The GHOST of CORNEL WEST - By Michael Eric Dyson

[DonViejo]

President Obama betrayed him.
He’s stopped publishing new work.
He’s alienated his closest friends
and allies. What happened to
America’s most exciting
black scholar?

By Michael Eric Dyson

APRIL 19, 2015

NOR HELL A FURY LIKE A WOMAN SCORNED” is the best-known line from William Congreve’s The Mourning Bride. But I’m concerned with the phrase preceding it, which captures wrath in more universal terms: “Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned.” Even an angry Almighty can’t compete with mortals whose love turns to hate.

Cornel West’s rage against President Barack Obama evokes that kind of venom. He has accused Obama of political minstrelsy, calling him a “Rockefeller Republican in blackface”; taunted him as a “brown-faced Clinton”; and derided him as a “neoliberal opportunist.” In 2011, West and I were both speakers at a black newspaper conference in Chicago. During a private conversation, West asked how I escaped being dubbed an “Obama hater” when I was just as critical of the president as he was. I shared my three-part formula for discussing Obama before black audiences: Start with love for the man and pride in his epic achievement; focus on the unprecedented acrimony he faces as the nation’s first black executive; and target his missteps and failures. No matter how vehemently I disagree with Obama, I respect him as a man wrestling with an incredibly difficult opportunity to shape history. West looked into my eyes, sighed, and said: “Well, I guess that’s the difference between me and you. I don’t respect the brother at all.”

West’s animus is longstanding, and only intermittently broken by bouts of calculated love. In February 2007, West lambasted Obama’s decision to announce his bid for the presidency in Illinois, instead of at journalist Tavis Smiley’s State of the Black Union meeting in Virginia, calling it proof that the nascent candidate wasn’t concerned about black people. “Coming out there is not fundamentally about us. It’s about somebody else. [Obama’s] got large numbers of white brothers and sisters who have fears and anxieties, and he’s got to speak to them in such a way that he holds us at arm’s length.” It is hard to know which is more astonishing: West faulting Obama for starting his White House run in the state where he’d been elected to the U.S. Senate—or the breathtaking insularity of equating Smiley’s conference with black America.

Despite West’s disapproval of Obama, he eventually embraced the political phenom, crossing the country as a surrogate and touting his Oval Office bona fides. The two publicly embraced at a 2007 Apollo Theater fundraiser in Harlem during which West christened Obama “my brother... companion and comrade.” Obama praised West as “a genius, a public intellectual, a preacher, an oracle,” and “a loving person.”

more
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/121550/cornel-wests-rise-fall-our-most-exciting-black-scholar-ghost

[JustAnotherGen]

1. Cross post it in the AA Group

[JaneyVee]

2. The only person that will ever satisfy Cornel West is Cornel West.

He should run for office.

[zappaman]

3. Exactly.

[Throd]

6. Eventually Cornel West would piss off Cornel West.

[JaneyVee]

7. LOFL.

[MerryBlooms]

18. !

Beaut.

[OKNancy]

4. this is taking me a while to read...

very long, but good!

[OKNancy]

5. companion article: Goodbye Old Friend

http://www.theroot.com/articles/politics/2015/04/michael_eric_dyson_tells_the_root_about_his_split_with_mentor_cornel_west.html

[sufrommich]

8. I've been reading the article by bits at a time

this is the first I've heard of this:


West said that when Obama “meets an independent black brother, it is frightening.” Yet Obama wasn’t too frightened to confront West. According to Jonathan Alter’s 2013 book, The Center Holds: Obama and His Enemies, at the 2010 National Urban League convention, Obama barked at West, “I’m not progressive? What kind of shit is this?” Other foul words were uttered, West added, and Obama “cussed me out.”

[Hiraeth]

9. For some reason I just gained even more respect for Obama.

[Paladin]

11. That makes two of us.

Cornel West is an obnoxious burn-out.

[JustAnotherGen]

17. It's why he's been after him for some time

Obama didn't do precisely what West said. MHP didn't bow down to him either.

[sufrommich]

19. Yeah, he sounds like nothing gets between him and

his ego.Yikes.

[m-lekktor]

10. aah, the New Republic(an), interesting comments trashing the author/article, I am surprised.

I figured everybody who reads the New Republic would be high fiving this piece!

[DonViejo]

13. Go read the TNR comments under the article...

you'll find what you "figured" is incorrect.

[betterdemsonly]

16. The New Republic/AN has always been the goto reference

for right wingers wanting to prove even liberals support this or that far right policy. In the 80s they endorsed the thesis of "The Bell Curve," a white supremacist book that argued blacks were genetically less intelligent, therefore all welfare, affirmative action and education money for blacks was a waste.

In 90s and the 2000 the provided democratic cover for the neocons and are still "liberal hawk" central for whatever new war John McCain and Lindsey Graham have dreamed up. Unfortunately, they are mostly Ivy League New Yorkers so Obama just can't resist trying to suck up to them.

[appalachiablue]

12. Both West & Dyson have my respect. Followed them for a while. Maybe I missed a

precipitating recent event or this article is a culmination of the differences between the two African American leaders. It's unfortunate, and the timing significant with so many widespread problems now regarding the level of racism, black oppression and abuse in this country.

[Mr Dixon]

14. WOW

Great Read, on point Michael Eric Dyson is one of the men i respect the most for telling the truth, i think i have seen every video of him on YOUTUBE, brought his book on Bill Cosby way before the rape allegations. I'm Glad he pulled CORNEL WEST nothing pisses me off more the people claiming OBAMA should do more for Black People, OBAMA should do what he can for all people.

[Hekate]

15. Still plowing my way through. Dyson is a helluva writer.

He's making me understand Cornell West and his early impact in ways I never had before. Wow, is all I can say. I've only experienced the public West as an embittered blowhard -- but he used to really be fantastic, and I'm sorry I missed that part of his career.

Sadly, I've just gotten to the part where West bitterly complained that he had not received tickets to the Inauguration-- after leaving a series of voice mail messages from a blocked phone with no call-back number. Dyson comments that he is all to familiar with that behavior from West.