CORNEL WEST ATTACKS OBAMA WHILE WEARING EMPEROR'S NOW CLOTHES

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.

OBAMA, OSAMA, AND SOME STRANGE REACTIONS

            Well, Barak has done in two years what his predecessor failed to do in eight:  killed Osama bin Laden.  Finally.  Bin Laden was such a larger than life villain that it’s difficult to unravel all of the visceral, intellectual and political fallout of his demise.

            Bin Laden provided America with a unifying enemy.  We have become accustomed to other countries and organizations hating America- not for our freedoms as the former president George Bush would have had us believe – but because of American imperialism.  The United States was always the big bully who consistently backed dictators like the Duvaliers in Haiti and the Shah of Iran while proclaiming itself to be the world’s beacon of freedom.   African Americans were always there to play the Devil’s Advocate-to provide context and point out the other side- when the media just could not understand why the rest of the world wasn’t ready to drink American bathwater.  It wasn’t that we weren’t patriotic.  We just wanted to hold our nation to a higher moral standard.  Even when the Iranians took American hostages, they let the African Americans and the women go as a gesture of understanding that these two groups had no influence on American imperialism.  We did not agree with the hostage taking and wanted our fellow Americans home as badly as everyone else.  But we also got the message.  This “getting of the message” that often was lost on an otherwise tone deaf America had been a large part of the dualism of African Americans: in it, but in so many ways, not of it.

            Osama came along and changed all of that.   ALL Americans were infidels  whom bin Laden would gladly kill.  Osama’s bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998  killed over two hundred people, most of them innocent Africans. The one thing all religious lunatics- those who feel ordained by God to determine who shall live and who shall die- is that, in their minds, with that great God derived authority comes absolution for any and all collateral damage in their quest to purify the world.   

            The bottom line is that people who kill in the name of God are evil.  The very concept of a holy war, or jihad, is an oxymoron.  It does not matter whether the “holy war” was carried out by Christians, such as the Crusades, or Muslims such as today’s terrorists, evil must be identified for what it is. 

President’s role must be lauded

            I once wrote that the discipline required to have a proper relationship with a woman was, “The kind that will allow you to love fully, …and at the same time remain willing to lose that person if it is in her best interest.”  The point being that to be worthy of something, particularly something or someone whom you cherish, you must be willing to let go.  We have seen countless times, especially since the rise of Obama, politicians willing to do or say anything to hold on to their offices, and in the process proving themselves unworthy.  Yet, in ordering this bold raid, Obama clearly put his presidency on the line.  With all the things that could have gone wrong, if the mission had failed, his chances for reelection would have been obliterated along with any hope for effective governing for the duration of this term.  Having seen what happened to President Jimmy Carter when the rescue attempt in Iran failed, Obama knew the risk and did it anyway.

            During the aftermath of bin Laden’s quite timely death, the president’s detached analytical skills-for which he has been roundly and constantly criticized- served him well as he avoided any hint of celebration and ordered that the body be cleaned in accordance with Muslim law.  Having pulled off the killing of bin Laden- especially after having been labeled as soft on terrorism as all democrats are labeled- President Obama wanted to click his heels in mid-air- feed bin Laden’s remains to the dogs, and have an all night boogie down party!  He refused to release the photos of bin Laden’s remains to avoid inciting any further reaction against the U.S.  I have been critical of the president in the past for his propensity to take so much racist abuse and not fight back.  But on this occasion, I can only admire the tremendous discipline he exhibited in the aftermath of taking down the most wanted, and allegedly elusive- man on the entire planet.  I probably would have done a line dance up to the podium with James Brown blaring, stuck out my chest, fat-mouthed, and got a whole ton more Americans killed!

Media notes, quotes ruminations and examinations

            In the wake of bin Laden’s demise, we cannot forget that over three hundred people have been lost in the tornadoes that devastated Alabama. …

            “You don’t have to be a racist to be a Republican.  But if you are a racist, you’re probably a Republican.”  Bill Maher

            Fox news contributor, Bernard Goldberg, complained that the word “racism” is being thrown around so casually regarding Trump and the Birthers.  For right wingers the only racism that exists is the kind that incessantly victimizes White people.  I’m amazed there are any White people left, considering the horrible ordeals that African Americans, Native Americans, and everybody else has put them through.  

            Give them credit.  Only real right wing republicans can be completely predictable and shocking at the same time.  Sarah Palin thanked George Bush for killing bin Laden, which when you consider that she thought the North Koreans were our allies, could not name a single publication she reads, and considers seeing Russia from Alaska as proof of foreign policy acumen, … when you consider all that- it’s not surprising that no one told her Bush is no longer in office!

            Finally, I can’t leave the zany right wingers without a nod to the ultimate prince of racism; a man who loves the truth as much as he loves people of color: Rush Limbaugh.  Rush provided  sarcastic praise for the president.  But when he removed his tongue from his cheek, he complained bitterly that the president had used the personal pronoun “I” too much and was taking too much credit.  Seems no matter what the president does, he will never, ever, please Rush Limbaugh.  Just who does Limbaugh think he is anyway … Tavis Smiley?