Cornel West LOSES IT....Calls Al Sharpton a ‘Bonafide House Negro of the Obama Plantation’

[grantcart]

127. When he spends more time attacking AA commentators who have higher profiles

than he has rather than attacking those that are out to delegitimize the President and undermine AA civil rights its pretty easy to see:

A sampling of his 'opinions'

on Melissa Harris Perry:

but she is a liar . . . “There’s not a lot of academic stuff with her, just a lot of twittering,” says West, who added that her book Sister Citizen, released last year, was “wild and out of control". . . She’s a fake and fraud. I was so surprised how treacherous the sister was.”

on President Obama

I used to call my dear brother [Obama] every two weeks. I said a prayer on the phone for him, especially before a debate. And I never got a call back . . But then a month and half later I would run into other people on the campaign and he’s calling them all the time. I said, wow, this is kind of strange. He doesn’t have time, even two seconds, to say thank you or I’m glad you’re pulling for me and praying for me, but he’s calling these other people. I said, this is very interesting. . .


And then as it turns out with the inauguration I couldn’t get a ticket with my mother and my brother. I said this is very strange. We drive into the hotel and the guy who picks up my bags from the hotel has a ticket to the inauguration. . .

“He feels most comfortable with upper middle-class white and Jewish men "


and now on Sharpton

“Instead,” he lamented, “we saw the coronation of the bonafide house negro of the Barack Obama plantation, our dear brother Al Sharpton.” West went further declaring that Sharpton’s decline was “supported by [MSNBC analyst] Michael Dyson and others who’ve prostituted themselves in a very ugly and vicious way.”

Perhaps you were not familiar with exactly how West has been expressing himself because any normal well adjusted person can see that for West it has all become very personal and he is very bitter.

The most ironic thing about West is that he continues to attack other AA for "selling out" and not taking personal risk and yet spends his time in the safest academic seats in the plushest universities. A real risk taker who takes tremendous professional risks by taking appointments at Harvard, Princeton, and Union.

If you think that such opinions are unique then have a read of the American Prospect

http://prospect.org/article/cornel-west-not-helping-himself

The standard criticism of Cornel West is that while he started his career as an excellent philosopher, he gave that up in favor of just being a celebrity (West left Harvard in a dispute with then-president Larry Summers over whether he was pulling his scholarly weight, and while he still teaches at Princeton, he hasn't produced scholarship in many years). West would probably counter that being a public intellectual is a worthy endeavor -- bringing a learned perspective to contemporary debates -- and perhaps more worthwhile than writing dusty tomes on arcane philosophical issues that won't be read by anyone apart from other philosophy professors.

That's a reasonable argument. But West doesn't help himself when he makes statements like this, in an interview



Q:You lament in your book "Race Matters" that there’s a lack of black leadership. You're smart, very charismatic — why did you never become what we would consider a black leader in the mold of Martin Luther King or Malcolm X?

West:Well, one, it's because we live in an age where there are no movements. But second, and most important, I have to be true to my calling. Martin King's calling was to be a Christian preacher. Mine is much more linked to the life of the mind and being able to move back and forth. This weekend I was with Bootsy Collins at B.B. King's. We wrote two songs together on his new album — that’s just one context where I try to play a very important role outside the academy. But my calling is still one of being an intellectual warrior and spiritual soldier.

The problem here is that he takes a perfectly reasonable argument -- not everybody ought to be a political leader, and he'll make more of a contribution as an intellectual -- and embeds within it something almost designed to make sure nobody takes him seriously. Apart from the name-dropping, you just can't describe the privileges of celebrity as "play[ing] a very important role outside the academy." I'd like to hang out at B.B. King's house and write songs with Bootsy Collins, too. It'd be awesome. But if you think that the fact that you got the chance to do that means you're making the world a better place, then you've been spending too much time with famous people. If I said, "Last weekend I was at Clooney's, and we ate sushi off Jessica Alba's naked body, then later I gave him some notes on a script he's working on. That's an important role I'm playing," you'd think I was just about the biggest jackass you'd ever met. And you'd be right.

So yeah I think he is a bitter person, and a lot of other people share that opinion.