Since January, this country has experienced two media bonfires—over Covington Catholic’s high school students and now Jussie Smollett—whose common element is the reflexive judgment that much of American society is irredeemably bigoted…

You would think these two fiascoes would cause embarrassment among this particular community of journalists and late-night talk show hosts. But we doubt it. At the national level, the compulsion to pronounce blanket moral condemnations about other Americans has displaced the instinct to find the facts.