Actor Hospitalized After Racist, Homophobic Attack

Let's say arguendo that this didn't remotely go down as was originally reported. How can there not be a credibility penalty paid by those who're insisting, even today, that OF COURSE HE SHOULD BE BELIEVED!?

I think the conventional wisdom nowadays among advocates -- I'm talking professionally trained ones -- is that believing without question is the best initial response. If the allegation is one of the small percentage that prove false, the theory goes, the initial step of believing is actually helpful in getting to that truth.

Which is totally fine for those people in those roles. I can understand that. The problem is that best practice, instead of being used properly for that limited circumstance, appears to have leapt into the media and national dialogue.

They won't admit that there was anything particularly fishy about the initial report and, if you thought there was, then what's that say about you? 

One rhetorical sleight of hand the #BelieveSurvivors crowd employs is to conflate withholding judgment using words like "allegedly" and "reportedly" with not believing. (Granted, I don't believe Smollett.)

From TMZ:

"Empire" star Jussie Smollett didn't want to be encumbered by an entourage of bodyguards when he wasn't working ... despite an offer by Fox a week before the brutal attack.

Sources close to the situation tell us ... security for the "Empire" cast was increased last week after Fox Studios, in Chicago, received that threatening, homophobic letter addressed to Smollett.

JUSSIE SMOLLETT TURNED DOWN EXTRA SECURITY ... Days Before Brutal Attack

OK this is weird. There's at least a chance of premeditation by ***somebody***. I mean, presumably Fox will be able to document the security steps it was taking. But what's the game here?

I guess they could have been staking him out and waiting until he was alone.

But . . . did he go to the great length of sending a letter threatening himself, and then faking this attack? It now appears that some kind of letter did exist a week earlier.

That, or it was part of the hoax, or he figured it would help prove the hoax true. 

I don’t believe he was attacked on the street, in either a premeditated or random attack. 

If he was beaten, it was by someone he had chosen to spend time with.