“We want victims of hate crimes and any crime to be believed. And so I think that, you know, in a sense, that was a good thing, that they came out and said, ‘We believe you.’”
—Sunny Hostin, throwing in her contribution to “The View’s” desperate efforts to offer excuses and rationalization for convicted hate-crime fraud Jussie Smollett and the race-baiting Democrats and pundits that instantly believed his absurd story and blamed his “attack” on Donald Trump.
Hostin, incidentally, is a lawyer. A lawyer actually made an argument that devoid of logic. What does that tell us about the law school that graduated her (Notre Dame), the Justice Department that hired her (Clinton’s), and the news networks that employed her as an analyst (CNN, Fox News, Court TV and ABC). Is there a dumber statement that is even possible to make? “It’s a ‘good thing’ that an obviously made-up hate crime account was believed, because we want everyone to believe even fictional accusations, though doing so wastes money, take police away from investigating real crimes, and increases societal divisions and suspicion.” Brilliant!
All right, all right: I know calling ethics fouls on the blather that passes for debate on “The View” is like beefy ex-male swimmer winning races against life-time females. Nevertheless, people watch “The View,” get fed “logic” like Hostin’s, and become dumber and dumber, until next thing you know they’re voting for Kamala Harris for President. Responsible citizens don’t just need ethics alarms, they need idiot alarms. If you can’t hear a comment like Hostin’s and instantly know what she said was idiotic, you’re not an asset to a democracy.
There were other statements on the same show that should set off idiot alarms. For example, fake Hispanic conservative Ana Navarro defended Smollett’s knee-jerk supporters by saying, “It’s hard when we’re living in a period where it wasn’t unimaginable that a black LGBTQ person could get beat up.” Good thinking, Ana: if an accusation isn’t “unimaginable,” then its hard not to believe its true. She’s also a lawyer, and just endorsed a principle that is the exact opposite of “beyond a reasonable doubt.” The Navarro Rule: “If it isn’t impossible, it must be true.”
Navarro also contributed this gem, in defense of those who immediately rushed to pronounce Smollett as the victim of MAGA hate;
“I saw yesterday a lot of reaction, you know, on that point on Twitter, of people wanting to own the liberals who had reacted in support of Jussie Smollett. Well yesterday, also, Josh Duggar got convicted, found guilty of child pornography. And guess what, there are pictures all over, all online of him with Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz and Mike Huckabee.”
My idiot alarm and ethics alarms went off on this, as well as my shameless biased scumbag alarm.
First! This is the essence of whataboutism. If conservatives were as irresponsible as progressives in a Smollett-like case, it wouldn’t mitigate what the progressive pundits did at all.
Second! The Josh Duggar case has no similarity or relationship to the topic at hand. He never made any false accusations of a hate crime or any other kind of crime. He was a star of a reality show celebrating big families (“19 Kids and Counting,” in which he was the oldest of the 19), and was later charged with child molesting and child pornography. When his crimes were brought to light, no conservatives, pundits or otherwise, defended him. None.
Third! Josh Duggar parlayed his role on the series into a job as executive director of FRC Action, a (PAC) sponsored by the Family Research Council. While in that position, and before the allegations against him arose, he was photographed with Huckabee and the rest. Navarro deliberately implied otherwise, a lie. Moreover, they were not communicating support for him, but for the organization he was heading.
In contrast, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris both swallowed Smollett’s hoax hook, line, sinker and fishing pole, because any smear of white Americans is a good smear. Kamala Harris said what happened to Smollett was “an attempted modern day lynching.” Biden tweeted, “What happened today to Jussie Smollett must never be tolerated in this country. We must stand up and demand that we no longer give this hate safe harbor; that homophobia and racism have no place on our streets or in our hearts. We are with you, Jussie.”
Joe and Kamala are also lawyers.
Ethics Alarms 
Ouch. Notre Dame Law School from which I obtained my J.D. forty years ago. Hostin is an embarrassment. No doubt about it. I’m going to assume she’s benefitted from affirmative action throughout her life. Of course, Amy Comey Barrett is also an ND grad (and former faculty member, I believe). NDLS has gone to the dark side. It was pretty conservative, at least among the faculty when I was there. Although even then there were a few lefties. Our Crim Law professor had been a Freedom Rider in his younger days and spent an entire lecture on why the death penalty was wrong. So even then, NDLS was a little schizophrenic. Ronald Reagan was the speaker at our graduation, even though Father Hesburgh was the family priest of the Kennedys (and I think, singularly responsible for getting the U.S. into the Vietnam War in order to save the Catholic Church in South Vietnam from being over-run by the Communists).
But Notre Dame always comes in for anti-papist abuse. A good former friend who came down with nearly terminal Trump Derangement Syndrome is a Stanford undergrad and Arizona State J.D. who sneered at “Amy Coney Island” when she was confirmed to the Supreme Court while telling me Kamala Harris was brilliant and deserving. It’s funny how schools like Georgetown and Boston College come in for much less anti-Catholic abuse than ND. Maybe it’s residual anti-Mick animosity with ND being The Fighting Irish, probably something the Jesuits play down. And I think the Jesuits (of Georgetown and Boston College) have gone full woke. The Holy Cross fathers seem a little more conservative.
And I forgot to mention, Pete Buttigieg’s father was a long-time tenured professor and highly regarded Communist historian and theorist at Notre Dame. So, our current Secretary of Transportation is a red diaper baby. Brilliant.
I’m struck by the irony and inadvertent admission in Hostins’ quote: she believed Smollett because she WANTED to believe it.
Wouldn’t it be nice if she took a close look at her own words and did a little bit of critical thinking?
Idiots never admit they’re wrong. That’s what makes them idiots.
Exactly. Critical thinking is critical.
The first sentence is (or should be) uncontroversial. “We want victims of hate crimes and any crime to be believed.” If something is true, we should want to believe it.
The second line, however, is a complete non sequitur. “And so I think that, you know, in a sense, that was a good thing, that they came out and said, ‘We believe you.'” That is a straight up opinion, and a mealy-mouthed articulation of one, at that. And, it says, in essence, “at some times, it is a good thing to believe something that is not true.”
The corollary to the first statement should be something to the effect of, “we do not want to believe false claims,” or “we don’t want to be fooled by claims that are not true.”
You put those two together and you get something like, “allegations of hate crimes should be treated seriously, which requires serious consideration, not snap judgments about their truth or falsity.”
-Jut
Every allegation must be viewed with some skepticism. But skepticism can never be a bar to an investigation; even if only a cursory one