After Cook County Judge James Linn told Jussie Smollett he'd be starting 150 days in jail right then and there Thursday night for ...
After Cook County Judge James Linn told Jussie Smollett he'd be starting 150 days in jail right then and there Thursday night for staging a hate crime against himself in 2019 and lying to police about the hoax, Smollett turned more than a few heads with a bizarre soliloquy of sorts.
'I am not suicidal!'
"I am not suicidal," Smollett said quietly to the judge. Then he repeated the phrase in a raised voice. Then Smollett said, "I am not suicidal," once again, even more sharply.
"I am innocent, and I am not suicidal," he continued as he stood up, shaking his finger. "If I did this, then it means that I stuck my fist in the fears of black Americans in this country for over 400 years and the fears of the LGBTQ community!”
Image source: YouTube screenshot, composite
Smollett added, “I did not do this, and I am not suicidal. And if anything happens to me when I go in [jail], I did not do it to myself. And you must all know that ... I am not suicidal.”
Then the singer and ex-star of "Empire" offered a grand finale, raising his fist as he was led out of the courtroom and flat-out hollering in the process: "I am not suicidal! I am not suicidal! And I am innocent! I could've said I was guilty a long time ago!"
Jussie Smollett has courtroom outburst after judge sentences him to jail | ABC7youtu.be
How did observers react to Smollett's outburst?
As you might imagine, a number of notable individuals reacted strongly to Smollett's behavior after his sentencing.
Actor and comedian Terrance K. Williams posted a video of himself wide-eyed as he took in Smollett's outburst and then cracked up by the end of it.
"Oh Lord! ... What a marvelous performance!" Williams bellowed, trying to catch his breath. "Man! You do some really great acting, Jussie, Jessie, Juicy, whatever your name is. Listen, man. You're going to jail! [laughs more] Oh Lord ... Juicy, Jussie is goin' to jail! He's [gonna] be locked up, they won't let him out, they won't let him out! Listen, that's what you get. You're going to jail — na na na na, hey hey, goodbye!"
After a remark about soap we won't repeat here, Williams added that he was having a mediocre day — until the sentencing: "I feel so much better! I just feel great! ... Now this is what you call justice right here, OK? He shouldn't have been lying. He shouldn't have been making up fake stuff about Trump supporters."
After Smollett's dramatic outburst, Gregg Jarrett — legal and political analyst for Fox News — tweeted that it demonstrated "his acting skills are no better than his lying skills."
Siraj Hashmi — tongue fully in cheek — noted that Smollett is "misunderstood. He’s not a liar, he’s just an incredibly talented method actor who cannot break character under any circumstances."
Lawyer and YouTuber Viva Frei observed that Smollett "appealed to the Ukraine war, the Holocaust, racism, homophobia… and in so doing, exploited all of those injustices for his own selfish & dishonest aspirations. He then raised his fist in defiance as he left the court room. Shameless narcissism to the bitter end."
Breitbart's Alana Mastrangelo wondered if Smollett was "auditioning for a new role?"
Social media pundit Gad Saad concluded after watching Smollett's outburst that "the level of malignant narcissism that this grotesque cretin exhibited is astounding. He has zero sense of shame. He is a Munchausen psychopath."
Anything else?
The Chicago Sun-Times reported that Smollett likely will serve only half the 150-day sentence since his jail term is eligible for “day-for-day” credit for good behavior. In addition to jail time, Smollett also will serve 30 months of probation and pay $120,000 in restitution to the city of Chicago as well as a $25,000 fine.
Smollett, 39 — who is black and gay — made national headlines for claiming a pair of supporters of then-President Donald Trump physically attacked him near his apartment in Chicago in the early morning hours of Jan. 29, 2019.
He claimed the two men wearing ski masks confronted him as he was leaving a Subway restaurant around 2 a.m. in below freezing conditions and yelled, "Aren't you that f***ot 'Empire' n*****?" before beating him up, putting a rope around his neck, pouring bleach on him, and hollering, "This is MAGA country!" — a reference to Trump's "Make America Great Again" slogan.
But once a police investigation began, Smollett's story began to crumble.
Prior to issuing his sentence, Judge Linn eviscerated Smollett, calling him a "charlatan" and telling him "your hypocrisy is astounding" and "you wanted to make yourself more famous" through the elaborate, "premeditated" caper and then "you threw a national pity party for yourself." But the worst part, the judge said, was that Smollett lied to authorities about it all — and then committed perjury on the witness stand.
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