Cornel West said "We’re living in a genocidal attack in real time, where nearly 7,000 children have been killed in less than 45 days..."

"... so all of the talk about X or Y is nothing but rationalizations of the proceeding, of the promoting of this kind of genocidal attack."

Said Cornel West, quoted in "Cornel West accuses Israel of ‘genocidal attack’ on Gaza" (NewsNation)(with video of interview with Chris Cuomo). 

 “We have to be morally consistent” about calling out war crimes, West said. “We can’t lose sight of the larger structural institutional realities in which people are being killed every day in the occupation beginning 1948. That’s like zeroing in on Nat Turner because he’s killing some white children and he’s wrong, but Black people were enslaved for 240 years.”

Cuomo weakly noted, “Palestinians have had a much better shot than Blacks in America have had,” and pointed to the "deals" that have been offered to Palestinians.

That fired up West: 

"The Green Party-Cornel West link-up promised to be a fusion of the largely white environmental movement and the social justice activism of West, author of the foundational tome Race Matters."

"And for Joe Biden and Democrats, the pairing could have quickly turned into a nightmare, forcing him to protect his left flank from an organized Green Party running a demi-celebrity with decades of progressive bona fides. But to hear West tell it, any cords holding this relationship together had frayed beyond repair."

From the long article "It’s Not Me, It’s You: Cornel West’s Messy Breakup/The presidential candidate’s last-minute decision to ghost the Green Party is just the latest rift within the perennially squabbling American left" (Politico).

"From my perspective, the approach of the Democratic Party—and not just the Party itself, the rank-and-file Democrats and liberals—has been a singular mission to destroy Donald Trump..."

"... as though that will solve all problems. So when I see these indictments, whether all of them are correct or not, fair or not, I think the entire mind-set is, We are going to jail this man and destroy this man, and that will solve our problem...."

Said Peter Daou, quoted in "Peter Daou’s Theory of Election Interference—by Democrats/The former Clinton aide, now running the third-party Presidential campaign of Cornel West, on his recent political awakening" (The New Yorker).

"[Cornel West's] presence in the 2024 race gives voters an exceptional choice for truth and justice beyond the corrupt and corrosive duopoly."

"Democracy means choice, it means options for voters, not coronations and vote-shaming. It is long past time to practice democracy rather than just pay it lip service."

Said Peter Daou, quoted in "Cornel West for President announces the hiring of political activist, author, and adviser Peter Daou as Campaign Manager" (a press release from Cornel West).

"Two developments over the last week significantly increased the likelihood that Donald Trump will be elected president next year."

I'm reading "Biden May Face Two Spoiler Candidates in 2024/Cornel West is running and No Labels is getting ready" by Jonathan Chait (Intelligencer).

At first, I thought this might be about the stellar RFK Jr. performance on Joe Rogan, but no. It's about Cornel West and No Labels. 

First, Cornel West announced his candidacy for the presidency, first on behalf of the People’s Party, before switching to the Green Party. Next, No Labels revised its criteria, and now says it plans to run a third-party presidential candidate unless Joe Biden is “way, way out ahead” in polls....

"I loved early Democratic Socialists of America leader Cornel West. I loved author of the 1993 book Race Matters West."

"I loved everything about West until he supported spoiler Ralph Nader against then–Vice President Al Gore in 2000. A lot of my political friends supported Ralph Nader back then. And a lot of them have since apologized. Even Michael Moore.... West never apologized. He didn’t see a third party playing a spoiler role to Democrats as bad—obviously, since he’s about to do it again. He did support Barack Obama in 2008, but he turned on him fairly quickly, making criticisms that went way beyond Obama’s political decisions. Then he supported Jill Stein in 2016. More recently, West has gone off the deep end. He promoted his 2024 candidacy, on the fringe People’s Party line, with an appearance on former comedian Russell Brand’s Web show, now frequented by right-wingers.... This is a downhill spiral even for West, who also spiraled downward after Obama’s victory.... [C]alling the president 'a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats' was awful. West went on to claim that Obama was afraid of 'free black men' thanks to his white ancestry and Ivy League education.... What does West bring to the [2024] race?"

Writes Joan Walsh in "Cornel West Should Not Be Running for President/He doesn’t see a third party playing a spoiler role to Democrats as bad—and that’s inevitable" (The Nation). 

West was on Russell Brand's show? Let's take a look:

"The neoliberal vision of brother Biden, which, in his own individual case, is predicated on crimes against humanity..."

"... in terms of mass incarceration, the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and the Wall Street bailout that led toward the collapse of so many poor and working people’s life chances—to me those are crimes against humanity.... It’s very clear he turns out to be milquetoast, and the only way he can deliver is the opposing posture, as if you put a Black sister on the Supreme Court and you satisfy the Black women who voted. You’re going to tell me that Black women voted solely to have a representative on the Supreme Court, and not to deal with Black people, Black children, and other folk who are suffering economically and socially? All you need is just a Black woman on the Court, and you’re satisfied now? Most Black sisters out there that I know did not go out for that. But, of course, we want a Black progressive on the court, and a Black woman, fine. But he can’t fight for voting rights for a whole year, can’t hardly engage in any courageous action for that for a whole year?"

Said Cornel West, quoted in "Cornel West Sees a Spiritual Decay in the Culture/A conversation with the prominent philosopher about democracy, disagreement, and how to stay upright in a fallen world" (The New Yorker).

"The removal of the classics is a sign that we, as a culture, have embraced from the youngest age utilitarian schooling at the expense of soul-forming education."

"To end this spiritual catastrophe, we must restore true education, mobilizing all of the intellectual and moral resources we can to create human beings of courage, vision and civic virtue. Students must be challenged: Can they face texts from the greatest thinkers that force them to radically call into question their presuppositions? Can they come to terms with the antecedent conditions and circumstances they live in but didn’t create? Can they confront the fact that human existence is not easily divided into good and evil, but filled with complexity, nuance and ambiguity? This classical approach is united to the Black experience. It recognizes that the end and aim of education is really the anthem of Black people, which is to lift every voice. That means to find your voice, not an echo or an imitation of others. But you can’t find your voice without being grounded in tradition, grounded in legacies, grounded in heritages."

Write Cornel West and Jeremy Tate in "Howard University’s removal of classics is a spiritual catastrophe" (WaPo). 

FROM THE COMMENTS: Joe writes:

I know a lot of institutions are closing programs now, but it isn't a value judgement as much as it is an acknowledgement of no students enrolled. Looking at the federal government numbers for 2019, 2018, and 2017, no bachelor's degrees were awarded in classics at Howard University. In 2016 and 2015, only 1 degree each year was awarded. There are so few graduates in classics at most schools, I can't find any earnings data on the college scorecard site. It really doesn't make business sense to keep a program open when students don't want to enroll.

"[Cornel] West said in an interview with The New York Times last week that he did not know why his request to be considered for a tenured post had been rebuffed..."

"... but that he thought it could have something to do with his age and his support for the Palestinian cause, which he called a 'taboo' issue at Harvard." 

From "Cornel West Is Leaving Harvard After Tenure Dispute/The public intellectual and professor of African-American studies will head to Union Theological Seminary in New York" (NYT)(excellent photo of West at the link). 

And here's the article from last week: "Cornel West Is in a Fight With Harvard, Again/The popular professor, who left Harvard in 2002 after a dispute with its president, says he may leave again if the university does not grant him tenure." 

"Adolph Reed and his ilk believe that if we talk about race too much we will alienate too many, and that will keep us from building a movement."

"We don’t want that — we want to win white people to an understanding of how their racism has fundamentally distorted the lives of Black people," said Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, a Princeton professor of African-American studies and member of the Democratic Socialists of America, quoted in "A Black Marxist Scholar Wanted to Talk About Race. It Ignited a Fury/The cancellation of a speech reflects an intense debate on the left: Is racism the primary problem in America today, or the outgrowth of a system that oppresses all poor people?" (NYT).

Also quoted, Cornel West, the Harvard professor of philosophy, who is a Socialist: “God have mercy, Adolph is the greatest democratic theorist of his generation. He has taken some very unpopular stands on identity politics, but he has a track record of a half-century. If you give up discussion, your movement moves toward narrowness."

From Reed himself: "An obsession with disparities of race has colonized the thinking of left and liberal types. There’s this insistence that race and racism are fundamental determinants of all Black people’s existence."

Buried in the article is Reed's opinion of Joe Biden: his “tender mercies have been reserved for the banking and credit card industries.” I'd like to hear more of that — skepticism about Biden's racial politics.

"Over the weekend Cornel West, who many call the most important living black intellectual, tried to ether Ta-Nehisi Coates, who many also call the most important living black intellectual...."

So it was an epic battle of the important living black intellectuals, according to D. Watkins at Salon in "Cornel West failed to 'ether' Ta-Nehisi Coates in the most pointless feud ever/Coates did end up deleting his Twitter account, though — points to West?"

D. Watkins obviously likes dramatic language, but why was this "the most pointless feud ever"?

West and Coates are staking out 2 different positions which really are in a major conflict. I don't read either enough to be sure I'm saying this correctly, but West seems to want a more general left-wing critique and Coates wants to impose a specifically racial template. Instead of talking about which of 2 prominent men "won" on a particular occasion of verbal aggression, maybe the subject should be whether racial analysis or economic analysis should predominate. But it's easy to see why we the people of the internet are more interested in talking about a hot fight between 2 big men.

D. Watkins says West and Coates "aren’t my leaders" and "their work is too complex for the reading level of many of the adults I work with." I kind of think West and Coates are writing in a style that's too complex for just about everybody (though many people like the feeling of themselves reading West and Coates). But who does D. Watkins work with?

Here's his profile at Salon:

D. Watkins is an Editor at Large for Salon. He is also a professor at the University of Baltimore and founder of the BMORE Writers Project. Watkins is the author of the New York Times best-sellers “The Beast Side: Living (and Dying) While Black in America” and "The Cook Up: A Crack Rock Memoir."

So Watkins may think he's really the one who deserves the "most important" title. I'm just going to guess that his books are more readable and reality-based.

Watkins concludes:

There’s no need for West to try to ether Coates. He didn’t create the oppressive systems that hinder people of color; he just makes money talking about them. The only thing Coates may be guilty of is taking liberal money out of West’s pockets, and if that’s the real issue, Dr. West, write about that.

To the people who dream of being the leader of the black race or having a monopoly on the extremely complex black experience: Put your money where you mouth is it, create some jobs, and go and help some real people.

Sounds good to me. And now I can see why Watkins is calling it "the most pointless feud ever." I don't know if deep down Watkins is envious of West and Coates, who've received so much money and adulation in the enterprise of winning recognition as the most important black intellectual. But Watkins is daring to be anti-intellectual: create some jobs, and go and help some real people.

"Ta-Nehisi Coates deletes his Twitter account after argument with Cornel West."

The Hill reports.

West recently criticized Coates in an essay published in The Guardian, slamming him for not being critical enough of former President Obama... [for] “fetishiz[ing] white supremacy" [and for] having a “preoccupation with white acceptance” and an “allegiance to Obama.”...

According to the AP, Coates and West engaged in a “contentious exchange” on Twitter, prompting Coates to delete his account.... Coates often used his Twitter account for political commentary. Earlier this year, his 31-tweet thread criticizing chief of staff John Kelly’s controversial comments about the Civil War being started by a “lack of compromise” went viral.

Well, let's see the exchange with West. Coates had an active Twitter feed and then deleted it all. That seems highly emotional. I want to see what the 2 men said to each other.

I understand feeling offended by West's essay, but stand up to him! He's not that hard to fight, is he?

Maybe Coates thought that he's doing so well with his books that it's foolish to let people take shots at him on Twitter and that West was using him to leverage his own flagging career as a race pundit.

ADDED: You can un-delete your Twitter account (within 30 days) (and you can also just take it private), so the gesture isn't as self-destructive as it may look.

Cornel West attacks Ta-Nehisi Coates with a side swipe at Toni Morrison, and Michael Eric Dyson tells West to shut up.

West put this up at Facebook:

In Defense of James Baldwin – Why Toni Morrison (a literary genius) is Wrong about Ta-Nehisi Coates. [James] Baldwin was a great writer of profound courage who spoke truth to power. Coates is a clever wordsmith with journalistic talent who avoids any critique of the Black president in power. Baldwin’s painful self-examination led to collective action and a focus on social movements. He reveled in the examples of Medgar, Martin, Malcolm, Fannie Lou Hamer and Angela Davis. Coates’s fear-driven self-absorption leads to individual escape and flight to safety – he is cowardly silent on the marvelous new militancy in Ferguson, Baltimore, New York, Oakland, Cleveland and other places. Coates can grow and mature, but without an analysis of capitalist wealth inequality, gender domination, homophobic degradation, Imperial occupation (all concrete forms of plunder) and collective fightback (not just personal struggle) Coates will remain a mere darling of White and Black Neo-liberals, paralyzed by their Obama worship and hence a distraction from the necessary courage and vision we need in our catastrophic times....

In other words: Coates, like Obama, is only a liberal, not a hardcore lefty, as he should be.

I got there via the Observer, which tried but failed to get Coates to respond and proceeded to get a response from Michael Eric Dyson, "a professor of sociology at Georgetown University who wrote a withering takedown of Mr. West in the April issue of The New Republic."

He described Mr. West’s Facebook post as an “acrimonious dirge,” a “bitter, nasty, sorrowful blue note,” and “despotically and willfully intolerant of the gifts and talents of those who may potentially eclipse him. It shows the vast ineptitude of professor West’s scholarship,” Mr. Dyson told the Observer in a phone conversation. “The point I made in my piece is that he doesn’t keep up, he doesn’t read the freshest, newest, most insightful scholarship, nor does he write about it in any serious fashion or teach it in his curriculum, and it shows here.”...

Mr. Dyson suggested that Mr. West listen to “the great Ludwig Wittgenstein,” who said: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”

In other words: Shut up.

"President Obama betrayed him. He’s stopped publishing new work. He’s alienated his closest friends and allies."

"What happened to America’s most exciting black scholar?," asks Michael Eric Dyson in a big New Republic about Cornel West.

"Much of the time, the law is settled and plain. But life turns up new problems..."

"... and lawyers, officials, and citizens debate the meaning of terms that seemed clear years or even months before. For in the end laws are just words on a page — words that are sometimes malleable, opaque, as dependent on context and trust as they are in a story or poem or promise to someone, words whose meanings are subject to erosion, sometimes collapsing in the blink of an eye."

Barack Obama, "The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream" (2006), page 118.

I ran across that quote after blogging about the book in the previous post. I'd searched my Kindle, not for anything about law — though I found the law quote interesting enough to make a new post — but because I'd searched the book for "solitude" — thinking I might find something apt for that other post — and I kept reading.

"Solitude" does appear in the book, once, as Obama is describing life as a senator in Washington, while his wife and daughters remain back home in Chicago:

Are educated, intelligent adults allowed to complain that they didn't get what Obama's smiling 2008 campaign persona made them feel they could get?

Ah, it's a free country. You can complain about anything you want, but you look foolish if you don't take responsibility for your own gullibility.

Thomas Frank interviews Cornel West:

Frank: I... remember... being impressed by Barack Obama who was running for president... I sometimes thought that he looked like he had what this country needed... That was a huge turning point, that moment in 2008, and my own feeling is that we didn’t turn.

West: No, the thing is he posed as a progressive and turned out to be counterfeit. We ended up with a Wall Street presidency, a drone presidency, a national security presidency. The torturers go free. The Wall Street executives go free. The war crimes in the Middle East, especially now in Gaza, the war criminals go free. And yet, you know, he acted as if he was both a progressive and as if he was concerned about the issues of serious injustice and inequality and it turned out that he’s just another neoliberal centrist with a smile and with a nice rhetorical flair.... 

Another neoliberal centrist with a smile and with a nice rhetorical flair? That's what I hoped I might get when I voted for Obama in 2008. He never assured us he'd be a left-winger, but some people — people who wanted that — projected their hope onto him, and of course, he invited everyone to see him as the embodiment of whatever it was they hoped for.

West: And we ended up with a brown-faced Clinton. 

That's crudely stated, and I wouldn't talk like that, but that's about exactly what I hoped for. A pragmatic centrist like Bill Clinton, and as a bonus, we get the first African American President. I didn't vote merely on that hope. It was also the case that John McCain lost me. It's always only a choice between 2 (or, rarely, 3) candidates. You can't get everything you want, and you can't know everything about what you are getting.

The NYT tries to figure out what portion of Barack Obama is Valerie Jarrett.

A fascinating long article by Jo Becker:

“She is the single most influential person in the Obama White House,” said one former senior White House official, who like many would speak candidly only on condition of anonymity.

“She’s there to try to promote what she understands to be what the president wants,” the former aide said. “Ultimately the president makes his own decisions. The question that is hard to get inside of, the black box, is whether she is really influencing him or merely executing decisions he’s made. That’s like asking, ‘Is the light on in the refrigerator when the door is closed?’ ”

Makes her sound like Karl Rove, right? But as the NYT puts it: "If Karl Rove was known as George W. Bush’s political brain, Ms. Jarrett is Mr. Obama’s spine."

“He’s got a real mess in the West Wing,” said one close presidential adviser. “Valerie is effectively the chief of staff, and he knows, but he doesn’t know. She’s almost like Nancy Reagan was with President Reagan, but more powerful.”...

It is not so much that she is Mr. Obama’s liberal id. Rather, her voice is often the one at the table reminding everyone of the president’s aspirational “first principles,” that he “didn’t just come to the White House to hold the office, but to make change,” [according to Anita Dunn, who was the president’s communications director].

Specifics: 1. Jarrett was responsible for encouraging Kathleen Sebelius to go ahead with the contraception mandate in the health insurance regulations; 2. She once "order[ed] a drink from a four-star general she mistook for a waiter"; 3. She snubbed George Soros and may be be responsible for his "largely sitting on the sidelines this presidential election," 4. She insulted Cornel West (after he whined about not getting invited to the inauguration), letting people know, as he put it: "one, I was crazy, and two, I was un-American."

#1 is the most important revelation, and the NYT begins and ends the article with it:

"I Know Why the Caged Bird Laughs" — the Maya Angelou prank show.

I dvr "Saturday Night Live," but I rarely watch any of it. But we got sucked into this week's show, with Maya Rudolph hosting, and that Maya Angelou imitation cracked me up.

The second link goes to the whole show, which includes Rudolph playing Michelle Obama in a "Cosby Show" spoof in which Fred Amisen has to play a merged Barack/Cosby character. Rudolph also plays Beyonce (with her new baby) in a scene that I didn't watch but heard Meade laughing at, and there was a very noisy segment called "What's Up With That?" about an incredibly irritating TV show. The real Bill O'Reilly appeared as himself in that sketch, and Meade seemed to find it hilarious, as I — 10 feet away from the TV — was trying to get through some work that I'd been putting off all weekend.

What made the show so funny? Has "SNL" gotten good again for some reason? Is Maya Rudolph a genius? Was it race? I see Ace of Spades is saying:

SNL Does Oddly Racial Episode for Black History Month

One sketch knocks the hypocrisy of sportscasters for making jokes about Jeremy Lin's race while getting all pissy about similar jokes aimed at blacks, and another sketch asks what it would take for Obama to lose the black vote.

Plus goofing on Maya Angelou.

Regarding that first sketch: I agree on the hypocrisy but I think the solution here is for everyone to lighten up, not for everyone to submit further to PC.

Saturday Night Live knows well that racial jokes are funny -- since they use them themselves a lot. Oh, they don't do it in a mean way, and they often (as here) have some kind of defensible thesis they can point to, but still. If you're using them, you're not really against them.

Isn't this the problem that drove Dave Chapelle crazy? I know Ace is trying to turn the tables on liberals. I think part of what's going on is that if there's a subject that you're not supposed to laugh about, when someone steps up and cracks jokes about it, it's especially funny. And part of why it worked is, I think, that there were some really great black actors playing, not racial stereotypes, but specific black individuals: Beyonce, Prince, Maya Angelou, Cornel West, Morgan Freeman, Michelle Obama. Specificity, not stereotypes.

Meanwhile, and speaking of Jeremy Lin, here's the NYT not-so-subtly accusing the American people of racism for getting so excited this year about Jeremy Lin and Tim Tebow, when we haven't gotten comparably excited about a black athlete.

Cornel West — protesting Citizens United — gets himself arrested on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Reported by Susan Brooks Thisltethwaite at the Washington Post's "On Faith" blog:

The Supreme Court was a fitting venue for this demonstration both to honor Dr. King and demonstrate solidarity with the #OWS (Occupy Wall Street) movement. As Dr. West said prior to being arrested, there is “a relation between corporate greed and what goes on too often in Supreme Court decisions.”

In Democracy Matters, West makes this point in far greater detail “(The) illicit marriage of corporate and political elites — so blatant and flagrant in our time — not only undermines the trust of informed citizens in those who rule over them. It also promotes the pervasive sleepwalking of the populace, who see that the false prophets are handsomely rewarded with money, status, and access to more power.” (p. 4)

How is that "far greater detail"? With no reference to Supreme Court at all, it seems like less detail. Or by "detail," did Ms. Thisltethwaite mean verbosity? Thisltethwaite continues:

Here’s the point: If you are content to think that corporations are people and money is speech, as the Supreme Court decided in the by a vote of 5-4, in their Citizens United v Federal Election Commission decision, then indeed you are sleepwalking through your citizenship and giving over your faith to false prophets.

I believe, when future accounts of this era are written, historians will judge that the wake up call for many people in America was in early 2010 with that Supreme Court decision. The winter of 2010 is what led to the #OWS demonstrations in the fall of 2011.

Can we as citizens accept this definition of person, and of speech? This is what Dr. West, by his action on the steps of the Supreme Court, is asking us to stop and ponder. Corporation as person? A soulless legal entity as human being? No. We can’t and we must not. As I have written before, God didn’t create corporations.

And God didn't create The Washington Post, which is a corporation. Could Congress criminalize WaPo's reporting about political candidates  in the 2-month period preceding an election? It would protect us from distorted ravings like yours, Ms. Thisltethwaite. What do you say? You must say yes! I mean, if you care about coherence. And I know you don't.

... Dr. West did not call for anger, he actually called for “deep love” in his remarks before his arrest, and he spoke his solidarity even with the police, those who were about to arrest him.

This is worthy of another jail, at another time. In 1963, Dr. King wrote, in his Letter from Birmingham Jail....

"It’s ready to die, brother. If I drop dead, I am coffin-ready."

"I got my tie, my white shirt, everything. Just fix my Afro nice in the coffin."

Cornel West.