[img]583|left|||no_popup[/img]Re “Does West/Obama Controversy Constitute Airing Dirty Laundry?”
I thought I was done discussing the illustrious Dr. Cornel West, but he just won’t go away.
Meantime, he is serving a useful purpose. The Cornel West Saga has opened eyes in the Black community to the petty, self-serving agenda of some so-called Black intellectuals. Time is past due for community members to realize the only intellect they can depend on is theirs.
Once again, though, Dr. Boyce Watkins and other Black scholars are running to the defense of Dr. West, trying to defend the indefensible. Why? Is it principle or are they trying to defend their own stature? Are they attempting to cover up the fact many of them are idiots? If so, they should give up. The cat is out of the bag. I am loving it.
Standing up for Him
Yes, Dr. Watkins has written yet another article in defense of Dr. West for Your Black World – “Dr. Boyce: Tom Joyner’s Tasteless Assault on Tavis Smiley and Cornel West.” As the title suggests, Watkins doesn’t understand there is no difference between an ad hominem attack on the character of President Obama, and the same kind of attack on Dr. West. He takes the position an attack on the character of the President is a “critique,” while an attack on the character of Dr. West is grossly unconscionable.
As a columnist, I am accustomed to convoluted thinking. What concerns me are those who rely on the efficient thought of the scholars who engage in it. If you look up to those who engage in inefficient thinking, you will become a flawed thinker, a big problem.
Here’s an example. One responder to Dr. Watkins’s article said:
“Dr. Cornel West is easily twice as intelligent as Tom Joiner (sic). In fact, Dr. West is a genius and Mr. Joiner realizes this.”
What evidence does the writer offer? None. The writer confuses literacy with intellect. Intelligence is the capacity to assess and creatively manipulate information that literates merely regurgitate. All the writer could possibly know about the relative intelligence of West and Joyner is West's propensity to regurgitate. He knows nothing about Joyner's ability to assess and process information. The writer's thinking is flawed, just like the people he relies upon.
He is another victim of Dr. West’s corporate sponsors. Dr. West is a Harvard-anointed preacher, period. The writer assumes Dr. West is more intelligent than Mr. Joyner because Dr. West has been given the accoutrements of alleged knowledge, wisdom and intellect that the puppeteers confer upon the people they handpick for us to listen to.
Even as Dr. West runs around ranting about the corporate “oligarchs and plutocrats,” he wallows in the privileges those people have bestowed on him. The evidence is Dr. West’s outrage at not being given preferential treatment for Obama inaugural tickets over the guy who “carried my bags.” In spite of Dr. West's claims of being a man of the people, he betrayed an arrogant sense of entitlement and superiority over the working class.
His defenders try to fluff that off as an inappropriate slip of the tongue, but it’s more. It represents a rare, if not unprecedented, opportunity to see the innermost thoughts of a demagogue. Dr. West's remarks revealed he thinks he’s above the average working-class American.
He feels entitled is because he plays his role well. The corporate manipulators need people like Dr. West. His rants give people a sense help is just over the horizon. That keeps the people from rebelling. Tavis, West and others we think we can depend upon play an important role in our subjugation.
Their Devious Strategy
For the manipulators to control our minds and behavior, they create symbols telling us who has been certified for us to listen to. To identify who has been anointed, they give them robes, uniforms, badges, and titles that either look or sound impressive. If it weren’t for those symbols we wouldn’t know the “anointed ones” from any other fool. My son is a federal agent. I am sure when he walks up to people and pulls out his credentials, it scares them. To me, he still is that little boy who used to come cuddle up next to me at night because he was afraid of the dark.
How much reverence would you bestow upon a judge who was sitting behind the bench in a jogging suite?
I suggest people start listening to Cornel West. I have ever since he betrayed his ignorance by allowing Tavis Smiley to stick his hand in his back and sit him on his knee. An y intelligent man wouldn’t allow that to happen because he would understand the value of integrity and independent thought.
He certainly would not allow someone like Mr. Smiley to control him. Tavis is far from an intellectual giant.
I specialize in the use of words myself, so I have a good understanding of their power, meaning, and the way they can be manipulated to mislead. So when I started listening intently to Dr. West, I noticed he specialized in stringing together impressive sounding but meaningless phrases. It takes Dr. West twenty minutes to say what another can in one sentence.
Dr. West’s primary goal is to mislead less-than-critical thinkers into believing he is saying something significant, using convoluted phrases and multi-syllabic terms that never resolve into a cogent thought. The technique’s purpose is to camouflage the fact he is not saying anything.
Dr. West reminds me of when I was a young musician. We all loved John Coltrane. His mind was so quick. He strung so many musical ideas so fast that his music was extremely busy. That is why we tried to emulate him. I got to be good at it. Guys on the block who loved jazz but had no formal musical training thought I was a genius. They didn’t understand the huge difference. Trane was saying something. I was making noise.
That is Cornel West. The wooly hair, the shaggy beard, the over-the-top, super-cool demeanor. It is all affectation. He wants us to believe he is so deeply avant-garde that he is hard to understand, the Ornette Colman of academia. He is just a brother who makes noise and takes a long time to say little.
Listening to Dr. West is like eating rice cake. You can feel it in your mouth so you know you’re chewing something. It has no taste or substance, though. You might as well eat the box that it came in. Since many so-called intellectuals can’t see through Dr. West renders them equally suspect.
Before you run headlong into corporate-sponsored mind control, ask one question:
Can I recall a memorable concept or phrase of that originated with Dr. West in twenty years of public exposure?
Take your time.
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
Religious bigotry: It’s not that I hate everyone who doesn’t look, think, and act like me – it’s just that God does.
