Awesome: Cornel West

[Andrew.]

Marsupialized and MBA Wood Goblin (and Democratic Wall St magnet Larry Summers) on the same page. You three should form a band.

West at the Occupy Wall St protest:

[BClark]

yeah, he's great. he's stopped by my hometown of newark a whole bunch of times, endorsed and stood up for corey booker when booker was running against the notoriously corrupt and entrenched 20+ year incumbent mayor, shape james. booker at the time was, almost on a daily basis, being unfairly slandered by james as an "uncle tom" or even a "white" candidate (being that he is only half black). so it helped that west stood up for him and helped expose james's craziness. west's visit at the time was shown in the (rather good) documentary "street fight" which covered the election.

his speaking against obama's being awarded the nobel peace prize (as several others did -- tariq ali, noam chomsky, lech walesa, fidel castro who proposed that evo morales receive it instead) was great, and obviously can be recognized now, in hindsight, as having been highly prescient at the time.

i recently saw that he had been kind of taken in by the anti-cuba crowd, which seemed a shame at first. but then i read what he actually had to say, and it turns out his criticisms are mostly valid, and he explicitly stops far short of the rabid anti-castro/pro-embargo drivel that the rest of that crowd routinely spouts. he still favors normalization of US-Cuba relations, opposes the embargo, and speaks highly of the historically strong relations between cuba and african american activists.

he flew to haiti during the 2004 coup to investigate, and was one of the few international figures who remained standing behind aristide through the coordinated assault on haitian democracy. this was being incredibly courageous in a time of insanity and brutally violent, racist, anti-democratic, US-sanctioned horror. by going there, he arguably risked his life (as there were widespread assassinations of anyone remotely associated with aristide's lavalas party) and surely his reputation (taking into account just how cowed the rest of US intellectuals were on the subject).

i remember reading his account of this one time he had a spirited dispute with amiri baraka (also from newark), whose writing i am a big fan of. if west's account is to be taken at face value, i must admit baraka was rather unfairly harsh towards him imo, but west spoke kindly of him nonetheless.

[etch]

This interview (with Francis Fox Piven) was from back in the spring but it's excellent and still pertinent.

[etch]

"Stop complaining."

[all_ages]

That whole episode was an unfortunate, bogus, media-driven narrative. Rachel Maddow did a really good job of debunking it.

I've been a fan of West for a decade, especially his early work in "Prophesy Deliverance". Some of his recent statements about Obama have been beneath him, unworthy of a dude of his intellectual stature, and seem oddly personal, as though he felt personally snubbed by West. This falls into that category.

[Superking]

Here's his speech from Friday night at Left Forum. It was awesome.

Hey. I know Everybody in the Modern World has a video camera in their pocket these days, but would it be too much to ask to put one of them on a tripod for great speeches like the one above?

Seriously, it wouldn't take much. A half-decent video camera, some "sticks", an audio feed into the camera from the A/V guy.

I like Cornel West.

[Andrew.]

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[etch]

Cornel West was arrested today in DC.

[Andrew.]

Cornel West was arrested today in DC.

[Mason]

Cornel West responding to Bill O'Reilly's claim that no one on Wall St. has committed any crimes:

[Clyde]

Of his books, I've only read Race Matters which still seems important and relevant. I've seen him speak publicly once and he was very engaging, particularly after following the bone dry, difficult-to-understand Habermas.

I think it's great that he's an honest to goodness public intellectual, one with quite a bit of name recognition at that. But I wish he'd focus more on scholarship than his celebrity. His album was embarrassing for everyone. Also, he was in The Matrix trilogy and wrote some dumb essays about the films that are far below someone of his intellect. I don't begrudge intellectuals for engaging with popular culture necessarily but West's forays into it strike me as a mixture of self-aggrandizement and a rehash of the same sort of hokum the Cult Studs were pushing in the early 90s.

Overall, not crap.

[caset]

pic from inside jail cell yesterday, when he was arrested at a protest of "stop and frisk."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/30-including-professor-cornel-west-arrested-outside-nyc-police-station-in-stop-frisk-protest/2011/10/21/gIQAJLen4L_story.html

[skoz]

I got stuck in an elevator with Dr. West,Winona Ryder and Keanu Reeves once. He was pretty hilarious and friendly. NC

[E. Norma Stitz]

His new radio show with Travis Smiley has been good the few times I've heard it.

It's a good show - there's often something of value for NPR listeners. I think it's funny how the show breaks down from the seriousness once in a while to bust balls.

Cornel West is all horse-sense - that's what I like. And he's clearly a sweet old cat with love in his heart. And he's a ball-buster. What's not to like?

[Antero]

I got stuck in an elevator with Dr. West,Winona Ryder and Keanu Reeves once. He was pretty hilarious and friendly. NC

It is storytime, skoz.

[skoz]

I got stuck in an elevator with Dr. West,Winona Ryder and Keanu Reeves once. He was pretty hilarious and friendly. NC

It is storytime, skoz.

Not much of a story, I worked on a movie they were all in. The cast and crew were staying in the same hotel so we'd run each other outside of work. I don't get particularly starstruck but It was pretty surreal being in a confined space with that particular combination of people, as in "gee, I have a weird job/life."

[BClark]

the shoving match between him and larry summers (and the media coverage of it) is rather interesting and, in my opinion, telling as to the present state of higher education institutions and their relation to the world outside their campuses.

[etch]

The Rich and the Rest of Us.

[Andrew.]

The Rich and the Rest of Us.

Excellent.

[Cranius]

Cornel West has a beautiful mellifluous speaking voice, I love everything he has to say here about life, death, music and intellectualism here (at 37:00):

Adorno says that the condition of truth is to allow suffering to speak