Whitewash?

March 28, 2019

In the last forty-eight hours, the news media has been consumed with the latest developments in the Jussie Smollett case.  On Tuesday, prosecutors dropped all of the charges against him and sealed his record, apparently in exchange for Smollett’s forfeiture of his $10,000 bond and doing sixteen hours of community service, (Source:  “Why the prosecutors dismissed the charges against Jussie Smollett,” by Deanna Paul, The Washington Post, 3/28/19).  Countless hours were devoted to venting anger over the speculation that Smollett had gotten away with something. The Chicago Police Department was furious and Mayor Rahm Emanuel declared the case disposition a “whitewash.”

Their performance is proof positive that irony is dead.  We should believe that the same Chicago Police Department that operated a secret facility from 1974-1991, where Police Commander Jon Burge tortured Black men in order to extract confessions from them, is outraged at this supposed miscarriage of justice?(Source:  “A Digital Archive Documents Two Decades of Torture by Chicago Police,” by Juleyka Lantigua-Williams, TheAtlantic.com, 10/26/16).  We should believe that Rahm Emanuel, who buried the video of the murder of Laquan McDonald by Chicago Police Officer Jason Van Dyke for a year, is an advocate for greater transparency? (Source:  “Laquan McDonald was shot down by the police, and he took the mayor’s career down with him,” by Dahleen Glanton, The Chicago Tribune,  9/6/18).

Yet while commentators were bloviating about Smollett all over the airwaves, apoplectic at thought of one Black man escaping harsh punishment for a crime he may have committed, we heard no such outrage over the Trump administration’s continued policy of depraved cruelty.  There was no comparable anger directed at the decision to use the courts to do what they couldn’t do legislatively and kill the Affordable Care Act.  If they succeed, 21 million people will lose their healthcare immediately and millions more will face significantly increased costs, yet the decision barely garnered notice outside of MSNBC, (Source:  “What Happens If Obamacare is Struck Down?” by Reed Abelson, Abby Goodnough and Robert Pear, The New York Times, 3/26/19).

Betsy DeVos unveiled a budget that, for the third year in a row, zeroed out funding for the Special Olympics, as part of a package of a drastic cuts to the Department of Education budget equal to 12% of the total. In addition to the Special Olympics, DeVos proposed cutting after school and summer programs for low income students, (Source:  “DeVos blasted again for proposing cuts to the Special Olympics,” by Katie Lobosco, CNN.com, 3/27/19).

Trump’s EPA is undermining the Clean Water Act by proposing new rules that would dramatically narrow what are considered “Waters of the U.S.,” where pollution is prohibited without a permit.  The new rule proposed by Trump’s EPA would exclude “18% of streams and 51% of wetlands,” in the country (Source:  “Tracking deregulation in the Trump era,” Brookings.edu, 3/27/19).

Trump’s administration has two modes – cruelty and greed. We can ill afford to be distracted by nonsense. Just because racism and homophobia  is profitable doesn’t mean that folks should waste ink and airtime whipping up resentment against a Black gay man.  The truth is, while folks are busy trying to put Jussie under the jail, Trump is busily working to increase the toll of human misery.  Don’t do that job for him.