TOM WOLFE MAY BE GONE, BUT WE’RE ALL STILL LIVING IN HIS VIRTUAL REALITY PROGRAM: Tom Wolfe could have invented Jussie Smollett.

‘Everybody everywhere,’ Tom Wolfe wrote in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, ‘has his own movie going, his own scenario, and everybody is acting his movie out like mad, only most people don’t know that is what they’re trapped by, their little script.’

Smollett got caught inside his own performance. He wanted to be a victim. The tearful interview was a feature of a role that he longed to play. He loved that modern sense in which one becomes a martyr while being alive to earn the sympathy, respect and fame that it can earn. ‘I’m the gay Tupac,’ he announced before his arrest, baffling even his sympathizers. What did he think he and Tupac Shakur have in common? Simply, Tupac was a legend and Smollett wanted to be one. Tupac became immortal by being shot. Smollett wanted the same status without dying. Tom Wolfe would be laughing in his grave, or perhaps kicking himself that he had not made it up.

Heh. Read the whole thing.