was close enough friends with that
he would fully trust not to flip if the when
the pressure came in, because it's like when the police,
if the police figured it out, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:17:48):
Right, But still like, it's just a good question. It's
a weird it's a weird decision. And also, why would
he do this? What's the motive? The Chicago p D
have a press conference and they say that he did
it to get a raise and that he sent himself
the threatening letter. They have no evidence for either of
these claims. Yeah, so like that those are just two

(01:18:09):
things that they state very unequivocally that they will never
provide evidence for.

Speaker 2 (01:18:15):
I also, I'm like, I have absolutely no doubt that
he has been threatened and harassed.

Speaker 1 (01:18:20):
Yes, the FBI looks into the letter, they never figure
out who sent it, and there's no evidence that he
that a this would have somehow led to a raise
or b that like he was hard up for cash.
So that's just like not a good motive.

Speaker 2 (01:18:34):
The only motive you can point to is publicity and attention.

Speaker 1 (01:18:38):
I think that's a much better motive.

Speaker 2 (01:18:39):
Yeah, he's an actor. They famously love attention.

Speaker 1 (01:18:42):
Yeah, I'll say another thing. Who pays for crimes by check?

Speaker 2 (01:18:46):
That I was gonna say, well, because I was gonna say,
they could say, well he's are we deal? You know
there were his weed dealer. He was paying for weed.
But you would never pay for weed with a check.

Speaker 1 (01:18:56):
Rich person, one oh one, get cash cash. Jesse's explanation
for the check is that it's for training and a
meal plan for a music video that he's.

Speaker 2 (01:19:05):
Going to Also plausible. I would pay for training in
a meal plan via check.

Speaker 1 (01:19:10):
And literally in the like note section on the check
is like the name of the music video. Oh yeah,
Like it absolutely checks out. He says that the need
your help on the low text was about he wanted
them to pick up an herbal fat loss drug while
they were in Nigeria. Yeah that's like illegal in the States, like.

Speaker 2 (01:19:32):
They were going to Nigeria. Also plausible.

Speaker 1 (01:19:35):
I would also believe that Jesse was just embarrassed and
trying to cover up the fact that he wanted like
regular illegal drugs.

Speaker 2 (01:19:42):
Yeah, like I could even see.

Speaker 1 (01:19:45):
A world where he says, okay, they the reason that
they came and met up with me at two am
was to like I bought cocaine from them. Yeah, and
then also unrel into that I got beat up by
some white guys. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:20:02):
I wasn't out just getting a sandwich. I was also
buying cocaine.

Speaker 1 (01:20:06):
Yeah, I was also buying cocaine. And then later I
ran into one white guy who did this thing like
it was a coincidence. Yeah, you know what I mean, Like,
I'm just making all this up, but I'm like, I
would believe that there's some version of it that involves
like regular drugs. Yeah, very plausible. Yeah, but I don't know.
He never says any of that. So whatever. The cops

(01:20:32):
they'll say that they're really mad and that they think that,
you know, we wish that the murders got this attention
instead of this Hollywood thing. I think they're a love
of them. Oh I but they're laughing it up. They're thrilled.
They they're like, look at our good police work. We're
smarter than this TV star.

Speaker 2 (01:20:51):
That's the thing.

Speaker 1 (01:20:51):
When I'm saying the muddying the waters this like lets
the cops have a victory lab. They're like, don't you
dare take advantage of our racial tension and we less
hate crimes than you thought. In Chicago see one less. Yeah,
specifically one less, one less better than one more. Uh,
and Marchie pleads not guilty.

Speaker 2 (01:21:11):
Sure.

Speaker 1 (01:21:12):
At this point, Kim Fox has recused herself the lawyer,
the state's attorney, state's attorney, because back when Jesse was
the victim, she talked to him. So she's sort of like,
so she just refuses herself. Yeah, so the attorney prosecuting
his case is now a white man named Joe Maggats
mag At, I know, right, And all of a sudden

(01:21:37):
he drops the charges. Sure, and Jesse agrees to pay
ten thousand dollars of his bond and complete community service.

Speaker 2 (01:21:46):
Honestly, I'm like, yeah, as you should. It's like, it's
such a messy, complicated situation, and you're like, let's not
make a big deal of this. It's embarrassing for everyone.

Speaker 1 (01:21:54):
Yeah, Kim is still the one who has to go,
like on news shows and explain the decision. She says,
this might seem really strange to people who don't work
in the legal system, but it's actually not that strange
that the state's attorney would choose not to pursue a
class four felony, which is the lowest class of felony.

Speaker 2 (01:22:14):
Yeah, it's like what you said, it was like filing
a false police report. Why would they go through this
entire rigmarole for a filing a false police report?

Speaker 1 (01:22:23):
Yeah, she says Cook County has a really high rate
of homicide, domestic violence, gun violence, and it's a better
use of her time to go after those crimes. And
he's not just getting away with it. He did community
service and gave up money, and he can put whatever
spinning wants on it. But you know, lots of people
do crimes and don't see the inside of a jail cell.
And he has no criminal record, and it's a non

(01:22:44):
violent offense.

Speaker 2 (01:22:45):
And also it's like got a quote unquote got away
with it. It's a crime that doesn't like hurt people tangibly. Again,
we talked about mudding the waters and the real victim
then of it coming out was his reputation.

Speaker 1 (01:23:00):
Like mostly people want to make him pay because they
tweeted really cringey statements about lynching. Yeah, but making people
tweet cringey statements about lyinging is not against the law.

Speaker 2 (01:23:13):
It's not against the law.

Speaker 1 (01:23:14):
Mayor Emmanuel calls it a whitewash of justice.

Speaker 2 (01:23:17):
Oh maybe shouldn't I use that right? All right, all right,
Mayor Emmanuel.

Speaker 1 (01:23:28):
I think their hope was that Jesse would just like
shut up. Yeah, but he treats it like he's been vindicated.

Speaker 2 (01:23:35):
Yeah, because they dropped the charges and he's like, see,
I did it.

Speaker 1 (01:23:38):
He's like, I've been vindicated. This is proof I didn't
do it. YadA, YadA, YadA. Really rubs everyone the wrong way.
He's he's like, I've been cleared, I've been redeemed.

Speaker 2 (01:23:50):
And you know what, I also will say for him
being like, Okay, so the cops couldn't catch the white
people who did this. You mean the Chicago PD couldn't
catch the people who did the crime. Yeah, sounds about right.

Speaker 1 (01:24:03):
Yeah. So he's still written out of empire.

Speaker 2 (01:24:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:24:08):
Trump is really mad because he had blamed Maga. Yeah,
and so he's like, Jesse's racist against white people.

Speaker 2 (01:24:15):
See, this is the thing that makes it worse.

Speaker 1 (01:24:17):
Yeah. The FBI has decided to look into this whole
charges drop situation.

Speaker 2 (01:24:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:24:24):
His lawyer is like, great, now it's a federal case.
He's being double victimized. And at the end of twenty nineteen,
Lori Lightfoot takes over for Rob Emmanuel and fires Eddie
Johnson for drinking on the job and lying about it.
So things are going great in Chicago.

Speaker 2 (01:24:44):
Yeah, things are always going great with Chicago p D.

Speaker 1 (01:24:46):
Yeah. A special prosecutor charges him with six counts of
disorderly conduct.

Speaker 2 (01:24:52):
That again also seems like they weren't quite sure what
crime to charge him with, because like you're like, is
that disorderly conduct?

Speaker 1 (01:24:59):
Yeah, because you like waste the police's time. I don't like.
I guess yeah, I'm not a lawyer.

Speaker 2 (01:25:04):
I'm not a lawyer.

Speaker 1 (01:25:05):
I mean I am, but I'm not. He goes to trial.

Speaker 2 (01:25:08):
He go, Okay, now he goes See, I was so
checked out. I didn't know this happened.

Speaker 1 (01:25:13):
This was now we're like in the pandemic.

Speaker 2 (01:25:15):
Okay, so we were worrying about other things. We all
kind of moved on.

Speaker 1 (01:25:19):
Yes. In one of the documentaries I watched, they're like,
this was Chicago's OJ trial, And I'm like, I don't
think anyone was paying nearly that much at time. No.

Speaker 2 (01:25:28):
The thing about the OJ trial is people cared.

Speaker 1 (01:25:30):
Yeah. The lawyers have a new strategy his lawyers, which
is that they say that the brothers did it because
they were homophobic.

Speaker 2 (01:25:37):
It is interesting again, given that there's so much security
camera footage that you're like, Yeah, if there was another
person in this area, we would or another two people
in this area, we would have seen them. These are
the only two people in this area.

Speaker 1 (01:25:51):
Yeah. Yeah, And it's all really dark, you can't see
the face of anyone at all. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:25:56):
So again it makes sense as a defense where you're like,
I guess these were the two people.

Speaker 1 (01:26:00):
The jury does not go for this, and he is
convicted on five of the six counts. Wow. By now
it's twenty twenty two. The officer who killed Laqwan MacDonald
has just gotten out of prison early for good behavior.
Oh great, he served less than half of his sentence.
So is the Chicago legal system trying to make an
example out of Jesse as a distraction?

Speaker 2 (01:26:23):
Oh possible, because.

Speaker 1 (01:26:25):
It makes law enforcement look competent and reminds people not
to believe everything that sounds really bad. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:26:30):
It also kind of feels like like maybe it's not
that mastermindy, but it is convenient.

Speaker 1 (01:26:37):
That's where I land. I think that they would manipulate
the courts at this point. La Quan MacDonald was murdered
eight years ago, so I'm not sure that they are
falsifying evidence.

Speaker 2 (01:26:52):
And it was a jury trial for Jesse, right, it
was a jury Yes. Yeah, I'm not.

Speaker 1 (01:26:58):
Sure that they're making up evidence in the Jesse case
to cover up what happened with Lakwan. But I'm sure
they're I don't know, throwing extra resources at the I
would believe that they're throwing extra resources at the case.

Speaker 2 (01:27:10):
Yeah, they want to at least not humiliate themselves at
this point.

Speaker 1 (01:27:14):
Yeah, they're in it to win it. One month later
is Jesse's sentencing. So his supporters, including the Reverend Jesse
Jackson and the actor Samuel L. Jackson, who are not
related despite having the same one's name. I mean, I
knew that, but I thought that was funny, write letters
to the judge asking for leniency and sentencing. They point
out that people who are convicted of class four felonies

(01:27:35):
often don't serve any jail time, and they find other
ways to serve their sentences like house arrest or community
service or you know, you can check in with a
parole officer, do weekend jail. Basically, they say, listen, this
kid is famous, black, gay and had a Jewish dad.
He's going to be a target in prison, and he
has already suffered a lot. It would be very reasonable
for you to find an alternative. The white male judge

(01:27:55):
is not having it. He orders Jesse to pay over
a hundred one thousand dollars in restitution twenty five thousand
dollars in fines.

Speaker 2 (01:28:04):
But he already paid thirty five hundred dollars for the crime.

Speaker 1 (01:28:08):
He's like, Jesse, you are a liar and a pretender
and a charlatan. Oof. You are getting thirty months probation
and one hundred and fifty days in jail starting now.

Speaker 2 (01:28:16):
Wow, did they ever get his phone?

Speaker 1 (01:28:20):
Jesse's yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:28:22):
Because I am curious whether they like could I mean,
I guess they got the texts from the brothers. Yeah,
it's just very interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:28:28):
There's no other smoking gun texts.

Speaker 2 (01:28:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:28:31):
Jesse stands up in court and he yells out your honor,
I respect you, but I did not do this. And
as he's being led out of the courtroom, he turns
and he yells, I am not suicidal.

Speaker 2 (01:28:43):
Oh interesting. They think they're going to kill him to
quiet him. He thinks they're going to kill him to
quiet him.

Speaker 1 (01:28:49):
He thinks that there's a chance that something will happen
to him, that like, he could get into a fight
in jail, and that the cops will be so embarrassed
that they'll say that it was sue Yeah. Just like
if he dies for whatever reason in jail, that the
cops will be so embarrassed that they let this happen
in him that they'll say it was suicide to cover
it up. And or this guy is so messy and

(01:29:12):
lives for attention and drama. Sure, he gets out on
appeal six days later. Oh great, Yeah, so he's granted
an appeal and he makes bail and so yeah, in
October twenty twenty three, he goes to an outpatient rehab.
In November twenty twenty four, the appeal is still happening,
and the Illinois State Supreme Court overrules the entire second

(01:29:37):
trial and conviction because the state had originally agreed to
drop the charges in exchange for community service and the
ten thousand dollars bond, and since he held up his
end of the bargain, they have to hold up theirs.

Speaker 2 (01:29:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:29:50):
So it's basically the double jeopardy principle, which is that
you can't try a person for the same crime crime twice,
so expanding on that, if you agree not to try
a person, you can undo that deal. You already made
a deal on whatever crime you think they did.

Speaker 2 (01:30:04):
Fair.

Speaker 1 (01:30:04):
While all of this has been going on, Chicago has
been suing Jesse for the cost of the investigation, okay,
and Jesse has been countersuing the City of Chicago. This
part of the case doesn't wrap up until May twenty
twenty five. Oh so messy. Jesse donates fifty thousand dollars
to a charity and that settles it. So great job everybody.
This is an awesome use of the courts.

Speaker 2 (01:30:25):
You know what a charity have fifty thousand dollars. That's good. Yeah,
I'm happy about that. I can't believe how many trials
this took. Yeah, and I was just talking about how
all the trials were for hoaxes were back in the
seventeen hundreds. I was wrong about that.

Speaker 1 (01:30:41):
For the last few years, Jesse has been working a little.
He directed a couple of movies, he made another album,
He was on a reality show, He goes to events sometimes.
He talked about the incident on two podcasts, and last
year he participated in a Netflix documentary.

Speaker 2 (01:30:56):
See That's what's interesting to me, because whatever I mean,
I guess he needs to kind of maintained that it
actually happened. But if I were Jussy or his publicist
or his creative manager, I would say just say that's
in the past. I don't want to talk about that anymore.
I want to talk about moving forward. This was one
night ten almost ten years ago, twenty nineteen, twenty nine, okay,

(01:31:19):
almost seven years ago. This was one night, seven years ago.
I just want to move forward with my life.

Speaker 1 (01:31:24):
I think he'll start saying that soon. Yeah. The documentary
is interesting. It goes through the whole thing without ever
mentioning the bleach like.

Speaker 2 (01:31:35):
Bleach that was found on his sweater. Yeah, your jacket,
that's just like not part of it. Like they just
that's not part of the evidence anymore. Interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:31:44):
The documentary makes a lot out of this one bit
of security footage.

Speaker 2 (01:31:48):
Is a documentary pro or anti Jussy or pretty middle balanced.

Speaker 1 (01:31:52):
It tries to present itself as balanced, but it is
kind of pro Jussy, okay, because it makes a lot
out of the like very little Projessy evidence evidence that
like is actually quite weak.

Speaker 2 (01:32:06):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:32:08):
It makes a lot out of this one bit of
security footage that seems to show one of the two
like figures stepping into some light and maybe having lighter
skin than the Osendaro brothers. But like it's very grainy
and it's not high quality footage, and like there's just
really nothing to suggest that that actually is like correctly colored.

Speaker 2 (01:32:32):
And we actually have actual evidence that these brothers took
this uber and tab, like we know they did come
to this area.

Speaker 1 (01:32:39):
Yeah, so like until someone explains what else they were
doing in that area, it really isn't.

Speaker 2 (01:32:49):
And it does not seem from the footage that I'm
sure the police combed through that other people, another pair
of people were in this area.

Speaker 1 (01:32:56):
Well, so they find these two witnesses, Okay, one of
them was a doorman at the Sheraton and saw a
white guy in a ski mask running oh at the
time of the incident, and there is security footage that
would maybe corroborate thish and some of the security footage

(01:33:22):
is missing. Interesting, and we know from the Lakwan MacDonald
case that the cops have the ability to like cover
their tracks deleting footage. Yeah, but I've also seen people
say that like hotel security cameras like they have lag
like they had like they don't record, you know, they

(01:33:43):
just sort of take snapshots. Yeah, so like this is
maybe not quite a smoking gun.

Speaker 2 (01:33:48):
And also it would be difficult to identify someone's race
in a ski mask running past you at two in
the morning, when presumably the doorman was inside.

Speaker 1 (01:33:58):
I think he would he he says that he like
shone his flashlight in the guy's face. I mean, I
don't know why this guy would lie. He's black guy. Yeah,
so maybe he was running. I don't think he was running,
saying I just did a hate crime.

Speaker 2 (01:34:13):
Yeah, but okay.

Speaker 1 (01:34:19):
There's also a woman who lived in Jesse's building who
says that she took her dog out to pee at midnight,
who says that she saw a white man like standing
on the corner with like a bit of rope in
his like coming out of his pocket.

Speaker 2 (01:34:37):
Oh.

Speaker 1 (01:34:37):
Suspicious, very suspicious. But also like, okay, so he stood
there for two hours in negative twenty degrees.

Speaker 2 (01:34:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:34:48):
I mean, but again, if you're like fueled by the
fire of racism, I guess it keeps you warm.

Speaker 2 (01:34:54):
It also is it's tricky because you're like, on one hand,
the Chicago Pead would have win this crime was told
to them would have wanted to do everything to solve
it right away. But if they couldn't and could only
link the Nigerian brothers, then they would would want to
cover their tracks to not be embarrassed.

Speaker 1 (01:35:14):
I mean, I can imagine a situation where they find
the Ausendaro brothers, get a confession and then just stop looking. Yeah,
like they're just like, oh, other witnesses came forward, whatever,
we don't want to interview them. Yeah, the Ausendaro brothers
have released a book, They've gone on Fox News, they
have a podcast about what they did. Like they're obviously
out for money and attention too. Like they're not, you know,

(01:35:38):
unbiased in their recollection of things. Yeah, they're not necessarily
trustworthy narrators. But let's get into it. Let's get into
the theories. The best way that I can describe looking
into this in like a normal hoax, I feel like

(01:36:00):
one side says, Okay, here's here's my story. My story
is red, and then the other side says, well, my
story is blue, and then we talk it through and
we find okay, well the story is mostly blue, but
it's a little purple. And then we do another hoax
and it's like one side says, okay, well my story
is one, and the other side says, well, my story

(01:36:23):
is five, and then we talk it through and I
find out, okay, well it's actually four, you know, and
we like find the middle ground. Yeah, And in this
it's like, well, one side says it's green and the
other side says it's seven, and I don't know how
to find the middle ground between green and seven.

Speaker 2 (01:36:40):
Well, because the most generous, too, JUSSI, is even if
details are suspicious, there's a version of this where he
was attacked and you know, he was walking home and
he was the victim of a hate crime or not,
or just a random act of violence, and he maybe
for attention, maybe believed it fabricated a version that was

(01:37:02):
with more emphasis on that it was a hate crime
against him, that it was you know, because he was
gay and because he was black, and because he was
on Empire. And that's a version where you're like, and
then he told details to the police that were a
little exaggerated, but he was attacked and a victim of
random violence or but.

Speaker 1 (01:37:20):
He somehow would have had to have a noose with him,
because there's security footage of him getting home with the
noose around his neck.

Speaker 2 (01:37:28):
He didn't take it off before he got home.

Speaker 1 (01:37:30):
He walked into the lobby with the noose around his neck.

Speaker 2 (01:37:34):
Oh yeah, he didn't notice somehow, well he had it.

Speaker 1 (01:37:38):
I'm just saying he had it on. I'm like, when
he left to go to go get some food, he
didn't have the noose on, and when he came back
he had the noose on. So his attackers must have
had a racial component or he had the rope with him.

Speaker 2 (01:37:55):
Well, so that is the evidence against this' like he
was the victim of a rain in an act of
violence and then exaggerated yeah, because it's like, well, you
can't there was a prop. There was a prop. There
was planning involved, So did he plan this or did
someone else plan this?

Speaker 1 (01:38:09):
Right? So okay, so neither version makes sense.

Speaker 2 (01:38:14):
The problem is he just went too far. If he
didn't have a prop, people would have believed him.

Speaker 1 (01:38:18):
Like why would a racist know where he was and
wait outside nepolar vortex only to lightly beat him up,
but also have props? But also why would he fake
it so poorly?

Speaker 2 (01:38:26):
Yeah, he thought he would get it. I mean, the
answer to why would he fake it so poorly? Is
he's a celebrity who thought he would get away with it.

Speaker 1 (01:38:34):
Jesse, in an interview with Variety, said that basically all
of the like inconsistencies are to further cover up what
happened with Lakwan McDonald.

Speaker 2 (01:38:47):
Oh don't that's that's This is the part that I
like don't want to be on Jesse's side because I'm like,
don't use this horrific tragedy of a boy who was murdered.

Speaker 1 (01:38:56):
Yeah, he sort of just suggests it, Okay, he's like,
and he just sort of ties it together to just
sort of cast out on the Chicago PD. He's like, well,
all this stuff about how corrupt the Chicago PD was
coming out, so that's why they kept doing all this
stuff to keep my trial in the news and keep

(01:39:16):
my trial going, Which, like, yeah, it's icky. He just
wants to smear the Chicago PD. But like, I'm not
going to sit here and ride for the Chicago PD.
But like, I don't necessarily disagree that they would use
his trial to like cover their misdeeds. But I don't
think that doesn't mean that they've just followed the evidence.

Speaker 2 (01:39:36):
That's the double side of it. The thing that's true
which is that the Chicago PD absolutely would have taken
advantage of this trial to make themselves look better. Yeah,
and that doesn't necessarily mean they were fully lying. Maybe
they were just taking advantage of this situation where they're like, oh, great,
a celebrity that we can make look dumb and look stupid,

(01:39:58):
and we can like because he you know, they just
fell fell in their laps. Yeah, of course they would
take advantage of it.

Speaker 1 (01:40:05):
So I came up with like ten theories. Ten theories
that I have ordered from Jesse innocent to Jesse guilty.

Speaker 2 (01:40:13):
Great, I am so excited. I can't believe you. I
can't even think of ten theories. I mean, I have
two theories, but please please.

Speaker 1 (01:40:22):
Number one, it happened exactly as Jesse said it did. Yeah,
sometimes just things are crazy, things are crazy, and just
we just don't have all the information, just like somehow.

Speaker 2 (01:40:30):
Somehow, Look, these people were out to try to do a.

Speaker 1 (01:40:34):
Hate crime, Like I don't know how racists think. Yeah,
they thought it was worth it to stand out there
in the hold. Yeah, whatever, there's security footage can Lie
and the brothers had a different reason for being in
the area.

Speaker 2 (01:40:47):
The brothers were selling him weed maybe Yeah, who knows
it happened.

Speaker 1 (01:40:52):
It happened, Number two, It happened similar to how he
said it did. But like things he exaggerated, like they
didn't actually yell what he said they yelled, And maybe
it wasn't two guys, it was just one guy. And
that's why they can't find it on the security footage
because he like he wanted to seem tougher, so he

(01:41:13):
said it was two guys because he didn't want to
admit he lost a fight to one guy. And that's
why they couldn't find on securit footage because they were
looking for two guys. He was actually one guy.

Speaker 2 (01:41:22):
That is a slightly more plausible version.

Speaker 1 (01:41:24):
Yeah, someone else paid white guys to do this, or
like some like white guys did this and then had
Ola and Bola take the fall for it. Oh okay,
someone else had Ola and Bola do this, and that's
why Jesse's confused.

Speaker 2 (01:41:41):
Yeah, he wasn't involved in on although they you think
they would confess to someone else telling them.

Speaker 1 (01:41:46):
To do this. They're like scared of that person. Oh
sure he's paying he's paying them. Still, Yeah, to say
it was Jesse, it was someone else's idea. Who set
it all up. But Jesse was in on it, and
that's why it all sounds so screwy. Sure, that's why
there's like weird missing texts and like the plan is
so bad because they were like delayed flights and like

(01:42:07):
it was just like a bad plan because maybe someone
who wasn't in Chicago and didn't know about the weather.
Like it was just like a bad plan with miscommunication.

Speaker 2 (01:42:13):
I mean that's he does have a creative director, and
that's why it was like unclear whether or not they
were going to call the cops.

Speaker 1 (01:42:20):
Yeah, yeah, not fully thought that Number Sixesse had a
mental health crisis and genuinely doesn't remember telling them to
do this. Oh yeah, Number seven he got the threatening
letter and wanted the studio to pay for him to
have security, So he planned the attack out of a
legitimate fear of violence. Yeah, and it was just like
a last minute thing, and that's why it's like such

(01:42:42):
a bad plan.

Speaker 2 (01:42:43):
At any point, did he ask for security or did
this because I wonder or either way, I mean, if
he felt like he was threatened, he wanted to be
like see it's serious.

Speaker 1 (01:42:51):
Yeah, yeah, he had a legitimate fear and so he
sent himself the letter. Yeah, And so he wanted the
studio to pay for security, and so he sent themselves
the letter. And then when that didn't work, then he
did this plan and it was all very last minute,
and that's why such a bad plan. Yeah number nine.
After years of experiencing the kind of racism and homophobia

(01:43:13):
that is too settled to fight aggressively but still wears
away at the soul, Jesse found himself famously black and
famously gay, and benefiting from privilege, yet full of rage
at a time when it seemed that victims were their
own breed of celebrity. He wanted to make his inner
wounds visible to the outside world. He wanted to engage
meaningfully in civil rights work the way his mother had,
but growing up on set had given him a distorted

(01:43:35):
view of the line between reality and fiction. Stressed and
exhausted by his job, he came up with a plan that,
in his mind, would give him a platform from which
to speak about things that mattered, staging a quote unquote
real incident that wouldn't actually hurt anyone. He just wanted attention,
and never meant to get the cops involved, but by
that time it was too late, and as the case
spent out of control, all he could do was stick

(01:43:56):
to his story, even as it made him look, for
lack of a better word, bug, that's bananas, Lizzie.

Speaker 2 (01:44:01):
That is incredibly well said. And you know what, I
can also see in someone's misguided head, as you said,
making internal, very legitimate wounds external him being like, this
will be a platform for good, right, Like.

Speaker 1 (01:44:16):
Maybe people have shouted that at him in the past. Yeah,
and he just never complained about it because he didn't
want to be a rich celebrity complaining. But he's like, no,
I'm gonna talk about how I've people have shouted this
at me. Yeah. Number ten. While the country faced a
racial reckoning, Smollet callously and maliciously sought to capture the
zeitgeist for his own selfish aims, banking on the public's

(01:44:38):
sympathy to prop up a stalled career instead of doing
what every other hack in Hollywood knows you have to do,
skip the shortcuts and put in the work.

Speaker 2 (01:44:46):
Yeah. I think it's probably I'm gonna say, I'm gonna
hope nine. Yeah, that's where I land Danish Swartz.

Speaker 1 (01:44:52):
All right, this is our last section. Are you ready?
For my hot take. Yeah. I don't even know if
I believe in this hot take, but this is my
hot hot.

Speaker 2 (01:45:01):
That's kind of hot take, one that you can't fully defend.

Speaker 1 (01:45:05):
In the fullness of time with hindsight.

Speaker 2 (01:45:07):
Yeah, this is not.

Speaker 1 (01:45:09):
That big of a deal.

Speaker 2 (01:45:11):
Yeah, I mean, the thing is no one, no one
except him, got hurt.

Speaker 1 (01:45:17):
I think the response at the time was correct, Yeah,
because the response to the incident was a huge what
the fuck? Because that is the correct response. Yeah, and
then the response to the revelation that it was a
hoax was a huge what the fuck? Also correct. Yeah,
but as you said, I think there was a very
big I think people were nervous that future hate crimes

(01:45:38):
would be not believed. Yeah, I am not an expert.
I don't know that that has come to pass.

Speaker 2 (01:45:45):
I actually agree with you. I think because he is
a celebrity that maybe actually makes it more ridiculous as
a as a circus exhibit.

Speaker 1 (01:45:55):
It's just a bizarre it's a bizarre what happened. Yeah,
like people, I mean, granted there were video, but like
people believe and understand even if they have different reactions
to it. People don't think that George Floyd's death was faked. Yeah,
people don't believe that Breonna Taylor's death was fit. Like

(01:46:16):
it's so bizarre that it goes outside the realm of
hate crime stories and into the realm of strange celebrity things. Yes,
I don't know that people are being accused of Jesse smolletting.

Speaker 2 (01:46:30):
The only thing that I would say is a consequence.
But I would argue is not his fault. Is just
the rapaciousness of like the Maga far right movement. Is
it makes like wokeness look silly. Yeah, but they would
take advantage of anything to try to make wokeness look silly.

Speaker 1 (01:46:50):
Yeah, And and correct me if I'm wrong. If other
people aren't being believed as a result, that that's horrible
and I take this back. Yeah, but I just haven't.
I haven't noticed that happening.

Speaker 2 (01:47:04):
Yeah, it doesn't seem like the narrative for at least
the ones we hear about in the news is people
questioning whether or not they've actually happened. But I will
say it shone a light to me, This is my
read of the situation that I have not done the
research in. To me, it's shown a light on the
fact that people get social capital and benefit from playing

(01:47:29):
the I mean literally in this case, playing the victim.
And I think that narrative is one that the right
really latched onto for the purposes of ridiculing and minimizing
the suffering of legitimately vulnerable populations.

Speaker 1 (01:47:46):
I mean sort of the classic like victim who lied
story is like that Rolling Stone article about yeah, sexual assault,
like the women whose stories of sexual assault are later
shown to have like inconsistencies. Every time that happens, it's like,
oh God, here's another setback or something. But usually it's

(01:48:10):
like someone who is not famous who then gains some
sort of fame as a result of being a victim,
and then is shown to have, for lack of a
better word, just like made it up. Yeah, that tends
to set back victims in general. Jesse was already famous,

(01:48:33):
but and so it has this weird effect of it
being like, I guess maybe now people won't be believe celebrities.
It does don't know that they're less inclined to believe victims.

Speaker 2 (01:48:45):
I fully agree with you on that point. I will
be more critical in general, I think, than you, because
I do think. And again I don't blame Jesse for this.
I think this is a problem of like internet culture
and the way the far right opates that it made
wokeness look silly, and it reinforced an idea that they

(01:49:06):
had in their heads that people play the victim for
social gain. And I think that that is a narrative
that a lot of people on the right have, that
people cry victim for their own benefit, for what is
it points points, but I was saying, for like the diversity,

(01:49:26):
d I thank you whatever, like oh the DEI points
is what they're trying to get. And I think that
this moment, because it was so publicized and because it
was so like, once you have the narrative in your
head of this guy faking this elaborate thing, it's so silly,
it reinforces this cultural movement away from wokeness because it's like, see,

(01:49:49):
people are only playing into this for their own social benefit.
And I think measuring that and ascribing that to Jesse
isn't fair because you just you can't do that. But
I do see as like a bullet point in a
I mean a genuine post woke, an anti woke backlash
that we have seen in our culture, which is reinforced

(01:50:10):
by a belief that people complain about genuine social injustices
for attention.

Speaker 1 (01:50:16):
Yeah, and I mean and that speaks to a lot
of like larger cultural trends that this podcast is on about.

Speaker 2 (01:50:26):
No, like, and it's it's impossible to measure. Yeah, I'm
just like anecdotally trying to like pull from the sky
of these random data points.

Speaker 1 (01:50:34):
No, totally. Like, I one hundred percent agree with you,
and I and I do wish that like we relied
less on like stories and more on like hard facts,
because then it would matter less if stories got debunked
because hard like you know what I mean, Like if
we didn't need examples.

Speaker 2 (01:50:55):
So, but you know what I mean, it's that thing
of a one person is a tragedy a million people's exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:51:01):
I also think, like just to to my point of
this being like whatever, Like, so Jesse's trying to have
a comeback, Sure I wouldn't hire him.

Speaker 2 (01:51:11):
If he was trying to have a comeback. He really
should be quiet about this.

Speaker 1 (01:51:14):
He should. There are other men in Hollywood trying to
have a comeback right now and succeeding who their careers
were destroyed for crimes that I'm not going to compare
apples and oranges yeah, in terms of impact right or wrong,
but what they did tangibly hurt other people, whereas Jesse's

(01:51:37):
main victim is himself.

Speaker 2 (01:51:38):
And also if you're if you google Mark Wahlberg hate crime,
it's not a hoax.

Speaker 1 (01:51:45):
So just that's just a fun fact for you. Yes,
and there are men who, for instance, recently showed up
at SNL, recently showed up at the Netflix Is a
Laugh Festival, recently showed up at the can Film Festival,
who I would argue did things that damage their careers
but are now having comebacks, who tangibly hurt other people,

(01:52:07):
where I'm like, obviously the bar in Hollywood is pretty low.
Maybe none of these men should get to have careers.
But I'm like whatever, Jesse, like, I don't care, like whatever,
you know.

Speaker 2 (01:52:19):
The different is the quote unquote gatekeepers, like the powerful
people don't like feeling tricked, and they don't like feeling
like Jesse was trying to trick them. I'm just like whatever,
he's just mentally ill, Like, yeah, he just did, like
you said, a bananas thing.

Speaker 1 (01:52:35):
He's just like And I don't even mean to disparage
mentally ill people because most of us would not ever
do this like it's horrible, but like.

Speaker 2 (01:52:47):
Famous a form of mental illness.

Speaker 1 (01:52:50):
Yeah, like I think he was just having a MENTI bee.

Speaker 2 (01:52:55):
It's like such a I understand why I got so
much attention because it's just like a for lack of
a better word, fun thing.

Speaker 1 (01:53:01):
To parse out.

Speaker 2 (01:53:02):
Yeah, because it's kind of, like you said, like an
actual victimless crime by the end, like he's basic but
that like so people can get this shn freud Like no,
I'm like going through the true crime details of it
without actually feeling bad because like a person isn't dead,
thank god. Yeah, oh so much. But again, yeah, people

(01:53:25):
men are coming back in Hollywood for doing way worse.

Speaker 1 (01:53:28):
Yeah, so that's what happened. You know it didn't happen.

Speaker 2 (01:53:33):
I think I would love, you know, people more qualified
than us to weigh in on what the what Jesse
Smolt's future should should be in Hollywood. I'm not the
the arbiter of that. But I also am like, look,
we all make mistakes, we all do insane sometimes, we
all do insane things. Not this insane. No, I think

(01:53:54):
I'm a little not angry or annoy like I don't
know the right word for like annoyed, just because I'm
so scared and troubled by this like anti woke backlash
that people who did take advantage of the moment. I
am inclined to view more harshly. But I also fully

(01:54:14):
agree with you that men come back in Hollywood for
doing far worse to actual victims.

Speaker 1 (01:54:19):
I mean, yeah, again, like I'm not like we should
welcome him back, but it's hard for me to stir
up real vitriol against this guy. I just think of it.
He's just a clown to me, Like he's just a
fool to me.

Speaker 2 (01:54:33):
I think actual gay black people could better, and he was.

Speaker 1 (01:54:38):
An actual gay black people, but that he really is black.

Speaker 2 (01:54:43):
I think gay people of color might have different opinions
on what his probably yeah, yeah, But Lizzie, I am
very grateful for like the clarity and restraint and fact
based reporting that you shared in this hoax, because again,
like you said, this was one where I was like, Nope,
not for me. But it is very interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:55:03):
You know, we tried to keep it to the things
that we knew to be true, and we probably got
some stuff from and.

Speaker 2 (01:55:12):
But you have ten possible theories and I.

Speaker 1 (01:55:14):
Had ten possible theories. One of them's got to.

Speaker 2 (01:55:16):
Be one of them's gota. It has the lamp somewhere
on that spectrum somewhere. That's it.

Speaker 1 (01:55:21):
That's all I have. It's the end of the season.
Thank you so much for listening.

Speaker 2 (01:55:27):
Than this was. This has just been a joy and
a delight, and we are going to continue to hoax
but we're not sure exactly where or when, but probably
still on this exact feed and definitely on the same
Instagram that will be communicated. So thank you for your
listening and your support.

Speaker 1 (01:55:47):
Yeah, and uh, please hoax responsibly.

Speaker 2 (01:55:51):
Please hoax responsibly.

Speaker 1 (01:55:53):
Bye. PAX is a production of iHeart Podcasts. Our hosts
are Danas Schortz and Lizzie Logan. Our executive producers are
Matt Frederick and Trevor Young, with supervising producer Rima L.

(01:56:14):
Kali and producers Nomes Griffin and Jesse Funk. Our theme
music was composed by Laine Montgomery. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts. Thanks for listening.

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