Last week, Michael Eric Dyson dropped “The Ghost of Cornel West” in the New Republic, a novella more than an article about what he sees as the fall of Cornel West and all he represents:
West has sacrificed friendships and cut ties with former comrades because he insists that only outright denunciation of Obama will do. It is a colossal loss for such a gifted man to surrender to unheroic truculence: If a mind is a terrible thing to waste, then the loss of a brilliant black mind is more terrible, more wasteful. At precisely the moment when we could use the old West’s formidable analytical skills to grapple with the myriad polarities that glut the political horizon, the new West, already in the clutches of a fateful denouement, has instead sought the empty solace of emotional catharsis.
Team Blackness dedicates some serious time to break down the article. Oh, and we also talk about our bucket lists.
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Cervantes
I wish he had picked a better place than the New Republic.
Hal
If only Obama had given him front row inauguration tickets instead of that bellhop.
Betty Cracker
Pompous windbag takes on insufferable egomaniac. It’s like watching Florida State play Tennessee. I loathe both teams, but the game is still enjoyable to watch.
Paul in KY
Read the article. Seems Dr. West has been caught up in his own celebrity or quasi-celebrity status. Also seems to be a little naïve about modern politics.
lol
Nicely done that the criticism about West is structured the exact same way.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
I sometimes wonder — and I freely admit to speaking out if my ass — if some of this is an extension of the conflict between West and Henry Louis Gates Jr., who has been much more successful at marketing himself as the go-to historian. Gates has had several successful documentary series on PBS, while West has none. IIRC, Obama is much closer to Gates both personally and intellectually.
schrodinger's cat
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): I am a bit skeptical of TV academics in general, fame changes people and usually not for the better.
FlipYrWhig
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Hmm, I would have thought West and Gates were in different niches — to be highly reductionist, West is Black ’70s and Gates is Black ’80s.
schrodinger's cat
@Betty Cracker:
Either description would fit about 95% of the professorial cohort in academia, in any field.
FlipYrWhig
@Betty Cracker: I’m not a fan of Dyson either. Apt name for someone who never loses suction.
burnspbesq
Dr. West’s descent into self-parody is a tragedy. He had something to say, but anyone who comes across him for the first time now will see him as a buffoon.
mellowjohn
@Betty Cracker:
or vice versa.
aimai
I thought it was a fascinating essay. Especially this part:
Felanius Kootea
@aimai: Yup, academe at its pettiest.
Ripley
I was part of a civil disobedience protest against the Bush war in 2003, with the full intent of remaining on White House grounds and facing arrest with about 275 other people (mostly clergy). Maybe an ultimately fruitless act, but that was my head space then.
West was there, placing himself before TV cameras for the most part. He stepped off right as the Capitol Police began herding us into police vans.
Brave Sir Robin.
brantl
@burnspbesq: How long ago was that? He’s been a petulant gasbag, any time I’ve seen him and I’ve seen him for 20 years.
ruemara
@aimai: This has been my experience of Cornell West. All the justification for viewing black people in a negative light, but with smooth liberal flavor.
mtiffany
The good Dr. West lost his mind right around the time he appeared in the second Matrix movie. But Michael Eric Dyson… feh… he’s a pompous douche. In case you missed it — long ago Dyson filled in for someone on MSNBC and whoever wrote the script had a little fun at Dyson’s expense. In one segment, the word ‘minor’ was used repeatedly in the intro, like to an absurd and obvious amount, like at least once every sentence. Every time the word popped up on the teleprompter, Dyson could not say ‘minor’ — it always came out ‘minority,’ like it was automatic and reflexive for him…
MomSense
I haven’t had a chance to read the article yet so I don’t have an opinion on Dyson’s critique. I will say that when West made that disparaging comment about the doorman having a ticket to the inauguration when he didn’t, I found that so offensive. The beautiful thing about the Obama campaign and the focus on organizing is the power of ordinary people working together to accomplish something meaningful. I have great memories of canvassing with VVIPs in NH in 2007. They would come and do a big speech or fundraiser but they also worked the phones and knocked on doors. If West couldn’t be pleased for a man who had the chance to participate in something beautiful because West considered him less important, then West is the one who is an Ivory Tower asshole with an out of control ego.
Turgidson
@MomSense:
The irony wasn’t lost on Dyson in his treatise. One of West’s main critiques of Obama is that he forgot about the little guy the moment he took office. But there he is, pissed off that some peon got to go to the inauguration and he wasn’t personally begged to attend.
I dunno, I have respect for both of these gentlemen but neither is a paragon of intellectual clarity or unimpeachable integrity to me, to the extent I’m familiar with their work and public personae (admittedly I’m no expert). Just kinda sad to see them have it out in public.
MomSense
@Turgidson:
I have a hunch that this is a public airing of some problems between Dyson and West that have been happening in their overlapping professional circles for some time. Again, I need to read it first before I feel comfortable discussing it.
Mandalay
@MomSense: @Turgidson: I think you may have misread the article….
There is plenty to criticize about West (as I did yesterday), but that incident isn’t really worth jumping on, and I’m sure plenty of other moms would react in the same way.
Mentioning that incident made the author look petty and desperate to me.
MomSense
@Mandalay:
No, I didn’t miss that his mother said it, but there is a reason he chose to include her comment.
aimai
@Mandalay: Thats a pretty naieve reading of a straight up use, by West, of his mother’s voice to express his personal rage and anger. Its obvious that West tells this story in his mother’s voice merely to distance himself from the pettiness of his own complaint, not because he doesn’t share her complaint (if, indeed,she even said that). The only reason the story exists at all is that West keeps telling it and he seems unconcious of the light it sheds on him and his mother.
Mandalay
@aimai:
You think Cornel West is flat out lying, and his mother never made the comment? Seriously?
Tripod
Self important leftist twats want to speak for the great unwashed masses and present themselves as gatekeepers to the political class. They get bent out of shape when politicians ignore them and speak to actual Democrats. It also pisses them off this happens via pedestrian media outlets (say like Tom Joyner) rather than media where they control the dialog.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/08/04/what-he-knows-for-sure
Bunch of thin skinned, do-nothing, classist babies.
aimai
@Mandalay: I think people tell stories, they frame their experiences, using the incidents and voices of people around them all the time. Its not reporting, and confabulating isn’t “lying” its telling stories to get your point across. I wouldn’t be surprised if his mother did say that, or if she just raised an eyebrow, or if she said nothing. But in any event 1) he and she knew that he had not been gifted with specific inauguration tickets by Obama before they got to the hotel, 2) the matter must have been a subject of discussion between them because he clearly expected to be rewarded and made a fuss over, and 3) he is the one continually raking up the story and making a point of telling it. He thinks, in telling it, that he’s making Obama look bad. Of course he’s not but this isn’t some kind of “just the facts ma’am” situation. The entire point of the story is to have his mother speak in the voice of “everywoman/everyperson” commenting on the inappropriateness of Obama’s actions towards West. Whether she did or not is ultimately unnknowable but it is also unimportant.
aimai
@Mandalay: I should add that West, of course, could have told the story in his own voice “I saw that the bellman had a ticket and I was pissed because I thought after all I’ve done for that guy… ” but that version of the story, which is also obviously perfectly true, doesn’t work for West because he prefers to introject his mother into it to distance himself from the obvious pettiness of the situation. They were both there, they both had the experience and the expectation–why is the mother in the vignette at all if he’s not “doing something” by using her?
Cervantes
@aimai:
Maybe she’s in the vignette because … it conveys what actually happened?
EthylEster
I saw West recently on CSPAN talking about his book, The Radical King. I was unfamiliar with the interviewer, Khalil Gibran Muhammad, director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. It was a kickass talk IMO. They were sort of finishing each others’ sentences at times. I learned a lot.
At the end Muhammad quoted FBI head James Comey talking in an ostensibly positive way acknowledging bad treatment of blacks by law enforcement folks. Muhammad made the point that discussions of racism often ends with stmts that imply that black people need help when all they really need is to stop being treated like they are racially inferior. I think (bad memory) that in this interview one of them related an anecdote about Harvard B school….who tells students to never talk about race or gender stuff…except to get on record that neither race nor gender make any difference. Depressing.
I recommend the interview and the book sounds great. King had some radical ideas and West clearly loves many of them. Let’s face it, Obama is NOT a radical. West expected more change. So did I.
I have always found Dyson to be off-putting in a loud mouth sort of way. I never feel that way about West. I don’t always agree with him but I tend to respect his POV. Plus the piece was way too long.
Cervantes
@Ripley:
West has been arrested numerous times, e.g., in New York, in Washington, DC, and in New Haven — where, indeed, he was the first member of the Yale faculty ever arrested on campus.
Find another line of attack because this one … isn’t.
Woodrowfan
@Cervantes:
yes, but West could emphasize that his mother said it to distance himself in the way the others described. When you repeat what someone else said in a circumstance that that it’s because you think what was said is worth repeating.
(having said that, I really don;t have an opinion of West as I’ve not read much of his writing. I neither like nor dislike his work.)
David Koch
@EthylEster:
☑ Landmark peace agreement with Iran
☑ Regulated CO2 – cut emissions by 30%
☑ Ended Bush’s war on Iraq
☑ Withdrawing all troops from Afghanistan
☑ Kept the US out of war in Syria, Iran, and Ukraine
☑ Repealed DADT
☑ Overturned DOMA
☑ Enacted Federal ENDA
☑ Endorsed Gay Marriage
☑ Set strong Net Neutrality regulations
☑ Raised car millage to 55 mpg
☑ Rescued the Auto Industry
☑ Prevented a 2nd Great Depression
☑ Ended Bush’s tax cuts for the rich
☑ Brought health insurance to 32,500,000 million people
☑ Nomalized relations with Cuba after 54 years
☑ Stopped Keystone Pipeline
☑ Enacted Dodd-Frank financial reform
☑ Deferred to Colorado’s and Washington’s pot laws instead of using federal preemption
☑ Overturned the ban on stem cell research
☑ Saved millions of Latinos from deportation
☑ Enacted free contraceptives for women
☑ Enacted 6 weeks maternity leave for federal workers
☑ Extended Social Security benefits to gay couples.
☑ Eliminated color coded terror alerts
☑ Rebuilt FEMA
☑ Appointed first 11 opnely gay judges on Federal bench
☑ Appointed first Latina to Supreme Court
☑ Appointed first female Solicitor General
☑ Appointed first femaled Federal Reserve Chairwoman
☑ Apponted 41% of female judges to Federal Bench
☑ Ended rescission, pre-existing conditions, lifetime caps
☑ Enacted Fair Sentencing Act
☑ Ended federal criminal asset forfeiture
☑ Ended gender discrimination in the Military
☑ Enacted Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
☑ Enacted Lilly Ledbetter Act
☑ Enacted Mathew Sheppard Hate Crimes Act
☑ Enacted Credit Card Reform Act
☑ Enacted Food Safety Act
☑ Eliminated banks from federal student loans
☑ Found bin Laden
☢ Reduced Nuclear arms with Russia by 66%
☑ Provided crucial finacing for Telsa’s electric car
☑ Negotiated Co2 reduction accord with China
☑ Expanded SCHIP and Pell Grants
☑ Syria surrendered their WMDs
☑ Enacted world program to secure loose fissionable material
☑ Saved movie “The Interview” from being censored and buried by Sony Pictures
☑ Secured release of POW Bowe Bergdahl
☑ Saved Yazidis and Benghazi from genocide
☑ Broke the Color Barrier
Obama has accomplished all this in only six years, in the face unpresented obstruction by the wingnuts and the corporate media.
MomSense
@David Koch:
WTF has Obama done so far?
http://whatthefuckhasobamadonesofar.com/
ShadeTail
@Cervantes: The point you and Mandalay are missing is, *why does West tell that story*? He chose to make his mother’s comment public, and there’s only one possible reason for it: to indulge in self-pity while giving himself a weaselly excuse to dodge responsibility for it.
Roger Moore
@EthylEster:
I don’t think either one is sufficient; we need both equality and reparations. Reparations without equality will just be stolen back, while equality without reparations will still leave blacks systematically disadvantaged and needing generations to catch up.
Turgidson
@David Koch:
Yeah but drones.
cokane
That article descended into unreadable nonsense, even though there is plenty to knock West about. What is all this halfwittery about “prophets”? Who even cares who qualifies or who doesn’t qualify as a “prophet”? It’s just a bunch of fabulist made up bullshit.
Joseph Smith was a prophet, after all.
Mandalay
@ShadeTail:
The point you are missing is that West isn’t the person telling the story in the article. It is being dredged up by someone who has a bone to pick with West, and is choosing to tell us what West’s mother said over six years ago.
That says far more about the character of the author than it does about West, or his mother.
Cervantes
@Woodrowfan:
That is the entirety of my comment: that maybe, in this case, if he says X, then it is because X is what happened.
And yes, if he says X, we can infer that it suits him to tell us about X.
Had not-X happened instead of X, we can infer that he might have kept quiet about it.
These things seem obvious — and reasonable.
Sure, it’s possible.
What are the alternatives?
He has been irritating me for decades and, believe me, I’ve said so.
Patricia Kayden
@David Koch: I wish Democrats would talk about these accomplishments more. Hilary Clinton needs to tout them and run on expanding President Obama’s successes. Hope she doesn’t make Gore’s mistake of running away from a successful President.
Mandalay
@aimai:
Huh? I have a lot of respect for your comments generally, but I can’t even follow your reasoning on this issue.
You can argue that West’s mother may never made the comment, and that is certainly possible, and nobody can prove you are wrong. But I have to wonder why you are going out on a limb over this.
(FWIW, West is being highly disingenuous about his disappointment at not being invited to the inauguration. What did he expect after repeatedly bad mouthing Obama once he had been elected president? President Obama is more forgiving than most of us, but even he has his limits.)
Mandalay
@David Koch: Keep posting that. It will never get old.
Cervantes
@Mandalay:
To be blunt: Cornel made a mess of it. Once he found out he was not being invited, he could have handled it a lot better — could even have used the fact to his own advantage — but, and not for the first time, his vanity got the better of him.
ShadeTail
@Mandalay:
Seriously? The story came from West (because that’s the only way Dyson could know of it), but West can’t be held responsible for it merely because the article’s author takes note of it? That’s a pretty hilarious attempt at spin. Can I start using that get-out-of-jail-free card? “You can’t blame me for cheating! It’s your friend’s fault for telling you about it!”
Cervantes
@Mandalay:
Just like the innocent kids killed by our Predator drones.
Turgidson
@Mandalay:
Dyson didn’t just offer that quote out of thin air, though. He stated that it was something West said in an interview, (edit) [and in the interview, the comment] was in the context of listing off all of Obama’s personal slights to West, specifically that Obama apparently prioritized his relationships with other people over with him. It wasn’t an unprompted “what was your mother saying about the inauguration?” So I think it’s pretty safe to conclude that West offered that anecdote as a way of expressing his anger at the man, rather than just recounting something his mother said one day dispassionately. And Dyson’s article devotes a fair amount of its space to West’s loathing of Obama as part of (in Dyson’s opinion) West’s decline into self-parody. So the mother anecdote is in context – it’s not just him venomously flinging shit against the wall.
In any event, screw this, I don’t really have any interest in defending Dyson or this article, which as I said above, I find more sad than anything.
rikyrah
the fights on twitter have been hilarious.
HILARIOUS
rikyrah
@David Koch:
thank you
Mandalay
@ShadeTail:
It’s not spin. And it’s not West who is bringing up the story now – it’s coming from someone who is pretty desperate to fling shit at him because West hurt his feefees.
The general animus towards West in this thread is interesting.
Ripley
@Cervantes: Fair enough. Thanks. I wanted to respect him, for showing up at all. The media swarm phenomenon seemed pretty bi-directional though.
liberal
@David Koch: saved Bengazi from genocide? LOL.
liberal
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2011/04/14/false_pretense_for_war_in_libya/
liberal
@Mandalay: LOL. The animus has an obvious source…anyone evidencing dislike of Obama is subject to the two minute hate.
lol
@Mandalay:
You understand that the ticket anecdote is one that *West* brings up *all the time* to demonstrate the lengths of Obama’s ungratefulness, right?
Plantsmantx
@Mandalay:
Considering that he waited so long to fling that shit, he couldn’t have been that desperate. So…why now? I can’t see it being about defending the President, at this late date. I don’t think it has anything to do with the President. I think it has a lot to do with trying to reduce the effectiveness of a probable black critic of a certain Presidential campaign.