[img]583|left|||no_popup[/img] Maybe hell can freeze over because if someone had told me yesterday I would be sitting here defending Tavis Smiley and Cornel West, I would have assured them that such an occurrence would only take place the day after Adolf could go snowboarding through the pits of hell.
One must learn to prioritize one’s demons. While Tavis and West constitute a bitter threat to the poor, middle class and black communities in their effort to enrich themselves through yet another tour featuring self-service, demagoguery and disinformation, it seems that the Washington Examiner has found another grinnin’ young deludetant in Ms. Star Parker.
In her article, “How to Keep the Poor Poor,” she says:
“Media personality Tavis Smiley and Princeton philosophy professor Cornel West have just published their latest contribution to American poverty propaganda, ‘The Rich and the Rest of Us: A Poverty Manifesto’ . . . To the extent this book is taken seriously by anyone, the result will only be more entrenched poverty.”
This Much Is True
While I make it a point never to go near the personal enrichment pamphlets of Tavis and West, I find no reason to doubt what Ms. Parker has said above.
She goes on:
“Smiley and West's message is simple: America today consists of a few powerful, rapacious rich people and a lot of unfortunate, exploited poor people. The rich are rich because they are lucky. The poor are poor because they are unlucky. And the only way to solve the problem is for an activist government to manage the economy and redistribute wealth.”
That is where the red flag went up. Even though I consider these two hustlers the quintessential demagogues, unless they’ve made a radical change in their bamboozlery, they never say that the rich are rich because they are lucky and the poor are poor because they are unlucky. For their flimflam to capture the imagination, they have to be accurate in their premise. Rightly, they point out that many of the rich are rich due to corruption, and many of the poor are poor due to social manipulation.
You see, Tavis and West understand that it is important to maintain accuracy, not to overgeneralize during the setup. That way, when they drop their false resolution on you they will seem reasonable, not clumsy and transparently idiotic as Ms. Parker does when she voices her corrupted version of their corruption of reality.
Ms. Parker’s spin on the Tavis/West resolution is, “the only way to solve the problem is for an activist government to manage the economy and redistribute wealth.” We know that is a lie because liberals don’t talk that way. The entire sentence is nothing more than a string of conservative talking points tied together “activist government,” “manage the economy,” “redistribute wealth.” Liberals have more finesse. The gross inarticulation Ms. Parker has engaged in has the print of conservative clodhoppers all over it.
A Version of Truth
Tavis and West would say something like:
“The majority of the rich (except for ourselves, of course) got that way through corruption and social manipulation. The poor are poor because Barack Obama (that jive, Johnny-come-lately-sucka who butted before us in line and won’t invite us to the White House or return our phone calls) won’t do nothing to help you. But for you Obama-lovin’ book-buyers, we want to point out that we love our dear brother. We're not saying vote Republican. Just don't vote for Obama. Let the Lord decide the election.”
Then they will tell us everything wrong with the country (primarily, Obama), but fail to tell us what’s wrong with us or them.
Ms. Parker goes on to criticize Tavis and West for saying, “The 150 million Americans in or near poverty are there as a result of unemployment, war, the Great Recession, corporate greed, and income inequality.”
What?
Is she denying that? That is one of the few things they are saying that is true.
Ultraconservative ideologues drive me up a wall when they look you in the eye and spew hordes of nonsense, inaccuracies and lies. Then they look at you as if you are crazy. How can anyone with a brain say we’ve got to keep the rich on a national welfare program because they are creating the jobs?
Can’t they see that the only way people are going to be hired to make tennis shoes is if the poor and middle class have the money to buy them? No one is going to hire anyone to make tennis shoes he can’t sell. It is the poor and middle class who create jobs.
Tavis and West may be greedy, self-serving bogeymen. But the Republican Party is the devil, and if Ms. Parker can’t see that, she is a fool.
Eric L. Wattree is a writer, poet and musician, born in Los Angeles. A columnist for the Los Angeles Sentinel, the Black Star News, a staff writer for Veterans Today, he is a contributing writer to Your Black World, the Huffington Post, ePluribus Media and other online sites and publications. He also is the author of “A Message From the Hood.”
Mr. Wattree may be contacted at wattree.blogspot.com or Ewattree@Gmail.com
