Smollett's story may be phony, but it shows the real danger of jumping to conclusions

SAN DIEGO -- Whoever said there is no such thing as bad publicity never met Jussie Smollett.

Ask your HR director. There must be easier ways to get a salary bump.

In a dizzying turn of events, the star went from alleged victim to criminal defendant. The actor has now been arrested in Chicago and charged with disorderly conduct for allegedly filing a false police report.

If convicted, the actor could get one to three years in prison and face a $25,000 fine. And a story that could have helped shine a light on a rash of anti-LGBTQ violence in America will instead give those who are uncomfortable with the topic an excuse to stay in the dark.

I don't see how we avoid it. There are too many stories. For instance, in a case that didn't get a fraction of the attention given to the Smollett story, a gay couple was attacked and seriously injured by four men in Austin, Texas, on Jan. 19 in an apparent hate crime. According to the police report, Spencer Deehring and Tristan Perry were beaten and kicked until unconscious.

If Smollett did indeed stage this attack on himself, then the actor did incalculable harm to victims of genuine hate crimes, and shame on him. But if anyone who doesn't feel comfortable discussing LGBTQ issues is using this case as an easy out, then shame on them.

Let's catch up. Smollett, a gay African-American actor who stars in the Fox drama "Empire," claimed that he was the victim of a racist and homophobic attack in Chicago on Jan 29. He said that two men who recognized him from the show cornered him in the middle of the night. He said they yelled slurs, hit him, doused him with bleach, and put a noose around his neck -- all while shouting, "This is MAGA country!"

A couple weeks later, police questioned two brothers from Nigeria, who told them that Smollett had hired them -- at the bargain price of $3,500 -- to stage the attack.

The stunt might have been phony, but the hatred it unleashed was real. A lot of it came from anti-Trump'ers -- some of whom are running for president. In fact, @CoryBooker and @KamalaHarris both tweeted that this was an "attempted modern-day lynching."

Meanwhile, as this drama was unfolding, the audience got into the act -- and tripped over its own feet. Many of those who tried to follow each bounce of this story immediately jumped to conclusions based on nothing more than their biases.

It happened on both the oversensitive left, and the desensitized right. Liberals went off half-cocked and suggested the alleged incident was fueled by the same mood that helped elect Donald Trump. Conservatives cynically used the alleged hoax as an excuse to bash "identity politics."

If we wanted something to be true, it was true. If we wanted it to be false, it must be false. Why? Because this story wasn't about Smollett. It was about us -- about how we feel about anti-LGBTQ violence.

C'mon people, how broken are we? We've gone from not listening to not thinking. We see a tweet or hear a rumor, and we decide -- on the spot -- whether or not it's true based on our politics and our prejudices. Case closed.

Last month, when my brother -- who happens to be gay, so his antennae are up for stories like this -- texted me to share news of the alleged hate crime, I didn't buy it. The journalist in me was skeptical that white racist homophobes who voted for Trump but also watched "Empire" were roaming the streets of a Democratic haven like Chicago.

But people kept talking about the story. So eventually, I mentioned the alleged attack in a column about how it is that so many LGBTQ stories are in the news these days. And I was careful to use the word "alleged."

No matter. I still heard from readers who were eager to discount the whole column. Days before police arrested Smollett, they had already made up their minds that the alleged attack was a hoax. Like I said, we feel. We don't think.

Never mind Jussie Smollett. The justice system will take care of him.

Who's going to take care of fixing the rest of us?

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Ruben Navarrette's email address is ruben@rubennavarrette.com. His daily podcast, "Navarrette Nation," is available through every podcast app.