JIM TREACHER: Happy Anniversary, Jussie!

Cast your mind back, dear reader, to this date a full five years ago: January 29, 2019.

Joe Biden is assumed to be planning a presidential run at the age of 76. A Quarter Pounder with Cheese sets you back $3.89. Sports Illustrated still exists, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is an unstoppable critical and box-office phenomenon, and Taylor Swift is dating some British actor nobody knows or cares much about. You’ve never heard of COVID-19, or Disney Plus, or “WAP.”

A simpler time.

And on this date, in the middle of the coldest Chicago night in decades, a very famous actor named Jussie Smollett goes out for a sandwich and is attacked on the street by a couple of guys wearing red baseball hats. The vicious right-wing thugs splatter him with bleach and tie a clothesline around his neck while screaming, “You’re that [N-word] [F-word] from [FOX soap opera] Empire” and “This is MAGA country.”

It’s a deeply disturbing assault that definitely isn’t complete caca del toro.

The reaction among our moral, ethical, and intellectual betters is rapid and fierce:

Between Jussie, AOC at the height of her personal Green Nude Eel monomania and the left’s collective joyless monomania over Trump’s real and imagined excesses, future generations will look back at 2019 as one of America’s last innocent years, along the lines of 1940 prior to December 7th; 1963 prior to November 22nd; and 2001 prior to September 11th. Looking back at the media’s freakout over Jussie reminds us that at least we got one last full year of collective fun before everything went completely pear-shaped in March of 2020.