The lexicon is constantly in flux. New words are added all the time as old words fall into disuse almost as often. Take the word “sandwich,” for instance. Supposedly, it came into usage because this old royal reprobate in England, the Earl of Sandwich, had such a bad gambling jones that he didn’t want to get up from the poker table (or whatever game they were playing back then) to eat, so he had manservant slap a chunk of wild boar — presumably cooked and sliced — between two pieces of bread and, voila, as the saying goes, the rest is history.
Which somehow brings me to Jussie Smollett, who is about to have the same distinction. A noun is about to be changed into a verb in his honor. Soon, when someone states they were lied to and the other person wants to know how big the lie was, our boy will come to mind.
“Was it a big lie?”
“No,” the person responds, “it was bigger than big.”
“So, was it a humongous lie?”
“No, bigger than that.”
“Oh, so you’re talking about a ‘Jussie.’”
“Yeah, that’s it, that big!”
In other words, when a lie can’t get any bigger, forever more it’s going to be known as a “Jussie,” thus providing this sick little boy with the fame he so eagerly pursued. Hell, this could end up being bigger than “sandwich.”
But while his legal team is busy shooting each other hand jobs over how brilliant they were to get the Cook County prosecutor’s office to drop all charges, experienced litigators are shaking their collective head in disbelief. They are wondering why didn’t these ambulance chasers get the federal charges adjudicated before smacking law enforcement in the face with this smelly, rotten fish of a deal.
Smollett’s lawyers should have realized that all law enforcement agencies — all of them — are on the same team and watch out for each other’s back. So when they pissed off the Chicago PD what do you think happened?
Did the superintendent of the police department, or the mayor, have to call the feds, who are looking into whether Smollett mailed that hate letter to himself, and ask them to pay “special” attention to the case. No. You fuck with one bull and another bull is going to try to give you the horn.
But I can just imagine how the interview with postal service police (an agency that has the highest conviction rate of any police department in the world) and the FBI went.
“Mr. Smollett, did you mail that letter to yourself?”
“Letter? What letter?”
“The letter you said you received on the set of Empire.”
“Empire? What’s Empire?”
“So, we can take that to mean that you didn’t mail the letter.”
“Look, sir, I don’t know why you guys won’t believe me, but how could I have mailed the letter since I don’t know where any mailbox is. In fact, I’ve never seen a mailbox in my entire life!”
He’d just told them a “Jussie.” Case closed.
From CoolCleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author at http://NeighborhoodSolutionsInc.
One Response to “MANSFIELD: Getting Jussied”
Linda Nemec Foster
Brilliant!!!