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A Portrait Of Cornel West – The Liberace Of Faux Intellectualism.

July 28, 2013 by  
Filed under News, Opinion, Politics, Weekly Columns

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(ThyBlackMan.com) Have you ever noticed that nearly every public pronouncement that spews from the mouth of Professor Cornel West is literally dripping with racial innuendo? His latest racist slander is that MSNBC is the ‘Rent a Negro’ network.

Professor Cornel West spews more racist rhetoric than any Republican in America. The reason for that is he’s essentially an entertainer who speciali2013cornelWESTzes in shock and race-baiting as his one and only routine. Clear evidence of that is he’s over the top in everything that defines him – he’s over the top in his personal image, in his overly gesticulative presentation, and his rhetoric is invariably inflammatory. Everything about him is a contrivance that’s specifically designed to bring attention to himself. The actual issues are meaningless to him. They’re nothing more than a platform to launch his performance. In short, Professor Cornel West is the Liberace of faux intellectualism.

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CORNEL WEST USES A FALSE “LOVE OF BLACK PEOPLE” TO SLANDER BLACK PEOPLE WHO OVERSHADOW HIM
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Professor Cornel West routinely uses policy differences as a pretext for making unsubstantiated and slanderous assertions about the character of the president and every other high-profile Black person who overshadows him:  .

1). President Obama is a “war criminal.”

2). President Obama is “a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs . . .”

3). President Obama is “a black puppet of corporate plutocrats.”

4). President Obama is “a Rockefeller Republican in Blackface.”

5). President Obama “has a certain rootlessness, a deracination.”

6). President Obama Is “Afraid Of Free Black Men.”

7). President Obama is “a global George Zimmerman.”

8). Dr. Harris-Perry is a “fake and a fraud”

9). Dr. Michael Eric Dyson “is a sellout.”

10). Al Sharpton “is a sellout.”

11). MSNBC is the “Rent a Negro Network.”.

Not one of those assertions is a disciplined and scholarly substantiated assessment of the facts. On the contrary, they’re the reckless and intellectually undisciplined rants of a bitter, self-serving, and severely discredited academic fraud..For Professor Cornel West there’s something ‘racially defective’ about every Black person who has the audacity to preempt Cornel West from the limelight. In order to gain clear evidence of that fact one simply has to ask oneself, what efforts have West made to try to improve the plight of the Black community?.

1). Is he in the community teaching 3rd grade to help ensure a better education for our children, or teaching at an Historically Black College or University to help “enlighten” young Black students?
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No. He’s never taught at a school that more than 1% of Black students can even afford to have lunch in throughout his entire career.
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2). Is he in the community teaching our young men to cherish, honor, and respect our Black women – the very womb of our culture?
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No. He’s out trying to sell books filled with inane and misleading information, doing $30,000 an hour speeches, and trying to become a hip hop star.
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3). Is he advising his good friend and business partner, Tavis Smiley, to be consistent with his sermons by being “accountable” to the community, and returning the money that he made on the Wells Fargo “Ghetto Scam” loans that he helped to herd over 30,000 poor minorities into?
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Nope, not a peep.
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So again, Professor Cornel West’s card has been peeped as the Liberace of faux intellectualism. So he needs to either put up, or shut up.

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

Comments

19 Responses to “A Portrait Of Cornel West – The Liberace Of Faux Intellectualism.”
  1. Thank you, Satchel,

    But I’m not taking the bait of people like Robert and Marcus (who don’t even have enough courage of his convictions to even use his own name, though I suspect he’s Boyce Watkins). I merely use their remarks as a springboard to pass along information like the following to thinking people:
    .
    Cornel West is one of the primary reasons the country is in the fix that it’s in. The Black community was doing pretty well under Clinton. Then during the 2000 election Ralph Nader and Cornel West teamed up and got Bush elected.
    .
    Clinton’s vice President, Al Gore, lost the 2000 election to Bush in Florida by 537 votes, and the Nader/West coalition peeled off 97,488 votes from Gore in Florida alone. So, again, West is one of the big reasons that the Black community is in the shape that it’s in today. Under Bush, the country was hemorrhaging 850,000 jobs a month. So by criticizing Obama about the condition of the country, Cornel West is like a guy who walks into a restaurant and shits on the floor, and then calls the Health Department because the owner can’t get it up fast enough.
    .
    And please keep this in mind – the worse the Black community is doing, the more money that Tavis and West makes talking about it, because Tavis owns a publishing company where he and West write books about it, a production company, where he and West do televisions shows about it, and he owns a speakers bureau, where Cornel West makes $30,000 a speech just to talk about Black misery.
    .
    And isn’t it funny that Tavis and West seems to Talk about everything bad that’s happening to the Black community, EXCEPT, Tavis’ part in the Wells Fargo “Ghetto Loan” scam where Tavis helped to herd over 30,000 Black and Hispanic homeowners into where they lost their homes AND their life savings? The Department of Justice said that it was the second biggest housing discrimination case on record:
    .
    “On July 12, 2012 Charlie Savage reported in the New York Times that Wells Fargo Bank agreed to pay $175 million to settle the discrimination suit which, according to the Department of Justice, targeted over 30,000 Black and Hispanic borrowers for subprime loans with a higher interest rate than for similarly situated White borrowers between 2004 and 2009.”
    .
    “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.”
    .
    Tavis Smiley and Cornel West’s outrage over those atrocities? Crickets. So they suffer from a sever case of selective outrage, at best.
    .
    http://wattree.blogspot.com/2013/01/a-question-for-both-tavis-smiley-and.html

  2. Thank you, jdgwisd,

    And I’m gonna have to partake of a littler of that advice that you passed along to Marcus as well. I’m going to have stop allowing mindlessness get next to me, but I have very little patience with clueless – especially when they try to pass themselves off as intellectuals.

  3. Satchel says:

    Eric.. Thanks for the article exposing Dr. West as a fake intellectual, that piece is great journalism, however you diminish your good work, when you take the bait of Robert and Marcus, by their invoking our President Barack Hussein Obama into an article exposing Dr. West. They are not looking for serious dialogue they are just being brats. Like I said, nobody takes Cornell West.

  4. jdgwisd says:

    Eric;
    I get tickled when those individuals who “say” they wont comment about what you write, then comment about what you write. Like you, I’ve sat among tillers of the soil of Black America and it’s wonderous and humbling when I have a child I taught speak about the things they learned from me in classes I’ve taught. Those seeds will be the measure of our impact to Black America. Marcus, you may not like the message or messenger, but it’s important to critique without rancor. The intellectual evolution of African America will occur when we can critique without rancor. The facts of Dr. West’s public demostrations have proven to the POTUS that he was right to steer clear of the “brother.”

  5. Marcus,

    Whether or not you take me seriously is about as important to me as news that a germ under a toilet seat in Uzbekistan decided to commit suicide.

  6. look it up says:

    Bush set aside hundreds of billions of TARP funds for Obama to have as a tool to combat the economic crisis. Almost 90 percent of TARP funds issued by Bush have been returned while less than 10 percent of TARP funds issued by Obama have been returned.

  7. Marcus Vessey says:

    Like I said Eric, it seems you are more interested in defending Obama than being the pragmatic critical thinker you profess. Simply acknowledging the complicit behavior of Obama does not necessarily mean you support the right wing agenda or Tavis and West.

    This is why I had to stop paying your stuff serious mind. If you would even that there are some serious legitimate failings in the Obama administration, and provide a legitimate and rational critique of the system as a whole I would take you seriously. As you never do, my opinion of you stands, the one I formed a while ago. You are a blind champion of the left regardless of its failings, and even a greater defender of Obama.

    Don’t bother responding. I wrote that as a farewell to your material. Peace and good fortunes bro.

  8. Robert,
    .
    Please tell me that you’re not so politically naïve that you don’t realize that those same corporations donate to the other side too to cover their bets. The corporations donate to both sides, man. It’s really scary finding out how uninformed people are in this country. That means they can be talked into believing ANYTHING – and the amazing part is, we have PhDs running around here saying things that any high school dropout would have known was dumb back in the sixties. We should be in a state of educational emergency in this country, because it is ridiculous how dumbed-down we’ve allowed ourselves to become.
    .
    Is President Obama a Slave to Wall Street?
    .
    Whenever I hear a person claim that President Obama is a slave to the corporatist Wall Street culture, I know immediately that he’s one of three things – he’s either ignorant, blind to reality, or he’s promoting his own agenda. Of course Obama is a slave to Wall Street – we all are.
    .
    You can’t live in this society without being a slave to Wall Street. But there are two kinds of slaves. There are slaves who are subservient and content to simply do what they’re told, and then there are slaves who engage in a constant struggle to free themselves and their people. So, while I’m not always happy with some of the day-to-day decisions that President Obama makes to promote our cause, I’m convinced that Obama is one of the latter. If he wasn’t, they wouldn’t be trying so hard to get rid of him.
    .
    The fact is, if you’re a casual observer sitting at home and keeping score based purely on your attitudes, prejudices, and feelings, it’s easy to pass your uninformed judgment on every decision that any politician makes. But the reality is, anyone who decides to go into politics has to be practical, and a huge part of that practicality entails recognizing the fact that you’re going to have to dance to the music that’s being played, and it’s Wall Street that leads the band. So regardless to who we elect, they’re going to have to have, at the very least, a working relationship with the corporate establishment – and ironically, it’s our own fault.
    .
    The primary reason that every politician in this country is forced to play footsy with the corporate establishment is because we, the people, are so lazy, undereducated, and disengaged from our own political well being that we allow the corporations to use money to control our minds. So the only way that a politician like Obama can even get through to us is by way of the corporate establishment.
    .
    The reason that money has such a large influence on our political system is because it’s used to tell us what, and how, to think. From the time that most of us get up in the morning until the time we go to bed at night, we spend most of our free time with corporate voices whispering in our ear. It could be the radio, television, or even the billboards that we don’t think we’re noticing as we’re driving in to work, but the fact is, they are all having a profound subliminal effect on our thinking and attitudes. They’re conditioning us to think, and to do, what they tell us to. Corporations spend billions of dollars a year to convince wimps with severe cases of acne and horrendous body odors that if they buy a certain kind of car, the beautiful model that’s sensuously stroking its hood, or someone just like her, is going to fall in love with them – and they influence out vote in exactly the same way. Thus, every politician must remain cogizant of that fact.
    .
    My personal favorite is the National Rent-A-Car commercial. They have a businessman walking through the air port in slow motion with dramatic music playing in the background. Then when he gets to the counter, they have the lady behind the counter making goo-goo eyes at him like she can barely restrain herself from jumping over the counter and attacking him. Then the clincher is, at the end of the commercial they have a deep, authoritative voice saying, “YOU DESERVE THIS!”
    .
    That commercial servers two purposes. First, it entices the traveling businessman to believe that using National Rent-A-Car makes him seem more important. But it also sends a message to the public – that big business is powerful, and that’s a good thing, so the concept of big business should be seen in a positive light because, “THEY DESERVE THIS!”
    .
    Since the public is manipulated like this 24 hours a day, any politician who doesn’t have a working relationship with corporations can’t survive. The reason for that is simple. The very same corporation that runs commercials on Monday that convinces an unthinking electorate that “Obama is a big-government socialist who’s trying to put a bureaucrat between you and your doctor,” can turn around on Tuesday and convince that very same unthinking electorate that it’s appropriate to create a government small enough to crawl up a woman’s uterus. That explains why we have people walking around saying things like, “Obama is un-American – he’s engaged in a socialist plot to insure my family’s healthcare and send my kids to college.” It sounds like hyperbole, but as we see on a daily basis, people are actually that brainwashed . . . MORE
    .
    http://wattree.blogspot.com/2012/03/is-president-obama-slave-to-wall-street.html

  9. ROBERT says:

    TO ERIC .HERE is a list of OBAMAS top donors.
    GOLDMAN SACHS
    MICROSOFT
    J.P MORGAN CHASE
    CITIGROUP INC
    MORGAN STANLEY
    GENERAL ELECTRIC
    IBM
    UBS AG
    TIME WARNER
    I stand by every word I said CORNEL WEST was right OBAMA is a black mascot of WALL st and his first act of his presidency was bailing these guys out and you can also throw in the auto industry.

  10. ROBERT says:

    TO ERIC .ITS very easy to verify who OBAMAS main donors were and we have it out his own mouth what his first act of his presidency was and that was bailing out the banks; you could not dispute my other allegations of war crimes so the only thing you have is one technicality of whether it was BUSH or OBAMA who signed into the tarp law as though it would make a difference.

  11. A Former Student of Cornel West
    .
    I recently found this comment sent to the Daily Princetonian on Google (7/31/13). It’s written by one of West’s former students. She comes to the EXACT same conclusion that I did about Cornel West. And her criticism has absolutely nothing to do with his political philosophy; it was written before most people even knew who Barack Obama was. The comment specifically addresses his scholarship:
    .
    A Former Student of Cornel West
    May 12, 2003
    .
    “I know you’ve gotten lots of response on this, but, as a student who’s taken Prof. West’s class, I thought I might chime in. Here is a letter I sent to the Daily Princetonian.
    .
    “I took Prof. West’s large lecture course, Philosophic, Religious, and Literary Dimensions of DuBois, Baldwin and Morrison, this semester hoping to experience first-hand the teaching of the man behind the hype. While I found the class entertaining, I did not find Prof. West to be particularly informative or critical in his approach whatsoever. Most lectures boiled down to animated though repetitive paeans to the authors, rather than a critical appraisal or contextualization of the material.
    .
    “Despite students’ obvious appreciation of Prof. West’s charismatic personality and gesticulating style, his acclaim stems from the histrionics he provides “on stage” in lecture, rather than the depth of scholarship displayed therein. If Princeton was looking to garner the publicity born of employing a fascinating personality, the “steal” of Prof. West was truly a coup. If it was hoping to improve the quality of the teaching faculty, I believe Harvard was the real winner in the exchange.”
    .
    Jessica Manley ’03
    Princeton University
    .
    http://wattree.blogspot.com/2013/07/beneath-spin-eric-l.html

  12. Robert, you said,

    “WE know that J.P MORGAN and GOLDMAN SACHS was OBAMAS main donors in his bid to become president and the first act as president was he bailed out their banks.”

    You’ve proven yourself to be reckless with the facts. So I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to document every syllable that comes out of your mouth from this point on.

  13. ROBERT says:

    TO ERIC. YES you are right it was BUSH who signed tarp into law but if you remember both OBAMA and McCAIN stopped their campaigns to show support for the bail out meaning if either one of them won they would carry out the bail out because BUSH was soon to leave office.
    OBAMA proves this by taking credit for the bail out in his first state of the union address.
    IN a article posted by [INVESTER CENTER] dated 1/27/10 reporting on OBAMAS first state of the union address the title of the article is a quote from OBAMA [BAILING OUT THE BANKS WAS NECESSARY BUT I HATED IT].
    THE article goes on to quote OBAMA as saying[A YEAR AGO WHEN I TOOK OVER AS PRESIDENT OUR FINANCIAL SYSTEM WAS ON THE VERGE OF COLLASPE EXPERTS TOLD US THAT IF WE DID NOT ACT WE MIGHT FACE A SECOND DEPRESSION ; SO WE ACTED IMMEDIATELTY AND AGGRESSIVLY]. IT goes on to quote OBAMA [SO WE SUPPORTED THE BUSH BAIL OUT BUT WE MADE IT MORE TRANSPARENT]
    I was not addressing who technically signed tarp into law I was addressing your comments on CORNEL WEST assertions that OBAMA [is a black mascot of wall street] and OBAMA is a [black puppet of corporate plutocrats].
    I am not a fan of CORNEL WEST nor do I know his motivations but he is clearly right on this point.

  14. Robert,

    You must get your information from Fox News. Try doing a little research instead of just running with whatever Fox News reports:

    “No, my friends, Barack Obama unequivocally did NOT bail out the banks!! For the last time it was George W. Bush and his Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson (former CEO of Goldman Sachs) that cooked up that idea, hastily sped the plan through Congress (most of which are bought off by Wall Street anyway), and signed into law. Yes, TARP, the Troubled Assest Relief Program, was signed into law on October 3, 2008, a full month before candidate Obama was even elected! When Paulson was pushing his plan, he wanted to give the banks the money with absolutely no strings attached as quickly as possible and with no oversight whatsoever! Thankfully we had a few good Democrats who had heads on their shoulders and didn’t allow $750 billion of the taxpayers’ money go to the banksters just like that. However, remember what did happen? Just a couple of months later and again a year later? With the taxpayers’ bailout money? Multi-million dollar BONUSES!!!! That’s right, huge bonuses for the very same executives who played Russian roulette with their customers’ deposits and investments (which was only legal because of the repeal of Glass-Steagall). Instead of being fired or investigated or going to jail for their crimes, these scumbags stole even more of middle-class America’s money and pocketed it, and it was government sanctioned. Once again, why do you think there’s an Occupy Wall Street?”
    .
    Jladeau

  15. ROBERT says:

    WE know that OBAMA has conducted countless drone strikes resulting in the death of over 3000 civilians many of them children.
    WE know OBAMA attacked the peaceful nation of LIBYA causing the death of 50;000 civilians the total ethnic cleansing of the black LIBYANS and the complete destruction of the infrastructure of the nation.
    WE know that as we speak OBAMA is conducting a war of terror against the innocent people of SYRIA. OBAMA has armed trained and financed the worst terrorist imaginable who are committing atrocities humanity has not witnessed in a long time.
    WE know that OBAMA has assassinated three AMERICAN citizens and one of them was only 16 years old which means he was one year younger than TRAYVON when he was murdered.
    WE know that J.P MORGAN and GOLDMAN SACHS was OBAMAS main donors in his bid to become president and the first act as president was he bailed out their banks.
    I know ideology is more important than facts to certain people but I will no longer sit by and allow people to mislead us without being challenged.

  16. jdgwisd,

    I fully agree with you. I grew up with brothers like West in the Hood. He’s a charter member of the Dime-a-dozen Club. He’s a weakling desperately seeking attention. back in the day we used to just slap people like West on the head and tell ’em to shut up.

    There was a rule of thumb in the hood – Never trust a brother who’s always trying to be the coolest thing in the room, because he uses so mush of his brainpower trying to maintain his image, there’s nothing left to think with. In addition, they invariably turn out to be weak, and snibbling snitches. There are a lot of brothers in the joint right now because they made the mistake of making someone like Cornel West their crime partner. If he gets caught, everybody’s going to jail. People with the character to ride their own beef to run their mouths as much as West does. He lacks character. Ghetto Wisdom 101.

  17. jdgwisd says:

    One thing that West and Smiley doesn’t understand is that in less than 3 years we will go to the polls to elect a new POTUS. Chances are, Mrs. Clinton will be a frontrunner. After the lack of political foresight these two have shown, do they really think Mrs. Clinton will accept either of these individuals as presidential cabinet material? Their ranting have dug their own social/ political graves. I’m a student of body language(the body never lies). I was not fooled by the “intellectualism” of Dr. West due to the lack of solutions to the issues that he raised. He sells sincerity too heavily with his eye contact and usage of the terms of endearment “MY Brother/Sister,” in attempts to disarm, then impress. He is a prime example of the saying from Shakesphere’s Macbeth: ” A tale told by a fool, full of sound and fury, but signifying nothing.”

  18. Satchel,

    From your mouth to God’s ear. But it’s really too bad. I used to be a big fan of both Tavis, and West. I’ll never forget, during the Clarence Thomas confirmation, West was testifying and some old condescending senator started talking down to West and he said something to the effect of, wait a minute, senator. I have more education than you do. After that, he immediately became my main man. But later, after I started seriously researching him, I found that it was all smoke and mirrors.

    Now I understand what was taking place. Cornel West came up during the time when their was a raging debate over the racist claim that due to the artificial boost that Black professionals were getting through affirmative action, they weren’t a competent as their White counterparts. And during that same time there was a debate going on over the claim by some White scholars that Black people were innately intellectually inferior to White people and the rest of the population.

    As a result of those debates, and the fact that West had an association with White ivy league universities, the Black community embraced West as the poster child for Black intellect without taking the time to vet him like we should have. It was that mistake that led to the flawed intellectual monster, and the embarrassment, that we have today.

  19. Satchel says:

    Eric..you can turn you attention elsewhere now, Dr. Cornell West is done, there is absolutely no critically thinking human, that takes Cornell West seriously.

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