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Cornel West’s Counter-Insurgency Against Obama

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A man thoroughly convinced of his own importance.

The other day  Tavis Smiley and Cornel West were bitching about President Obama.  What they were bitching about doesn’t rally matter because that’s what they do.  That’s all they do and they tear down Obama so much it makes me wonder are they angling for their own show on Fox News?   How did West and Smiley go from men of respect within Black culture to self-parody?

I’d sum it up in two words: Barack Obama. From Tavis’ perspective it’s straight up envy. He used to host a yearly gathering called “The State of the Black Union” where he would invite prominent people to discuss issues of importance to African-Americans. It was interesting to see people who were often overlooked by the White mainstream media gather to discuss and debate, but a funny thing happened with “The State of the Black Union.” Talking was all it was about. There was no action plan. There was no “Black agenda” that sprung from  these lengthy talk-a-thons.   It was equally clear if you weren’t part of the  Tavis Smiley clique of Favorite Black Folks ,   you probably weren’t going to be invited to speak. Then there’s  the issue of the gathering of Black thinkers  being underwritten by Smiley’s corporate pals,  Wal-Mart and Wells Fargo.

The defining moment came in 2008 when Smiley invited Sen. Obama to appear at the yearly gathering.   The eventual nominee was still in the middle of  primary battle with Hillary Clinton  and instead of coming off the campaign trail, he wrote Smiley a letter offering to send Michelle Obama in his stead.  Smiley flatly rejected Obama’s wife as his representative and got really ugly about it. Smiley, a Clinton supporter, invited her to appear instead and she accepted.

Smiley continued to attack Obama for not appearing.   Suddenly, even Smiley’s supporters started looking sideways at this raging egotist and wondering who was he to demand Obama appear personally to kiss his ring?

This led to Smiley eventually quitting the Tom Joyner radio show, the program that initially raised his national profile and a bitter falling out with Joyner himself. Smiley wrote a book after Obama won the presidency called “Accountable” where he pompously asserted how it was up to Black people like him to hold Obama accountable if he didn’t deliver the goods to the Black community once he took office.

The book tanked hard and Smiley griped Obama supporters had turned on him and caused the book to flop. He’s been a little pebble in a big can rattling around ever since about how Obama ain’t shit.

Cornel West…now that’s an entirely different and much sadder story. It’s also downright pathetic at points.  A frustrated supporter in 2008,  West despises Obama so much he can’t abide anyone that doesn’t share his negative opinion of the president.

“I love Brother Mike Dyson, but we’re living in a society where everybody is up for sale,” West said in a Huffington Post story. “Everything is up for sale. And he and Brother (Al) Sharpton and Sister Melissa (Harris-Perry) and others, they have sold their souls for a mess of Obama pottage. And we invite them back to the black prophetic tradition after Obama leaves. But at the moment, they want insider access, and they want to tell those kind of lies. They want to turn their back to poor and working people. And it’s a sad thing to see them as apologists for the Obama administration in that way, given the kind of critical background that all of them have had at some point.”

Who needs Cornel West’s kind of “love.”  If everybody is up for sale, where’s West hiding his price tag?

“Sister Melissa” hasn’t been reluctant to call out West for his single-minded mission to demean and defame Obama at every turn as her 2011 column in The Nation stripped West’s hypocrisy down to the bone with the precision of a surgeon’s scalpel.

Harris-Perry has gone from West’s colleague to his nemesis

“As tenured professors Cornel West and I are not meaningfully accountable, no matter what our love, commitment, or self-delusions tell us. President Obama, as an elected official, can, in fact, be voted out of his job. We can’t. That is a difference that matters. As West derides the President’s economic policies he remains silent on his friend Tavis Smiley’s relationship with Wal-Mart, Wells Fargo, and McDonald’s–all corporations whose invasive and predatory actions in poor and black communities have been the target of progressive organizing for decades. I have never heard him take Tavis Smiley to task for helping convince black Americans to enter into predatory mortgages. I’ve never heard him ask whether Tavis’ decision to publish R. Kelley’s memoirs might be a less than progressive decision. He doesn’t hold Tavis accountable because Tavis is his friend and he is loyal. I respect that, but I also know that if he were in elected office the could not get off so easily. Opposition research would point out the hypocrisy in his public positions in a way that would make him vulnerable come election time. As a media personality and professor he is safely ensconced in a system that can never vote him off the island. I think an honest critique of Obama has to begin by acknowledging his own privileges.”

The days when Black Americans had  “leaders” is over and done.  We have organization heads, self-appointed experts and spokespersons on race and some celebrities who have a podium to express their beliefs. But as far as “leaders” goes, that went bye-bye when Martin and Malcolm and others left the scene, often violently and always prematurely. What we have now is a group of Second Wave Wannabees who would like to considered as picking up where King, Malcolm, Rosa Parks, Medgar Evers, and so many others left off.

Martin didn’t have corporate sponsorship. Malcolm didn’t demand huge speaking fees. Rosa  didn’t have a talk show.  Nobody went looking for Smiley or  West to “lead” Black people.  We had REAL leaders.  Why settle for phony ones?

Pointing out West’s hypocrisy  is almost its own news desk.  Journalist and blogger Eric Wattree has long documented West and Smiley’s shameless self-promotion, “West is never short on words when it comes to denigrating high-profile Black people. He’s publicly criticized Dr. Melissa Harris-Perry, Dr. Michael Eric Dyson, Rev. Al Sharpton, Jay Z, and of course, his favorite target, President Barack Obama. But when it comes to his good friend and associate, Tavis Smiley’s, involvement in Wells Fargo’s victimization of the Black community, he’s been curiously silent.”

The silence is being interrupted by the loudness of the Black community waking up to Smiley’s coziness with Corporate America and how he’s played the role of Judas goat leading African-Americans into financial ruin while profiting from their misery.  Following their second so-called “poverty tour” that West and Smiley claimed was supposed to spotlight the poor, but was confined to key states in the last presidential election, the due were called out by Najee Ali, a Los Angeles based activist, for Smiley’s cozy relationship with rabidly anti-union Wal-Mart.

“Wal-Mart is a billion dollar corporation. They should be able to offer a better medical package for their associates and a living wage. The involvement of corporations like Wal-Mart in Tavis Smiley’s own PBS show is troublesome,” says Ali. “Wal-Mart is one of the major sponsors of his show. Therefore, Wal-Mart plays a major role in sustaining Smiley’s popularity. If Smiley and West want to address poverty shouldn’t they involve Wal-Mart in the conversation and hold them  accountable as well?”

Pete and Repeat are back in black.

Pete and Repeat are back in black.

Don’t hold your breath waiting for Dear Brother Cornel to answer that.

West is a joke. There’s a rock song entitled, “I Am What I Hated When I Was Young” and that sorry state where West is at now.  A vain, prideful man with a slight Messiah Complex,  whenever West opens his mouth he sounds more irrational, more deranged, more self-righteous and more butt hurt than ever.   There is nothing remotely intellectual in the vicious and highly personal ways West scorns the president.

What do you get when you match a vain, egotistical academic with delusions of divinity with a vain, egotistical hustler searching for a way to stay relevant?  Nothing good.  Just two clowns without a circus fighting to stay in the spotlight.   If it wasn’t so damn annoying it would be sad.

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No Black President? No Problem.

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This may come as a shock to anyone who expected Barack Obama to deliver reparations, 40 acres and a mule and a new flat-screen television to Black folks, but he’s not Black America’s president and never wanted to be.

“I want all Americans to have opportunity,” he told Black Enterprise Magazine. “I’m not the president of black America. I’m the president of the United States of America.” When asked about criticism that he hasn’t done enough to help minority-owned businesses, he said, “The programs that we have put in place have been directed at those folks who are least able to get financing through conventional means, who have been in the past locked out of opportunities that were available to everybody.”

 Obama, the first African American president, has been under pressure from some black activists to ease severe problems in the African American community such as unemployment, which is about 14 percent, far higher than the national rate of 8.3 percent. Another problem that African Americans want Obama to address is the high rate of incarceration for black men.

 But he has consistently resisted calls for any type of “black agenda.” In the Black Enterprise interview, published in the magazine’s current issue, he added: “I’ll put my track record up against anybody in terms of us putting in place broad-based programs that ultimately had a huge benefit for African American businesses.”

Obama has taken considerable heat for his refusal to advance a “Black agenda” which has turned former supporters such as Cornel West into bitter enemies.  West calls the president a “black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs,” and then twists the knife even deeper saying “I think my dear brother Barack Obama has a certain fear of free black men” and “He feels most comfortable with upper middle-class white and Jewish men who consider themselves very smart, very savvy and very effective in getting what they want.”

They love you one second and hate you the next one.

Obama has always straddled the line of rising above his Blackness and being anchored by it.  Even Obama supporters have occasionally stuck him in a Magic Negro box. Who can forget Joe Biden’s brain fart when he thought he was paying Obama a compliment, “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”

In the process of making a million dollar contribution to a pro-Obama PAC, actor Morgan Freeman couldn’t resist qualifying how “Black” the president is. The man who has played both the president and God pointed out that Barack is not America’s first Black president. America is still waiting for its first Black president.

“They just conveniently forget that Barack had a mama, and she was White – very White American, Kansas, middle America,” Freeman said. “There was no argument about who he is or what he is. America’s first Black president hasn’t arisen yet. He’s not America’s first Black president – he’s America’s first mixed-race president.”

Obama is probably glad to receive Freeman’s money. The unwanted history lesson and the actor’s musings on racial purity? Not so much. This is the permanent dilemma of Barack Hussein Obama: too Black for some and not Black enough for others.

Even God gets it wrong every so often.

I agree with Dr. West when he says Obama has been too cautious. Too conciliatory. Too willing to give breaks to Wall Street instead of Main Street. The president been terribly served by his economic team of advisers, especially Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, his lousiest Cabinet pick and Larry Summers, West’s old nemesis from Harvard whose primary interest was protecting big banks, not the little guys screwed over by them.  There are problems specific and targeting Blacks that necessitate specific and targeted remedies.

But West is an ideologue and socialist who may had hopes he would be included in Obama’s  Black brain trust along with Henry Louis Gates, Christopher Edley and Charles Ogletree. It didn’t happen and West, a relentless publicity hound and self-promoter who is more likely to be in the studio cutting rap albums and appearing in crappy Matrix sequels than he is shaping impressionable young minds in a lecture hall.

I respect Dr. West and he’s not entirely wrong how President Obama has fallen short of realizing the hopes Black Americans placed in him, but does he have no understanding the political realities of Washington and the limitations of the presidential power?

There was never any chance the Republicans (and more than a few Democrats) would ever sign on to a targeted program specifically benefiting African-Americans.   The Republicans called healthcare reform a socialist plot.   You’d have to be nuts to expect these obstructionists to give a thumb’s up to massive new spending targeted toward 36 million African-Americans.   How does a moderate Democrat in Alabama go home to their district and sell that to their constituents as anything but another big government giveaway to Blacks?   Nuts or Cornel West, not that there’s all that much difference it seems anymore.

America has elected more than a few White Presidents of White America, but it’s not about to elect a Black President of Black America. It’s too absurd to even consider except for the hopelessly naïve and delusional.

The ideologically pure dream have the luxury of dreaming of utopias. Realists have to do the heavy lifting of complicated reality.   Whatever else that can said about Obama it has to be said he lives in the real world where if you’re not the president for as many as possible, you won’t be president for any of them long.

Black President or not, kids don’t have a problem with that.

 

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Bros Before Hos: Black Academics Style

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History will be made Saturday morning when Melissa Harris-Perry, a professor of political science at Tulane University, hosts a morning political talk show on MSNBC.   Asked what her show will be about Harris-Perry told The Amsterdam News,  “Although it’s not a show about race-look, I’m a professor of African-American politics, so we’re going to be talking about race. I’m a feminist, so we’re going to be talking about gender. I’m a parent, so we’re going to be talking about kids and young people. I live in the South, so we’re going to talk about politics beyond the D.C.-to-New-York corridor. It’s a political show but it definitely has a point of view.”

Those are points of view absent from the Sunday morning talking heads shows where Black women are non-existent.  I welcome Harris-Perry and wish her well.  But there’s no news that someone can’t find a way to receive it as bad.   Enter Cornel “the ‘Fro” West and his Mini-Me, Boyce Watkins.

In an interview, West unloaded on Harris-Perry, his former colleague at Princeton. “I have a love for the sister, but she is a liar, and I hate lying,’ says West. . . . She’s become the momentary darling of the liberals, but I pray for her because she’s in over her head. She’s a fake and a fraud. I was so surprised how treacherous the sister was.’

Yet before West heated up a clothes hanger to whip on Harris-Perry with, Watkins had scribbled his own bit of character assassination with a piece, “5 Reasons Melissa Harris-Perry is Perfect for MSNBC.”

If I end up sounding like a hater, it’s because I probably am.  White people, as a collective, have never like (sic) me very much and advocating for black folks has never been an easy way to pay the bills.  Also, my gripe with Melissa is the same I’d have with any black person who allows herself to be propped up by the Democrats to do their dirty work against Cornel West as he spoke on behalf of black, brown and poor people.   Harris never proved that Dr. West was wrong – she only sought to discredit him and dismantle his voice.  In that regard, she was no different from a slave using the master’s gun to kill the leader of the negro rebellion.

She is clearly a liberal who happens to be a black woman, not a black woman who happens to be a liberal…The whole light-skinned black liberal thing works in her favor:  I should start by noting that I’m a bit light-skinned myself and nearly all of my relatives are of the “high-yella” variety (I was adopted).  So, this is not meant to offend anyone with light skin.

Watkins breaks out the pimp stick.

In one breath, Watkins says he doesn’t mean to offend light-skinned Blacks.  Can you guess what he follows that caution with?  If you guessed offending light-skinned Blacks, you win!

But, the emergence of Barack Obama has opened the door for quite a few light-skinned, non-threatening, black superstars of both politics and media:  Cory Booker, Harold Ford, Don Lemon on CNN and a few others have been able to benefit from this wave.  Harris-Perry is a perfect fit as the (in the words of cousin Pookie) “light-skinded-ded,” red-bone, highly educated liberal that white folks tend to love.  Nothing militant will come out of her mouth, unless she’s angry about a new immigration law or some civil liberties violation in the National Defense Authorization Act.  Not to say that there’s anything wrong with the “light-skinned liberal analyst” phenomenon, but I wonder how successful these folks might be if they looked like they were siblings of Wesley Snipes – darker skinned commentators and pundits deserve opportunities as well, and I argue that they are being put to the side (can you think of one dark-skinned person in prime time media?  Me neither).

The cherry on top of Watkins talking out of both sides of his mouth comes with a slap at Harris-Perry for doing the exact same thing he does.

Black journalists have long complained about what Al Sharpton referred to as “All white, all night,” in which most of the major cable news outlets didn’t have any hosts of color on their nightly branded shows.   The best way to shut down that criticism is to hire Al Sharpton himself, which is exactly what MSNBC did.  But one challenge is that neither Sharpton, nor Harris-Perry, is a professionally-trained journalist, so there are still quite a few talented black journalists who are seething over the fact that MSNBC went after black scholars and activists, rather than seasoned media professionals.

For the record, I am not a real journalist either.  I am one of those scholar/activists who’s been able to benefit from the bias of which I am speaking (I have more media appearances than nearly all of my journalist friends).

Nobody made more of an issue about Sharpton landing the MSNBC gig than I did, but Watkins has twisted the legitimate concerns of “real journalists” who would like to see Blacks who do this thing for a living a shot at these television gigs as well as Black scholars and activists.

Watkins doesn’t like Harris-Perry, he’s not happy for her and he even goes so far as to question her Blackness and commitment to Black people because she prefers Obama to West. It just comes off as that small-minded, crabs in a barrel mentality that keeps us busy squabbling over small stuff that isn’t worth squat.

Call me a cynic, but this “I won’t do cable TV ’cause I want to keep it real” rap is more than a little self-serving. There are too many Black folks who are doing cable TV and they aren’t running away from their Blackness by doing so.   Watkins spew out a hit piece that is mean, petty, and it smacks of simple envy. If MSNBC offered Watkins a show he’d run over  West to get it.

On his Facebook page, Watkins denied everything in response to my challenging him about Harris-Perry.

Never blame on malice what can be adequately explained by sexism.

Brother, I can give you the real deal on the “smell test” – my goal is not to be objective about Melissa or to politely say “congratulations” to someone I think is bad for black America.


I make it ABUNDANTLY CLEAR that I am not appreciative of Melissa’s views. Her attacks on Cornel were uncalled for and unvalidated – I was very angry at the way she allowed white folks to prop her up on a platform so she could do the dirty work for the Democrats who were upset that Cornel was out speaking on behalf of poor, black and brown folks.

To answer any questions that might be asked about my remarks…no, I don’t want a f*cking job at MSNBC. I’ve been on all the networks numerous times and could have gotten quite a few gigs had I been a “good boy.” I’ve lost millions for speaking what I believe to be the truth and my only goal is to seek independence of thought and commerce for black America. In far too many cases, major black voices are controlled by white-owned media outlets and corporations – That’s why I put all my money and time into yourblackworld.com, which allows me to get my message to the public without having to ask for a white man’s permission. I don’t hate white folks, but the truth is that their agenda is almost always different from your own and they always view us as second-class citizens.

Someone who is “bad for Black America?” What is about Melissa Harris-Perry that is “bad for Black America?”  What’s really bad for Black America are Black academics talking smack like winos on the corner.

Harris-Perry took issue with West when he whined to a WHITE guy (Chris Hedges) how hurt he was that he didn’t get a personal invitation to Obama’s inauguration.

West came off like a jilted girlfriend, not a preeminent Black intellectual. It was pompous, it was small and it was arrogant as hell. Cornel West wasn’t speaking out for poor, Black and brown folks. He was ticked off that “the dear brother” who brought his bags to his hotel room had a ticket to the Inauguration and he didn’t.

There is a cost for working in the mainstream (just ask Roland Martin), but I’m not buying the line only those out of it care about, protect the interests of, and love Black people. No one is required to watch MHP on MSNBC.    Just don’t say you’re “happy” for her when you have made it crystal clear you are anything but.

Going after Harris-Perry for being “light-skinned” is as petty at it gets.  By the Boyce Watkins  standard, only folks as dark as Wesley Snipes (or Clarence Thomas!) can legitimately criticize other Blacks because they are “dark enough to decide who is really part of the club.

The weakest attack to make against someone is to cast doubts upon the content of the character based upon the color of their skin.     Black academics love a good disagreement, but when the intellectual quality of the argument doesn’t rise to the level of a beef between second-rate rappers, that’s pathetic.

West and Watkins are too smart brothers.  They should be smart enough to expend their brain power on a real problem facing Black folks.  Harris-Perry getting a TV show isn’t one of them.   Then again, maybe there’s another reason for Watkins and West’s “bros before hos”  smackdown of MHP.  Maybe it’s nothing more than sexism.  Plain and simple, they are simply asserting their male prerogative to put an uppity sista in her place.

Sometimes its most obvious reasons that are the least considered.

The next time West and Smiley plan a road trip for self-serving publicity, they should pack a booster seat in the back and bring Boyce Watkins along for the ride.

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“Dear Brother Cornel and Tavis…”

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Brothers workin' it out--for themselves.

I admire the way you two have worked that “Obama ain’t done nuthin’” riff you’ve been pounding for three years now.  You do a real fine job of laying out the case that voting for Barry was the worst move Black folk could have made in 2008.

What you haven’t done is make a case how things would have been so much better if John McCain and his dumb as a bag of rusty nails running mate had won instead.   Guess they would have jumped right on that Black unemployment thang, right?   Right?

But I got a question for you my dear brother Cornel and my less dear brother Tavis.

Why haven’t you two come up with a practical, workable, politically doable PLAN.  Like say–oh, I don’t know–how to go about electing a few more Blacks as state governors?  Or maybe putting at least ONE-non Illinois Black man or woman in the U.S. Senate.   How about demanding the Democrats in the House push aside confirmed losers like Nancy Pelosi for a savvy winner like James Clyburn?   Maybe even pick a few more genuine Progressives to Congress and a lot fewer Reagan Democrats?

I know two smart Black men can do more than gripe about what Obama ain’t done.  Couldn’t you come up with some feasible plans, some savvy strategies, and long-term goals that can be implemented even if Obama isn’t reelected next year?   Something?  Anything?

Smiley is on a holy mission against Obama.

Nah.  Not going to happen.  What we will get from Prof. West and Mr. Smiley is another year and a half of “Obama ain’t done nuthin’” whining, moaning and griping because that’s so much easier than coming up with genuine strategies to expand and maximize Black political power.  Empty rhetoric is a lot easier than rolled-up sleeves, knocking on doors, registering voters, supporting candidates of our own choosing and building rather than bitching.

So now you two are about to embark on a tour of 15 towns to highlight the issue of poverty in the U.S.    You guys say the poor have been forgotten.  I agree.  I would add that the jobless millions of Americans have been forgotten by both parties in Washington too.

This seems like a worthy mission for you two.  But why do I have the sneaking suspicion you guy are just opening up the newest front in your ongoing war to tear Obama a new hole?

Wait, wait…don’t tell me.  I bet you’re going to tell me what the move for 2012 should be.  Does it have something to do with telling Obama to come correct to your “don’t have one yet but that Black Agenda will be ready any minute now”  demands or you’re going to tell Black folks to stay home next November and let the Republicans waltz back into the White House?

In an interview in the NY Times Sunday magazine West gave no sign his Cold War against the president is ending anytime soon.

So let me ask you: in 2007, you introduced Barack Obama as your “brother, companion and comrade.” But in May, you referred to him as “the black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs” and the “head of the American killing machine.” What in the world happened?

It was a cry from the heart. What happened was that greed at the top has squeezed so much of the juices of the body politic. Poor people and working people have not been a fundamental focus of the Obama administration. That for me is not just a disappointment but a kind of betrayal.

But you have also acknowledged that this is more than just political — you’ve said that after campaigning for him at 65 events, you were miffed that he didn’t return your phone calls or say thank you.

I think he had to keep me at a distance. There’s no doubt that he didn’t want to be identified with a black leftist. But we’re talking about one phone call, man. That’s all. One private phone call.

My Root colleague Jack White described the West interview as “deep.”

What’s so “deep” Jack about West continuing to blubber like a lonely 16-year old schoolgirl on a Saturday night that Barack never calls anymore?

“But we’re talking about one phone call, man. That’s all. One private phone call.”

West seems to be pretty damn needy for an acclaimed public intellectual. Why’s he so insecure? Will everything be sweetness and light if Dear Brother Barack just breaks off a call to Dear Brother Cornel and say, “Hey man, I’ve been reeeaaal busy, but you know you my boy, right?“

West and Smiley claim they bash Obama because they want to help him become a better president.  Some doubt that’s all they’re trying to do.

Not many believe that Smiley’s criticism comes from a place of love, though, and I don’t blame them, since he also complains about not being invited to the White House. West looks equally shady when he damns the president because he couldn’t get a hookup on extra tickets for the inauguration.

Let’s not forget to separate the personalities and their petty little beefs from disagreements with the policies. The latter is worthwhile and legitimate, the former is petty and illegitimate.

Nobody ever said President Obama was above criticism. It’s simply wise to understand what is really motivating the critics.   Motives ALWAYS matter. Yours, mine and certainly Mr. West and Mr. Smiley’s motives.

If your criticism is coming from a sincere philosophical, practical or political place it deserves to be taken seriously. But if your criticism is based upon ego, envy, anger or irrationality, it deserves to be dismissed.

Tavis and Cornel are two egomaniacs whose criticism of the president is based upon their own private blind spots and not some wish to help Obama be a better president.

By the way, isn’t Dr. West also Professor West? I just saw him in Philadelphia a few weeks ago at the NABJ convention and he’s always on television somewhere.  Doesn’t he have a class he should be teaching?

You will never see a repeat of this.

Just don’t tell me you’re doing a thing to preserve, protect, defend and advance the interests of African-Americans.  You are not.

Seriously, you aren’t.

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Then Came the Last Days of May

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A big winner on the field and a big loser off it.

As the last few hours of May 31 tick away, my assessment is it was a rough month for a lot of folks.

Rough for Ohio State University head football coach Jim Tressel.  He was forced to quit under a cloud of scandal and lies.   Shed no tears for him as this is a mess he put himself in trying to clean up after star quarterback Terrelle Pryor.  The NCAA is now turning their investigation toward Pryor as they look into whether he got the hook-up from a local car dealer.

The NFL announced they will hold a supplemental draft in July before the first training camp opens (IF any training camps open) giving Pryor a potential escape route provided he can find a team willing to take a chance on a college QB with a rough skill set, tremendous potential and character issues.

Rough for the folks of Joplin, Missouri where tornadoes ripped through the city killing 139 and leaving hundreds more injured.

Rough for President Obama who had an uncomfortable meeting with Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu  over the president’s call for Israel to return to the 1967 borders, a request Netanyahu flatly rejected.

Rough for the ex-Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger as it was revealed he had fathered a “love child” with a housekeeper some 14 years ago and the child was born less than a week after Schwarzenegger’s son Christopher was born to his wife, Maria Shirver.   Shriver and Schwarzengger have separated ending their 25-year marriage.

"Remember when I said I'd impregnate you last? I LIED!"

Rough for the GOP who lost a special election in New York in a district which had been drawn to be a stronghold rejected the Republican candidate and sent a Democrat to Washington instead.   The key issue was Medicare where Kathy Hochul pounded Jane Corwin for her support of House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan’s plan to privatize the program.

Rough for Cornel West who gave an interview where he ripped President Obama as having a problem with “free Black men” and a “mascot for Wall Street.”  West also came off as a clueless and entitled elitist when he whined how his “dear brother Barack” hadn’t thanked him personally for working for his election and how he hadn’t been invited to the inauguration but a hotel bellhop had.

Rough for my family as my wife Vanessa lost her dear mother Delores who passed away at the age of 81.

But Osama bin Laden had it roughest.   He finally lost his world champion Hide and Seek title. His hiding place was besieged by a Navy SEALs  team who shot him in the head, dragged his corpse away and dumped his corpse in the ocean.   That was both rough and well-deserved.

Wonder what June will be like?  Guess we’ll know in 30 days.

Gotcha!

Cornel “the Crab” West Pulls Barack Back in the Barrel.

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Hey, Barack, where's my invitation?

There is a tug-of-war between the Black Elites and the rest of Black America for the soul of Barack Obama. The issue is most Black folks believe Obama has one. The Elitists like Cornel West don’t think he does. I’ve talked about Princeton professor Cornel West going one from an admirer of the president to one of his most embittered critics.

In an interview West called Obama, “a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats. And now he has become head of the American killing machine and is proud of it.”

Sympathy for Osama bin Laden?  That’s bad, but West made it worse.

“I think my dear brother Barack Obama has a certain fear of free black men. It’s understandable. As a young brother who grows up in a white context, brilliant African father, he’s always had to fear being a white man with black skin. All he has known culturally is white. He is just as human as I am, but that is his cultural formation. When he meets an independent black brother, it is frightening. And that’s true for a white brother. When you get a white brother who meets a free, independent black man, they got to be mature to really embrace fully what the brother is saying to them. It’s a tension, given the history. It can be overcome. Obama, coming out of Kansas influence, white, loving grandparents, coming out of Hawaii and Indonesia, when he meets these independent black folk who have a history of slavery, Jim Crow, Jane Crow and so on, he is very apprehensive. He has a certain rootlessness, a deracination. It is understandable.”

“He feels most comfortable with upper middle-class white and Jewish men who consider themselves very smart, very savvy and very effective in getting what they want,” he says. “He’s got two homes. He has got his family and whatever challenges go on there, and this other home. Larry Summers blows his mind because he’s so smart. He’s got Establishment connections. He’s embracing me. It is this smartness, this truncated brilliance, that titillates and stimulates brother Barack and makes him feel at home. That is very sad for me,”

West’s amateur psychoanalysis provoked sharp responses from Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart denouncing West as part of the “Blacker than thou” crowd and his slam of Obama making him “no better than a Birther.” 

But the epic smack down came from a Princeton colleague,  Melissa Harris-Perry, who wrote of West’s remarks,  “This comment is utter hilarity coming from Cornel West who has spent the bulk of his adulthood living in those deeply rooted, culturally rich, historically important black communities of Cambridge, MA and Princeton, NJ. And it is hard to see his claim that Obama is “most comfortable with upper middle-class white and Jewish men who consider themselves very smart, very savvy and very effective in getting what they” as anything other than a classic projection of his own comfortably ensconced life at Harvard and Princeton Universities. Harvard and Princeton are not places that are particularly noted for their liberating history for black men.

Princeton vs. Princeton: Let's get ready to rumble!


West is setting himself up as the arbiter of another man’s Blackness and some folks are just as full of spite applauding it like trained seals.

West is rapidly transitioning from being petty to being stupid.   Perhaps the most annoying thing about him is how he calls everyone a “dear brother” just before he tries to rip them a new asshole.   And West isn’t above being petty.  He’s still raw over not getting an invitation to the inauguration.

His questioning of the president’s Blackness got the most attention.  But it is his reaction to how he perceives Obama snubbed him during his inauguration that tells you best what playground West is on.

“I used to call my dear brother [Obama] every two weeks. I said a prayer on the phone for him, especially before a debate. And I never got a call back. And when I ran into him in the state Capitol in South Carolina when I was down there campaigning for him he was very kind. The first thing he told me was, ‘Brother West, I feel so bad. I haven’t called you back. You been calling me so much. You been giving me so much love, so much support and what have you.’ And I said, ‘I know you’re busy.’ But then a month and half later I would run into other people on the campaign and he’s calling them all the time. I said, wow, this is kind of strange. He doesn’t have time, even two seconds, to say thank you or I’m glad you’re pulling for me and praying for me, but he’s calling these other people. I said, this is very interesting. And then as it turns out with the inauguration I couldn’t get a ticket with my mother and my brother. I said this is very strange. We drive into the hotel and the guy who picks up my bags from the hotel has a ticket to the inauguration. My mom says, ‘That’s something that this dear brother can get a ticket and you can’t get one, honey, all the work you did for him from Iowa.’ Beginning in Iowa to Ohio. We had to watch the thing in the hotel.

“What it said to me on a personal level,” he goes on, “was that brother Barack Obama had no sense of gratitude, no sense of loyalty, no sense of even courtesy, [no] sense of decency, just to say thank you. Is this the kind of manipulative, Machiavellian orientation we ought to get used to? That was on a personal level.”

What that says to ME is Cornel West has a sense of entitlement a mile wide, an over-sized (and easily bruised) ego a mountain high and a personal shallowness that is a mud puddle deep.

There’s nothing remotely “intellectual” about such petulant, infantile whining.    West is acting like a spurned lover mad because Obama hasn’t called him on Friday night, not like a critically thinking intellectual..

Somehow the professional crybabies like West and his booty boy, Tavis “Subprime” Smiley and their amen corner think Obama can propose a jobs program or an education program or a free bucket of chicken program that benefits ONLY Black folks.   Yeah, let’s see how long it takes Faux News to lose their minds over that.   Then let’s see how fast John Boehner and the rest of the Republican controlled House (where ever dime of the federal budget comes from) bust their humps to help Obama galvanize the Black vote for 2012.

Anybody see Cornel West's Afro in this barrel?

You can climb up to the top of the Empire State Building, jump off singing “I Believe I Can Fly” and the last thought that goes through your brain before its turned into mushy street pizza along with the rest of your dumb ass will be, “Damn, I Believe I CAN’T Fly.”

Gravity doesn’t care what lie you tell yourself.  Gravity always wins.   Well, the same principle applies to politics.  Politics doesn’t care what West or Smiley and their amen corner wants.  Politics only cares what is possible and it is IMPOSSIBLE for this president or any of his 43 predecessors to push through legislation for a job program that ONLY benefits 12 percent of the population.

West and Smiley can jump off the Empire State Building if they want to.  I hope there’s enough of their amen corner looking up to break their fall when they come crashing down.

This is not a conversation most people enjoy having and conversations people don’t enjoy having are precisely the kind true intellectuals should compel us to hold. But not the way West did running from one White man (Chris Hedges) to another (Ed Schultz) to denounce Obama as not being authentically Black enough. That’s NOT his call to make and he damn sure doesn’t need to be pandering to White liberals who enjoy watching the Negroes play “crabs in a barrel.”

I’m sorry, Dear Brother West, but you’re thinking emotionally, not strategically. Starting this kind of drama does nothing but get people irate. It sure won’t nudge them around to the perspective you’d like them to get to.

Maybe it’s time for Dear Brother West to bust out the Afro.  It seems to be cutting off the fresh air circulating to his brain.

"How come you don't call me anymore, Barack?"

The Black Elitists vs the Black President

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See? He's eating greens. That PROVES Obama is Black!

“I can’t pass laws that say I’m just helping black folks. I’m the president of the United States. What I can do is make sure that I am passing laws that help all people, particularly those who are most vulnerable and most in need. That in turn is going to help lift up the African-American community.”

~ President Barack Obama

The day after formally announcing he was running for a second term, President Obama traveled to New York City to speak at Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network Convention and both parties benefit from the association.   Obama gets to show his concern for issues of particular interest to African-Americans and Sharpton gets to rub shoulders with the President of the United States and gets to stand a bit taller among the ranks of unelected Black leadership.

Of course that didn’t go down well with some of Obama’s critics/haters.  Tavis Smiley and Cornel West are rapidly becoming the Cheech and Chong of angry Negro “intellectuals” and their latest comedy act takes both Obama and Sharpton to task.

Smiley: The President knows his base in Black America is shaky. You can’t play that history card more than one time.

West: Sharpton is wrong to provide cover to Obama given the level of Black suffering and misery.

I get why Tavis has a bug up his nose about Obama.  He got mad when Obama wouldn’t come off the campaign trail to show up for the 2008 State of the Black Union pajama party.  Then he got irked when Obama offered to send Michelle instead and just generally showed his ass about it.   He griped how the president did an interview with Bill O’Reilly during Super Bowl Sunday, but not one with him.  (Maybe blowing off the guy about to be president’s wife wasn’t the smartest thing you could have done, Tavis)  Then there’s the displeasing fact Smiley wrote a Obama-bashing book Accountable that flopped hard because people weren’t hearing that noise.

The rise of Obama’s star has come at the price of Smiley’s falling. Tavis has not taken the change in popularity well.  His jealousy and wounded ego means his opinion of the president’s job performance is completely tainted.   Smiley’s criticism of Obama are about as valid as what could be expected from Rush Limbaugh.

Dr. West’s problem with Obama is he has to back his boy, Tavis and that’s understandable.   Loyalty is a beautiful thing.  But the way the good doctor ignores the harsh realities and problems President Obama has had to face and the entrenched and sustained racism from the Republican Party, the right-wing media machine, billionaires like the Koch Bros. and their Tea Party foot soldiers assembled against the president’s agenda undercuts West’s credibility as a political commentator.

Or maybe Obama said something nasty about the good doctor’s acting in The Matrix Reloaded?

Maybe intellectuals such as West envisioned a bigger role as an adviser to Obama and when they weren’t invited into the tent he decided to take a giant leak on it instead.  There might be a deeper, more complex and complicated reason, but the mundane, petty and trivial reasons can’t always be dismissed.

What’s next for “Cheech” Smiley and “Chong” West?   Going the birther route and hoping Donald Trump scratches them a check?

Two crabs thinking up ways to pull Obama back into the barrel.

Grumpy Old White and Black Men

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Cindy laughed when John forgot to tape his face on.

I’ve been backed up trying to finish some other long-simmering writing projects and had to put the blogging on the back-burner, but that hardly means I don’t have some thoughts on two grown-ass men acting like little spoiled brats because they aren’t getting their way.    One has his nose permanently out of joint because Barack Obama beat his butt and the other because Obama doesn’t kiss his butt.

John McCain: “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and I Don’t Care.”

WASHINGTON – Gay troops can serve openly in the armed forces without harming the military’s ability to fight, the Pentagon’s top leaders declared Tuesday, calling for the 17-year-old “don’t ask, don’t tell” ban to be scrapped and pointing to a new survey to show most troops won’t mind.

Looks like the only reason left for gays not to serve in the military is homophobia.

I thought DADT was a bad idea from the jump. I was in the service and I got hit on by a gay soldier, and while it freaked me out at the moment, I don’t have any problem with gays serving in the military. Now will someone tell that homophobe John McCain to get his liver-spotted ass the hell out of the way?  It’s high time for that old soldier to fade away.

McCain has dug his heels in presenting one weak excuse after another why DADT should not be repealed.   For the longest time the excuse was we needed to wait until the results of the survey of the troops were in.   Now they are and a clear majority has said in effect, serving with an openly gay soldier is a  “your problem” to the Senator, not a “our problem.”

Not that he’s going to wave any white flags anytime soon.   On CNN, accompanied by his oh-so-not-gay BFF, Sen. Lindsay Graham, McCain made it clear he wasn’t down for getting rid of DADT and demonstrated yet again how much of a sore loser he still is when he said, “The fact is, this was a political promise made by an inexperienced President or candidate for Presidency of the United States.”

Bitter much, Johnny?

The Republicans opposition to repealing a clearly discriminatory policy is based upon one thing and one thing only:  a deep and enduring fear and  hatred of gays and lesbians.   Every other possible reason has been debunked, discredited and should be discarded, but just because the 2010 election is over, it’s not too early to think about the 2012 election and feeding the  biases and prejudices of the Republican base is a never-ending task.   This is what happens when demonizing one group of Americans to appeal to another is the only successful game plan in your playbook.

Any thought that Maverick McCain the mainstream media slobbered over might return after Obama handed him his ass should be over and done.   What we have now is an increasingly, cranky senior citizen who looks more like he has an open mind and interested in reasoned debate than he’s pissed these busy body reporters refuse to take his word as gospel.

Time to up Johnnie’s meds again?

Cornel West puts President Obama on blast–again.

Cornel West, a card-carrying of the semi-permanent Black aristocracy and a homey of Tavis “Accountable” Smiley appeared on Democracy Now to assert there’s really not a dime’s worth of difference between the way George W. Bush and Barack Obama deal with Black America.

Gonzalez had asked Prof. West to comment on Kanye West’s assertion that “George Bush doesn’t care about Black people;” but the professor diverted into criticism of the current Administration. He said he thinks neither Bush nor Obama acts out of “racist motivation and intention,” but that both Administrations inflict(ed) “racist effect and consequence” on people of color, and that their policies have “generated levels of misery among Black people, Brown people, Red people, but especially among the working class poor.”

Cornel West echoed Kanye West in rebuking Obama: “… He doesn’t care about the Black poor: The evidence is overwhelming! … His policies [a]re racist in effect and consequence and especially classist in terms of generating misery among poor people, disproportionately Black and Brown. … The Obama Administration seems to have very little concern about poor people and their social misery: Look at the policies vis-à-vis Wall Street – downplaying Main Street; look at the policies of Black Farmers – a settlement already in place but they don’t want to execute it because they don’t want to be associated with Black folk too explicitly; look at the policies of dilapidated housing; we can go right across the board – look at the policies of the new Jim Crow – the Prison-Industrial Complex.”

I’m pretty familiar with West’s act by now and it’s about as tired as Kanye’s.   Maybe the good doctor thought he’d have a limo shuttling him to the White House when the president needed his special insights into what the Black intelligentsia are thinking today.   Alas, for West it hasn’t turned out that way and he seems a little put out by Obama’s inability to carry out the smoke and mirrors “policies”  of the illusionary “Black Agenda”  he and Smiley have pushed in their corporate underwritten State of Black America” circle jerks.

I have the utmost respect for what Dr. West contributes to the culture and the political discourse,  but he’s acting like his oversized ego has been bruised by the president’s lack of interest in catering to it.    This is the same man who complained  bitterly last year how “his dear brother” treated him like “a Cub Scout.”

If he were asking me for advice I’d tell Dr. West he needs to chill, get off of the radio and back in the classroom and that it’s time to either bust down the ‘fro or at least put some conditioner in it.

Ask yo’ boy Tavis to loan you a dab of some Afro-Sheen.

Now Barack, It's like this: "Put ya hands in the air and wave 'em like you just don't care."