In a City Journal piece with that title, Manhattan Institute scholar Heather MacDonald lays out the unusual circumstances by which Cook County prosecutors dismissed an open and shut case of falsely reporting a hate crime.  Noting that Michelle Obama's former Chief of Staff contacted Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx on Jussie Smollett's behalf prior to her office's decision to drop all charges "is rather the latest example of the incursion of academic identity politics into the workings of government."  The decision in the Smollett case, like the one last month to dismiss aggravated battery charges against a 16-year-old black male who attacked two Chicago police officers, suggests that "Foxx operates in a cultural milieu that holds that the fact that a hate crime is a hoax is less important than the fact that it could have been true. Prosecuting Smollett could have sent another black man to prison."  While everyone involved in the Smollett case knows that he was guilty, Smollett told reporters that he has been vindicated and "is still availing himself of the rhetoric of academic victimology, vowing to `fight for the justice, equality, and betterment of marginalized people everywhere.'"  The ability to orchestrate a fake hate crime, escape the consequences and become a national "social justice" celebrity will undoubtedly inspire others to follow suit, with the gullible complicity of the major media and academic elites