On January 29, Jussie Smollett made a call to the Chicago Police Department and reported that he had been the victim of a hate crime by two men wearing MAGA hats, shouting slurs at him and that "This is MAGA country", throwing bleach on him, and performing a mock lynching on him. The police found him in his apartment with a noose tied around his neck.

However, after much investigating on the part of the Chicago Police Department, it has been revealed that Jussie Smollett hired two brothers to perform the attack on him.

He organized the attack, as well as mailing himself hate letters because he was "dissatisfied with his salary" on the television show "Empire" and trying to boost his publicity. Smollett turned himself over to the Chicago Police Department on Thursday morning.

Smollett's actions are very unusual and disrespectful, to say the least. It's very strange that he would willingly subject himself to the acts which he claims to hate. When you take a step back and look at the situation through an objective lens, this is too extreme to handle a disagreement over a lower salary. Committing felonies is not the way to get a point across. Smollett hurt not only himself but also the two people he hired to perform the hate crime. He caused more damage than he probably intended to cause for everyone involved.

In addition to all that, he greatly disrespected the Chicago Police Department.

Chicago has a higher crime rate than the average rate in the US, which puts a huge strain on their police department. The superintendent of the Chicago Police Department said in a press conference Thursday morning that he was saddened that this took away attention from the real gun crimes which are affecting innocent families in Chicago. The police essentially focused all their attention on an act which could have been prevented if Smollett had simply been willing to communicate with people with whom he works on "Empire". They really and truly should have focused on innocent people who were victims of very real crimes.

Staging a hate crime is no way to advance a person's career. It simply desensitizes people to the reality that hate crimes do indeed happen.

The world is an imperfect place, so things like that, unfortunately, still happen. However, organizing a fake one only causes people to be skeptical whenever one occurs.

When people hear about a hate crime happening on the news, now there's a chance that they will wonder, "Was this staged? Or did it really happen?" This could lead to people disregarding hate crime claims in the future, thus potentially causing people who suffered through them to not get the help they need.

There are so many other ways to make a name for yourself, ways that don't involve violence. You don't need to commit felonies and pull other people into these actions in order to make a point. I genuinely wish Jussie Smollett had thought his actions through more and decided to not jump to extremes to get what he wanted. He could have gained much more positive publicity that way.