Friday, March 29, 2024

Professor Cornel West – The Illustrious Mighty Mouth – Is At It Again.

July 11, 2013 by  
Filed under News, Opinion, Weekly Columns

Like
Like Love Haha Wow Sad Angry

(ThyBlackMan.com) It’s time for the Black community to wake up and fight back, because Tavis Smiley and Cornel West are killing us.
.

These two individuals thrive on taking advantage of our misery for their own self-promotion and enrichment. Problems are their business. They love them, because highlighting problems give Tavis grist for his television production mill, they give West and the rest of his speakers bureau something to talk about to generate their huge speakers’ fees, and pointing out problems under Obama generates revenue by making Smiley’s ALEC-connected sponsors happy.
.
As a result, when Tavis and West decide that there are not enough problems to sufficiently sustain their various enterprises, they incite them by indulging in reckless and divisive hyperbole – and at times like these division is the last thing we need.
.
These gentlemen are toxic to not only the Black community, but to America as a whole. Because, essentially, they’re serving as agents for the Republican Party, the domestic enemy of the American people.mrcornelwest-2013
.
This time Fox News is trumpeting that West is proclaiming that under Barack Obama Black people are being relegated to the Back of the bus. But, as usual, both West – and of course, Fox News – is failing to point out that the United States Constitution gives control of ALL SPENDING to the United States House of Representatives, which is controlled by the Republican Party.
.
We expect that from Fox News, but isn’t Cornel West bright enough to know that? If he doesn’t, he’s too dumb to be running his mouth as much as he does. On the other hand, if he does know it, why is he all over Obama instead of the Republicans? If we had to depend on Cornel West we would never know that while he’s busy bad-mouthing Obama the Republicans are leaving no stone unturned to reverse the Civil Rights Act. Hmmmmm . . .
.
While it is true that the Black community is in dire need, what we’re in dire need of is having people like Tavis Smiley and Cornel West to stop preaching us a sermon, and start living us one. If they were just half as prolific in finding solutions as they are in generating cause for division, we’d be half way home by now.
.
At this point I no longer even have to discuss the stupidity of Tavis Smiley, especially in the Black community, but with respect to Cornel West, he’s renowned for going around bragging to anyone who will listen about how much he LOVES his people. Yet, he has NEVER taught at a school that more than 1% of Black kids can afford to get into in his ENTIRE career. What’s up with that? If he REALLY loves his people as much as he claims, he’d be in the hood teaching 3rd grade, or at the very least, at a historically Black college. And how many Black students could he help through school with his $30,000 PER SPEECH speaking fees? He could pay for some deserving Black student’s entire college education with just two speeches – and, help the Black college that the student chose to attend, in the process.
.
Cornel West also joined with Ralph Nader to help get George Bush elected in the 2000 election. That created the very conditions that he’s blaming on Obama right now. Bush won the presidency by winning Florida by 537 votes. The Nader/West coalition took 97,488 votes from the Democrats in Florida alone. So West is like a man who shit on the floor of a restaurant, and then called the health department because the proprietor couldn’t get it up fast enough.
.
In addition, in July of 2012 the Department of Justice announced that Wells Fargo Bank agreed to pay a $175 million settlement to reimburse over 30,000 poor and minority borrowers who were targeted in what has come to be known as the “Ghetto Loan Scam,” in which West’s close associate, Tavis Smiley, is reported to have played a substantial role.
.
The New York Times reported that it was the “second-largest residential fair-lending settlement in the department’s history.” Yet, as much as Smiley and West love to jump up and down over poor and minority abuse, on this particular issue – again, the second largest case of fair-lending abuse in history – they’re as quiet as two church mice, or as Cornel West is so found of saying, neither one of them ain’t said a “mumblin’ word” – and with good reason.
.
Several articles, including one seeded on Newsvine entitle, “Tavis Smiley – “Ghetto Loan” Peddler for Wells Fargo,” closely associates West’s road dawg, PBS talk show host, Tavis Smiley, with the Wells Fargo Bank scam targeting poor and middle-class Black and Hispanic borrowers. The article quotes Kelvin Boston, host of “Moneywise, and Keith Corbett, of the Center for Responsible Lending, as calling Tavis Smiley “the big draw” of the Wells Fargo scam. Specifically, the article states the following:
.
“Smiley was the keynote speaker, and the big draw, according to Boston [host of “Moneywise”] and Keith Corbett, executive vice president of the Center for Responsible Lending, who attended two of the seminars. Smiley would charge up the audience — and rattle the Wells Fargo executives in attendance — by launching into a story about how he hated banks, and how they used to refuse to lend him money for his real estate projects in Compton, Calif., and elsewhere… But what appeared on the surface as a way to help black borrowers build wealth was actually just the opposite, according to a little-noticed explanation of the “Wealth Building” seminar strategy, contained in a lawsuit recently filed by Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan.
.
“Wells’ plan for the seminars all along was to target black borrowers for higher-cost subprime mortgages, not for wealth-building, the suit charged. And the seminars were a part of the bank’s overall illegal and discriminatory practice of steering black and Hispanic borrowers into riskier and more expensive loans.”
.
In a statement by Wells Fargo put out after the bank agreed to a settlement of $175 Million, they said that while not admitting to any wrong doing, Wells Fargo agreed to a settlement of the law suit because the bank felt that it was the right thing to do. The settlement includes Wells Fargo paying the Black and Hispanic victims of discrimination $125 million in compensation, and an additional $50 million in down-payment assistance to borrowers in the affected communities.
.
So the question that remains is, if Wells Fargo Bank feels that compensating the poor and middle-class victims of this scam “is the right thing to do,” shouldn’t Tavis Smiley, the most strident advocate of “accountability” and fervent crusader for the interest of the poor, feel obliged to do the same? Certainly, benefitting from the misery of the poor and minority community would run counter to Mr. Smiley’s zeal for the need of the powerful to maintain accountability.
.
We also asked Cornel West, who loves to talk about the “prophetic tradition,” what he thought was the proper course of action for his good friend and associate? What does the “prophetic tradition” dictate would be the appropriate action for Tavis Smiley to take in order to be “accountable” to these poor minority borrowers and the Black community?
.
As yet, we haven’t heard a word from either Smiley or West. So Tavis, West, if you REALLY want to perform a public service for the Black community it would be very simple – either PUT UP, OR SHUT UP!

Staff Writer; Eric L. Wattree
 
More thought provoking articles feel free to visit; The Wattree Chronicle.
 
 

Comments

6 Responses to “Professor Cornel West – The Illustrious Mighty Mouth – Is At It Again.”
  1. Ed,

    You said what I wrote is shameful, yet, you didn’t dispute one fact in the piece. So what’s so shameful, that I had the audacity to call out the illustrious Cornel West?

    As for why I’ve targeted Tavis Smiley and Cornel West, I made that quite clear in the piece – because they’re trying to pimp the Black community, while at the same time, they’re running all over the country lecturing America on political fidelity. In short, they’re two self-serving poverty pimps of the very worst kind, and the Black community has been suffering from the kind of dysfunction they promote for over 300 years. So it’s time to bring it to an end:

    About Mending Fences With Tavis and West

    Penguin Board of Directors said:
    .
    Hi Eric,
    .
    Thanks for the resources provided me on and off SmileyandWest on this discourse. I agree that relationships among the personalities mentioned in your write-up could be much better, if for no other reason, but the larger interests of the African-American community that they represent or claim to represent in one shape or form. While I have no qualms about calling a spade a spade, as my records would support, my strong belief is that this estranged situation would come to mend in the foreseeable future. I strongly believe that. As such, I am inclined to sustaining the optimism and fostering the prospects of bringing about that reality in whatever way I can. You are in a similar position to add something to mending the situation, without compromising your passionate pursuit of truth as you see and understand it.
    Sincerely.
    ***********************************************
    Penguin,
    .
    With regard to your comment on mending fences with Tavis Smiley and Cornel West, I don’t think the Black community should even try to engage in any mending relations with these two. These two individuals have clearly demonstrated themselves to be self-serving, uncaring, and toxic to the Black community. In addition the disease that they represent is one that has been debilitating our community and culture for well over three hundred years now. So it is essential that we be aggressive in stamping out that disease with dispatch, and in no uncertain terms. We’ve got to make Tavis and West a walking, breathing example of the fact that our Black community is no longer going to tolerate self-serving poverty pimps and turncoats in our midst.
    .
    And further, we’ve got to make absolutely certain that corporate manipulators can no longer use Tavis Smiley as an envoy to the Black community, and the best way to do that is to ensure corporations recognize that he represents a liability rather than an asset to them in our community. That’s beginning to happen as we speak – but of course, Tavis is blaming that on Obama instead of facing reality.
    .
    I predicted last year that Tavis and West were headed in the direction of Amos-n-Andy. They’ve succeeded in making such fools of themselves that they’ll never be able to make a comeback among Black people. So I fully suspect that they’re going to be relegated to the armpit of history in the very near future – and it couldn’t happen to a more deserving pair.
    .
    http://wattree.blogspot.com/2013/03/beneath-spin-eric-l_24.html

  2. ed says:

    This was probably the most worthless and biased piece of work I read in a while. Shame on even having this lame narrowcast obsession with one individual. Did he give you an “C+” on a term paper or something to justify your petty bile?

    Ok, Dr. Cornell is this “bad guy” versus who? So the other Black notables like Rev. Al Sharpton out there running their mouth, are they doing any better? You mention Dr. Cornell West but ignore the collective?

    For example, you mention the Wells Fargo scam..did you mention the part that Magic Johnson name was all over that crap and he branded himself with centers for some of those loans? See how you lose credibility sentence after sentence reading this nonsense and you are omitting other people and just want to single out this one guy like he took your girlfriend from you in high school?

    Overall, your bullet points and talking points are lame and ineffectual and carry no convincing or strong argument here to target one man instead of the entire collective. That is what is confusing that I think you need to explain – why you targeted just Dr. Cornell West knowing he wasn’t the only one or in most cases, wasn’t the primary culprit.

  3. Natalie,

    Since you have so little courage of conviction that you have to hide behind a screen name, I’m not going to even bother to take you seriously. For all I know you could be Joe the Plumber, or a different person every time you post. I don’t believe in ghosts, so having a discussion with one is ridiculous.

  4. David,

    The mere fact that people like yourself have been bamboozled into even taking Cornel West seriously as an intellectual is a serious indictment against our educational system. It also show how easily people can be misled. Any faction in this country can take any fool off the street and drop a few letters behind his name and give him a job at Princeton or Harvard and people will follow him over a cliff like sheep.

    Cornel West has been in the public eye for over thirty years, yet, he’s never said one thing that most people can quote as a uniquely profound and memorable assessment of reality. The man has been indulging in intellectual rice cake for his entire career. You hear sounds coming from his mouth, but anyone with any kind of intellectual acuity will immediately recognize him as an individual who takes a very long time to say absolutely nothing.

  5. david says:

    It’s the first time I come across your writing and I want to say I was not impressed. Your vulgar attacks on Dr. West miss the mark and are a disservice to a courageous black man who has used his intellect to speak truth to power. How disappointed I am to have followed a tweet over to this website. I won’t be returning.

    good luck,

  6. Natalie says:

    How did I guess the author? Smh!

Speak Your Mind

Tell us what you're thinking...
and oh, if you want a pic to show with your comment, go get a gravatar!