Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

People are complicated. Love is not.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

A consequence of cucumbers

Their freedom requires your slavery.

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

“That’s what the insurrection act is for!”

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

Republicans don’t trust women.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

The GOP is a fucking disgrace.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

Everybody saw this coming.

Fani Willis claps back at Trump chihuahua, Jim Jordan.

You are here: Home / 2024 Elections / 2024 Primaries / Late Night ‘Grifters Gonna Grift’ Open Thread: Cornel West Pokes His Head Up

Late Night ‘Grifters Gonna Grift’ Open Thread: Cornel West Pokes His Head Up

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It’s been almost a month since West first announced his ‘campaign’, and I guess he figured all the haterz are busy right now going after RFK Jr, so… why not grab some more sucker money?

(I guess the ‘good’ news is that any money spent on Cornell West would otherwise go to Rob Schneider’s new best bud… )

Previously, on:



(Dyson’s teardown is actually quite good, but — yes — too long.)

Reader Interactions

97Comments

  5. 5.

    Citizen Alan

    First I couldn’t bring myself to watch Rocky Horror anymore (a Halloween tradition for me going back 30 years) because that self-righteous cosplay Marxist Susan Sarandon was in it and I can’t look at her without shouting expletives. Now it appears I can’t watch the second Matrix movie for the same reason. Fucker West only has 1 line, and i want to scream “SHUT UP! I HOPE THE MACHINES WIN BECAUSE YOU’RE ON THE ZION CITY COUNCIL”

  6. 6.

    Tony Jay

    Back when the spiteful melts running the Labour Party were trying to deselect my hard-working but unforgivably left-wing MP last year, they insisted on online remote-voting for everything except the final head to head vote (they’ve since changed that to remove the democratic element icky involvement of large numbers of people they can’t make disappear at the press of a button) and declared that the vote to chose who would appear on the stage for that final selection could only be two names, but one of them HAD to be a woman, even though their rules stated that there would be a female candidate at the final selection vote even of no one voted to put her there.

    But lo and behold, on the actual day of the final vote the female candidate had pulled out, but the bureaucrats Nu-Lab Central had sent up from London to ‘oversee’ the proceedings told the sitting MPs team that every postal vote for her would be counted as a vote for the Starmerite candidate, on the grounds that it was a vote AGAINST the sitting MP.

    We still won the vote, after four solid hours of eagle-eyed concentration by the MP’s disabled secretary ensured that scores of ineligible ‘votes’ for the Starmerite candidate that the London mob tried to slip through multiple times were finally binned. They were furious, and retaliated by having the secretary banned from standing for the City Council seat she’d held with a huge majority for years.

    Anyway, my point? Yes, authoritarian cheats love to exploit the ratfucking potential of a third-party candidacy. Also, what is it about egotistical black guys called West and jumping to the tune of racist MAGOPs? Is it hereditary?

  7. 7.

    Steeplejack

    Huh. As of now, Twitter is denying all access unless you have an account. You (I) cannot get past the log-in screen with a vanilla browser. Clicking on links from here doesn’t work either (right now, for me).

  9. 9.

    hotshoe

    @Steeplejack:

    Yep, Twitter won’t let me look, either.

    I don’t have an account, don’t want one, wouldn’t have one if ya paid me — however, I admit I am gonna miss being able to click on some tweet and see the thread, see the replies …

    guess being kicked out is what we “deserve” for wanting to be able to spectate for free in the tech-bro’s carnival funhouse.

  12. 12.

    Baud

    @Tony Jay:

    declared that the vote to chose who would appear on the stage for that final selection could only be two names, but one of them HAD to be a woman,

     

    I would have voted for Boaty McBoatFace.

  14. 14.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    @Baud: Looks to me like a phenomenally stupid way to drive up people signing up for accounts. Elmo’s vision for Twitter seems to depend on a massive user base, which he needs to be constantly growing, not shrinking.

  15. 15.

    Tony Jay

    @Baud:

    I would have written in Baudy McButtpants, but Nu-Labour have banned frivolity along with socialism, democracy and BIg-Band Music.

  18. 18.

    Rusty

    A quick look at his bio on Wikipedia and find a guy that has ping ponged repeatedly among a half dozen universities getting into fights with everyone along the way, along with being on his fourth wife.  He also has zero electoral experience, he hasn’t been elected to anything.  Yeah, there’s the guy we want running the country, someone who can’t get along with anyone.  He’s a perfect for that holier than thou left wing friend who proudly states they have never voted for anyone that actually won office.  The useless for the useless.

  21. 21.

    frosty

    I’m an obsessive reader of Balloon Juice, TPM, Wonkette, etc and I have no idea who the hell is Cornell West.

  23. 23.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    @Baud: Me too, but then you and I aren’t scions of a blood-diamond fortune (or emerald, or ruby, or whatever the hell got Elmo his inherited fortune) who can just impose our wills on reality and make it so because we control the channels of communication into the public forum that’s also our personal playground where we make the rules.

    Do I sound bitter?

  27. 27.

    Geminid

    When West announced for the Green Party nomination (having already picked up the “People’s Party” endorsement) one theory was that his position against military aid to Ukraine was a factor. The GP’s 2020 candidate, Howie Hawkins favored aid and some considered him the frontrunner for next year’s nomination..

    In any event, West’s candidacy is controversial within the small Green Party community. Some feel their own democratic process is being steamrolled by West and Jill Stein, now his campaign manager. West’s connection to the grifty, gropey and LaRouchey People’s Party chief is especially suspect.

    The Ukraine invasion has been a stressor for the Democratic Socialists of America as well. Their International Committee’s anti-NATO position has prompted a small exodus of party members, while the votes for aid by the handful of DSA members in Congress has caused blowback against them from other party members.

    The DSA will stage their bienniel convention this August in Chicago, and they will have a lot to fight about.

  29. 29.

    Betty Cracker

    @Amir Khalid: I would not, though I’ve often thought that if civilization collapses and I am forced to live off the (swamp) land, there would be plenty of gator to dine on. But only the tail filets are truly edible. (Photo taken from my porch. Notice the paw — very Godzilla-like!)Late Night 'Grifters Gonna Grift' Open Thread: Cornel West Pokes His Head Up

  33. 33.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kay: They do bellow during mating season. People around here call it “booming,” and it’s the most primordial sound I’ve ever heard. Gives me the willies!

  34. 34.

    Baud

    @Betty Cracker:

    I don’t know if they were Florida gators but I’ve seen videos of the bellowing and that is an apt description.  Truly from another time.

  36. 36.

    Another Scott

    @Steeplejack: It’s still working for me on Brave on my Android phone – just click the close X at the upper left corner of the login popup.

    Dunno.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  41. 41.

    Another Scott

    @Baud: @Kay:

    Still working for me on Brave, so I guess it’s a bug of some sort. Melon has probably called up Manpower to send a temp coder over to fix it – should only take a few weeks.

    😜

    Hang in there.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  43. 43.

    Tony Jay

    @Baud:

      Kompromat

    Oh, I know that one. Four syllables. It’s the one Trump used to get those Muscovite hookers to do what they advertised on his hotel bed.

    I mean, I know of it…

  45. 45.

    Geminid

    @Baud: The Green Party has no positive aspects so far as I’ve seen, and seems like an op of some kind. I used to think it was an extension of the LaRouche movement.

    I have a little more sympathy for the DSA, or at least some of its membership. I think they are wrong, but most of them are at least sincere. The Party actually was successful in helping elect a few members to House seats on the Democratic Party line. But their willingness to go along with the rest of the Democratic caucus on important votes has disappointed some DSA members. The “inside, outside” strategy of running members as Democrats will be a bone of contention at the August convention. The party’s Ukraine policy will be another.

    The DSA seems to be at a crossroads. The party grew rapidly after Senator Sanders’ 2016 run and was approaching 100,000 members last year. I’ve seen reports that membership is below 90,000 now and dropping.

    That may be caused in part by the very consequential Georgia Senate runoffs of January 5, 2021. Raphael Warnock’s and Jon Ossof’s wins put the Democrats in position to achieve some meaningful progress in the last Congress, with potential for more in the next one. Now the Democratic Party is more the place where the progressive action is.

  46. 46.

    Another Scott

    @Another Scott: Wait a minute.  Urg.  I get past the login page, but I am not seeing the posted tweet now, just some random thing that Melon’s algorithm is deciding is good for me.  I could have sworn that it was fine a minute ago.

    I think that they do things like this frequently and it usually lasts a few hours or days then goes back to “normal”.  Who knows if Melon will do that this time…

    Sorry.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  48. 48.

    trnc

    the green party ran a Putinist grifter *twice* for the presidency, something even the GOP has only managed once.

    What am I missing here? The GOP ran a Putinist grifter twice and are going for a third. I tried going to the original tweet for context but it requires login and I’m not on twitter.

  49. 49.

    MisterDancer

    RE: Cornel West — look, I can’t tell you how important West was, at one point. He helped set the stage for modern discussions of race in the mainstream. If you don’t know of him, if you missed this era:

    At the age of 39, West catapulted to fame after struggling financially and became, deservedly, a far richer man with the publication of his best-known work, 1993’s Race Matters.[…]Race Matters changed how we speak of black identity in the United States. It gave our country a golden pun for matters of race that mattered more than they should and brought West the sort of celebrity that is intoxicating and distracting. West garnered glowing profiles in Newsweek and Time—in the same week—and explored his ideas on radio with Terry Gross and on television with Bill Moyers and Bill Maher. There was a certain satisfaction in West’s rise: One of the smartest men of his generation also became one of its most popular.

    Then me telling you won’t mean much. He comes off, now, as Just Another Grifter, and that’s fair, in and of itself.

    But I ask you to take on a certain amount of faith, if you will, that what’s happening now is a deep betrayal of what this man once stood for. That this is far more like if Thurgood Marshall, while still a sitting Justice, turned into Clarence Thomas.

    It is funny, yeah. But it’s also a Tragedy, and I mean this in the Greek way, where the flaws of a person lead them from greatness to a downfall.

    All we can do, now, is work to mitigate the damage he’s doing as he collapses.

  50. 50.

    Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg

    @Steeplejack:

    I noticed that yesterday. Feels like an Elon initiative – I simply log in with my banned account, but they even strip the search function, so I can only see the directly linked tweet. I can get to a specific timeline by googling the timeline holder’s name and can navigate it a little from that timeline, but can’t see trending.

    I did notice yesterday that they can’t seem to throttle it on desktop applications – so a lot of functionality is OK in that environment.

    Keep in mind that my account got banned because I was mean to Lee Zeldin – and literally was inside the Twitter rules. They have been unwilling to reinstate.

  52. 52.

    Princess

    @Steeplejack: Same for me. It could be just a technical problem or it could be intentional. If so, it’s not exactly a way to make your site appealing and grow members. If Musk were deliberately trying to destroy Twitter because of its (former) utility as an organizing and information tool against people like him, what exactly would he be doing differently than he is?

  53. 53.

    Baud

    @MisterDancer:

    Nader did some awesome work back in the day too.  Although to my knowledge, he’s still more an ideologue than a grifter.

    Still, I’m sorry to hear how much of a betrayal this is for some.

  54. 54.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    @Tony Jay: ​
      That reminds me Indiana Jones comes out today. We going to see it when the crowds ease because we love Phoebe.

  55. 55.

    trnc

    Does anyone have any special insight into the Forward Party? Just looks like yet another Andrew Yang vanity project to me. Their schtick appears to be “we’ll stand for whatever you want us to stand for” and their platform at this time consists of nothing more than figuring out how to get themselves on ballots. According to FEC filings, their biggest single expense seems to be to Gusto Payroll Services, which struck me as odd because it doesn’t seem like there would be enough employees to justify that. However, I don’t know enough about getting a political party started to base that opinion on anything.

  58. 58.

    Steeplejack

    @Another Scott:

    It’s not working for me with Brave either (Android phone).  Previously tried with Firefox. Maybe I need to delete my cookies and try again.

    Haven’t tried on my Windows computer yet.

  59. 59.

    Barry

    @frosty: “I’m an obsessive reader of Balloon Juice, TPM, Wonkette, etc and I have no idea who the hell is Cornell West.”

     

    An allegedly brilliant man, who did some allegedly brilliant work  any, many years ago, who has been *at best* coasting on that for decades.

  61. 61.

    Anyway

    @MisterDancer:

    RE: Cornel West — look, I can’t tell you how important West was, at one point. He helped set the stage for modern discussions of race in the mainstream

    Thanks for that backgrounder. Sounds like he was one of those academics that gets their ideas into mainstream discourse and the notoriety went to his head … what’s his beef with Prez Obama?

  63. 63.

    raven

    @Baud: The article indicates his momma wasn’t invited

     

    In a 2011 interview with Chris Hedges on Truthdig that appeared under the headline “The Obama Deception: Why Cornel West Went Ballistic,” West recalled his indignation during the Inauguration, when he arrived at his Washington hotel with his mother, and she noted that the bellman had a ticket to the event but not her son. “I couldn’t get a ticket for my mother and my brother,” West said. “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.’” Thus the left-wing critic found it unjust that the workingman and not the professor had a ticket to the inauguration

  66. 66.

    Betty Cracker

    @Cameron: Yep, I’ve seen it at Publix, and I see it on restaurant menus occasionally but never order it. Have you ever tried it? It has to be cooked just right or it’s like eating breaded pencil erasers. My stepmom knows how to cook it.

  67. 67.

    Baud

    @raven:

    Thanks!

    In a 2011 interview with Chris Hedges on Truthdig that appeared under the headline “The Obama Deception: Why Cornel West Went Ballistic

     

    Everything about that phrase screams trouble.

  68. 68.

    Amir Khalid

    I just tried to read the Malaysian Ministry of Health’s Twitter feed. No joy. There must be thousands of public agencies around the world who just got screwed over by Elon.

  69. 69.

    evodevo

    @Baud: ​
      Ewww! I’ma steelin’ that…(If it’s as bad as snake or mammal musk, it’s AWFUL lolol Elon has a lot to answer for and this is quite appropriate…)

  70. 70.

    Geminid

    @Baud: Now Chris Hedges is a West ally, and supposedly talked West into pursuing the Green Party nomination.

    Hedges has come down hard on the anti-NATO, anti-Ukraine side.  That war has had a polarizing effect on the Left. Now Greta Thunberg is denounced as a “NATO shill” because she laid the blame for the Khakhova dam demolition squarely on the Russian side, where it belongs. Thunberg visited Ukraine on Wednesday and called out Russia’s “ecocide,” which will lead to a new round of denunciations.

  71. 71.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Steeplejack:

    Following the thread, sounds like another breakdown.  It has recovered so far from each one, but the site is increasingly unstable.

    @MisterDancer:

    But I ask you to take on a certain amount of faith, if you will, that what’s happening now is a deep betrayal of what this man once stood for.

    I trust you on this.  I’m sorry.  It happens.  Some heroes completely lose the damn plot when they get big.  It can be soul crushing.

    @Princess:

    what exactly would he be doing differently than he is?

    He’d immediately take the site down, or remove the ‘latest’ function, or keep a big moderating team but give them way different orders.  This kind of erratic bullshit guarantees he’s just a fuckup.  Hostile to minority issues and likes to promote hate voices, absolutely, but doing it the incompetent fuckup rather than evil mastermind way.

  72. 72.

    Betty Cracker

    @Amir Khalid: In retrospect, it was foolish of agencies, institutions and brands to rely so heavily on a platform that could be co-opted by a greedy right-wing dingus. The same applies to NASA, the DOD, etc.

  74. 74.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Betty Cracker:

    I can’t fault them on this one.  You use the tool that’s available while it’s available, and it became important because the public was using it, not because the agencies intended it to be.  I say this as part of the “Fuck the bigot.  I won’t use his service.” crowd.

  75. 75.

    Betty Cracker

    @Baud: Maybe there’s an inverse correlation of the messaging hot potato! If you define “the left” as a group whose political views are significantly more liberal than the mainstream American center, the Democratic Party now represents them properly. (It didn’t always.)

    If you define “the left” as most folks on this blog seem to, i.e., as contrarians who define themselves in opposition to Democrats, they’re struggling with messaging because the party has co-opted the positions they used to employ as cudgels to beat the party they hate. So, all they’ve got left is anti-woke sputtering and a parodic anti war stance that is objectively pro-Putin.

  76. 76.

    Geminid

    @Baud: The Dems might still have a brand problem had it not been for the Georgia Senate runoffs. McConnell was all set to choke the Biden administration with austerity. That would have been bad for the country, but bad for the Democrats also because it would have extended intra-party conflict. Instead, legislative success became a unifier, despite the fight over linking the Infrastructure and BBB bills in the Fall of 2021.

    I think a smaller but still significant turning point in this respect was the 2021 Ohio 11th CD special election, when Shontelle Brown defeated Nina Turner.

  77. 77.

    Betty Cracker

    @Frankensteinbeck: Great points. I do fault NASA and the DOD for relying on Musk companies though. Hopefully they’ve been drawing up contingency plans since he started using his businesses to give his crackpot views policy heft.

  78. 78.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Princess:

    Adding:  Musk’s evil desire is to make hate speech as publicly legitimate as minority equality speech, and to force liberals to endure conservative harassment in the public square.  He’s been pretty open about it, he just speaks in conservative jargon and a lot of liberals don’t understand what stuff like ‘comedy is safe’ means to them.  Oh, and he especially wants trans women to have to put up with harassment and insults.

    It’s not the same as a plan to destroy marginalized community organization, even if it sometimes looks like that.  It’s barely a plan since it doesn’t require much calculation.

    EDIT – @Betty Cracker:

    I do fault NASA and the DOD for relying on Musk companies though.

    Valid.  Musk was always a flake who hoarded the right to impose his jackassery over good business.  This was predictable at least as a risk.

  79. 79.

    gvg

    @Geminid: Which Bill Clinton’s much derided now triangulation set the stage for. He knew you had to win to get anything done, and to win you had to have enough votes. The democratic party was at that time losing elections a lot by being just a bit too pure for all the areas they were running in. His views and compromises are now frowned on but I remember how close the votes were, and how things were before, and who asked him to get certain legislation passed. He stopped the losses and was able to veto some worse laws than what we did get stuck with. The electorate has changed alot, and many are too young to remember but not all.

  81. 81.

    different-church-lady

    But hey, at least the Supreme Court says white people can be his students now.

  83. 83.

    Geminid

    @different-church-lady: A New Mexico jackal described some bad experiences with this crowd while she was working for the Democratic Party there. That’s what she called them: the “dirtbag left.”

  85. 85.

    RevRick

    As I’ve said on another post, I’ve had a run-in on Twitter with this crowd of holier-than-thou leftists. They loudly proclaim that the Democrats have to “earn” their votes by adopting all their preferred policies. Okay. But they fail to understand several things about the reality of our political system and parties.

    First, that the GOP is straight up the white people’s party. They are about preserving all the power and privilege of white people. They accomplish this by opposing just about everything.

    Second, the Democrats, on the other hand, are a diverse coalition with contending and opposing interests. By definition, Democratic leaders are going to disappoint their supporters. These leaders will have to make trade offs and deals to get things done. So, the Democratic Party will never attain any sort of purity.
    Third, politicians like to get elected and re-elected. That means they chase after the potential pool of voters that will put them over the top. And if leftists consistently demonstrate how fickle and impossible they are to get, making them unreliable and untrustworthy, then Democrats will have to move right to find willing voters. But leftists never look in the mirror to see their part in this.
    Fourth, politicians really do try to enact what they promise on the campaign trail, because, again, they like to get re-elected.

  86. 86.

    Ken

    @Betty Cracker: But only the tail filets are truly edible.

    Have you tried, after catching one, putting it in a kid’s wading pool of water and feeding it cornmeal for a week? That works for catfish.

  87. 87.

    Ken

    @Princess: If so, it’s not exactly a way to make your site appealing and grow members.

    It’s also not appealing to existing members, and especially not to advertisers. “From now on, your potential audience will be limited to people who’ve signed up for the site.”

  89. 89.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @RevRick: They don’t want to be (one small) part of a coalition.  They want to rule it.  And they feel entitled to do so or else they will take their ball and go home run to third-party spoilers.  They aren’t serious about major change and don’t have the understanding, patience or humility to do what is needed to effect major change.

  90. 90.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @MisterDancer: What do you think caused him to go so off the rails?  Is it just ego?  I don’t know his history and haven’t read Race Matters.  By the time I became really aware of West he was already doing regular appearances with the odious Bill Maher and spending most of his words on talking shit about Obama/Dems.  So sadly, I never got to enjoy him before he became whatever he is now.

  91. 91.

    Steeplejack

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    I don’t think the Twitter block is a “breakdown.” I think it’s a deliberate effort by Musk to make people sign up for accounts so that they can regain access. Would be happy to be proved wrong.

  92. 92.

    Roberto el oso

    @MisterDancer: very well said! I own an autographed copy of Race Matters, from when West gave a lecture at the university I worked at. What I remember most was his engagement with the students during the Q&A segment afterwards, and he was by turns very seriously grim in his assessment of American history and culture and extremely witty and personable, and, perhaps most of all, he was very hopeful in his message.

    It’s a sad loss.

  94. 94.

    wenchacha

    @Steeplejack: Maybe already answered, but so far a workaround for me is clicking to comment on a tweet, which then gets a page where I can login or switch to the app.

    I don’t remember the password I used to join years back. Tried changing it, messed up, and got stopped from trying after too many times. Oh well.

    I will continue on, but I probably need to try one of the other sites.

    Can somebody give me the summary of the issues btw the Spoutible guy and RVaWonk?  It makes me less keen on Spout, but I don’t know the backstory.

    Also: Cornel West sucks.

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