Dr. Cornel West’s latest rant against President Obama brings to mind the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes with an enormous twist. If you missed it, in a Truthdig column entitled “The Obama Deception: Why Cornel West went Ballistic.” by Chris Hedges, West asserted, “I think my dear brother Barack Obama has a certain fear of free black men. It’s understandable. As a young brother who grows up in a white context, brilliant African father, he’s always had to fear being a white man with black skin.”
West went on to say a whole lot more crazy stuff against the president, all of which was justified by Hedges. The response from the African American community, lead by West’s Ivy League colleague, Melissa Harris-Perry, was swift, powerful and true. West asserts that Obama summarily discarded him after heartlessly extracting all of West’s prayers and energy on Obama’s behalf. Prof. Harris-Perry correctly pointed out that the rift between West and Obama began,” not with a puffed-up president but when Cornel West’s “dear brother” Tavis Smiley threw a public tantrum because Senator Obama refused to attend Smiley’s annual State of Black America.”
I love nothing more than an intellectually stimulating and engaging argument. The one we’re having with West and Smiley, or the Media Minstrels, as I’ve dubbed them, does NOT fit that category. As Dr. Harris-Perry pointed out, just about everybody in the African American community knows about the rift that began with Smiley’s tantrum. Most of us thought that, with a little time, Smiley would get over himself and come back to reality. The ego based rift with Obama has just about isolated the Media Minstrels from the rest of the African American community. It caused a split between Smiley and Tom Joyner as well as with the Rev. Al Sharpton. Yet, in one of the most profound manifestations of “Who you gone believe, me or your lying eyes?” the Minstrels insist that their issues with Barak Obama center around the president’s insensitivity to African American issues!
There is a saying that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and the friend of my enemy is my enemy.” By attacking Obama, nonstop, West has joined the company of Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, and Rush Limbaugh. So, at least as far as President Obama is concerned, we have Cornel West, Tavis Smiley, Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh on one side and Al Sharpton, Tom Joyner, Jesse Jackson and the overwhelming majority of the African American community on the other side. So we are now treated to the spectacle of West, while questioning Obama’s blackness, agreeing with Beck, who asserts that Obama hates all Whites, that Obama is a worthless president! This Media Minstrel would have us rolling on the ground with side splitting laughter were it not for one unavoidable fact: West, like his counterparts on Fox news, has found an audience outside the Black community that believes him.
Chris Hedges filed a follow up column entitled “Why Liberal Sellouts Attack Prophets Like Cornel West.” Hedges swings back at West’s critics writing,” The liberal class, which attempted last week to discredit the words my friend Cornel West spoke about Barack Obama and the Democratic Party, prefers comfort and privilege to justice, truth and confrontation.” Huh? Hedges’ entire column is an abstract treatise on the lack of bona theoretical underpinning for the liberal class. (Whew!!) The bottom line is that Hedge’s response was to ignore the internecine argument that sprang from the African American community and focus on what he already believed.
West, like his counterparts from Fox News, operates from an ulterior motive that takes precedence over the truth. In West’s case, the motivation appears to be (1) jealousy; (2) the old “crabs in a barrel” syndrome, and (3) most interestingly, a symbiotic relationship with Smiley who shares a similar ego structure and through agreement with whom, an acceptable reality can be constructed. (Whew again!)
Obviously that last sentence needs a bunch of explanation/deconstruction. I started this blog by saying West’s rant was reminiscent of the Emperor’s New Clothes, but with an enormous twist. The lie that the emperor was dressed worked because people agreed with it. When a child disagreed, the illusion fell apart. West has dressed up his childish jealousy of the first African American president in robes of intellectual pursuit of a higher goal of a more humane society. But the African American community had told him that we see there is no robe there. Yet he persists. He and Smiley need each other to agree that the robe exists; so they won’t have to face the reality of who they really are.
Like the original Emperor’s New Clothes, the West rant against Obama also carries a lesson. I don’t know if West has gotten to the point where he believes his own rationalizations yet. If he hasn’t, he will. The more one can justify one’s one actions and attitudes, no matter how many people try to point to an alternative perspective, the more divorced, or disconnected, one becomes from one’s true self, and ultimately one’s own mental health. I’ve been preaching for more than two decades now that the worst lie one can tell, is the one that is told to self. Only through brutal honesty with ourselves can we begin to understand that we empower ourselves by working for that which is greater than ourselves. One would think that a minister like West would understand that.
This blog highlights the issue of self-hatred among African American intellectuals.
ReplyDeleteOnce again, my brother, you've said a mouthful. One wonders what it will take for the media minstrels to abandon their ego-driven efforts to discredit Obama. Then again, they're so delusional they've convinced themselves that they're speaking "truth to power" and will probably never be shamed into halting.
ReplyDeleteHi Mr. Griggs. I read your book when I was about 11 or 12 I think. It is still one of my all time favorites to this day and I have read over 3,000 by now being 48. I agree with your assessment: Obama is the Man and Cornell West is insane for not supporting Obama.
ReplyDeleteHenry G Castleberry