From the “you can’t make this stuff up” department:

Jussie Smollett, pals reportedly rehearsed alleged attack

Sources said one of the brothers held the rope and poured bleach on Smollett during the 2 a.m. attack, while the other donned a red hat and shouted racist and homophobic slurs at him.

Assuming this is true (and until there are admissions of guilt from the primary and/or a trial that results in certainty, it’s always appropriate to maintain some doubt), it would seem to be a bit of pure idiotic genus. Why? Because:

Smollett has claimed his two attackers called him a “f—-t,” “n—-r” and yelled “This is MAGA country!” before throwing a noose around his neck and dousing him in an unknown “chemical substance.”

If your plan is to claim that an assault with specific events and insults happened, an assault that you are orchestrating for whatever crackpot purpose, you have a few options. One is to just make the claim, based on pure imagination. But the problem here is that it’s not something you *remember,* but something that you *imagined,* so your story could easily drift. Additionally, you could be in trouble if you run up against some expert in determining whether or not you are lying.

But if you actually act it out… you can *honestly* claim that someone else poured bleach on you and tied a rope around your neck and called you names. Things actually did happen, and happened in a particular sequence, and took a definite length of time to occur. This in many ways makes your story more credible and manageable… so long as nobody asks you if you in fact orchestrated the attack.

But then there’s this:

Smollett, 36, also allegedly paid for the rope, which was purchased from the Crafty Beaver Hardware Store

That’s the source of the problems. What would Smollett know of crafty beavers?

Heh. Snerk.