Dyson is a liberal. Always has been.

That's what I meant.

Agreed?

He called Melissa Perry “a liar and a fraud". He slammed other blacks as well.

I don't think there is a right/left argument between the two.
It seems personal. He is offended at West's attacks on other African-Americans.

rather than The New Republic(a "liberal" magazine that devotes most of its time to attacking the left and has often been quite hostile to black activism, at least since the late 1970's).

Once you're published in TNR, you've pretty much joined the other side.

TNR has a new guy there.. Jamil (?) someone. I'll see if I can find it and edit.

Here... good interview: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/22/michael-eric-dyson-cornel-west-the-new-republic_n_7117904.html

And Larry Summers too? Brings up the side projects but mentions his lack of books or their ideas but "Leon Wieseltier famously derided West’s work as “almost completely worthless” in these pages 20 years ago."

Wieseltier served on the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq and was a prominent advocate of the Iraq War. "I am in no sense a neoconservative, as many of my neoconservative adversaries will attest," Wieseltier wrote in a May 2007 letter to Judge Reggie Walton, seeking leniency for his friend Scooter Libby.[5] WTF?

I keep continuing to find issues. The main thing is the MHP slammed began slamming him first when she was hired by MSNBC. Not sure about Al Sharpton but he was defending Obama too, same thing with Eric Dyson. He gets a job with MSNBC and not only does he start defending Obama he writes this hit piece defending his MSNBC colleagues. The "liar & fraud" may have been something related to issues where she left Princeton for Tulane but I'm not digging into that. Even some of her controversial statements which I agree with (similarities to Guantanamo inmates & American slaves) where made in the context of defending Obama. Her criticisms of him were "thin criticisms of Obama" when they are from thin.

I notice searching for the source -- "I love Brother Mike Dyson, but we're living in a society where everybody is up for sale," West said. "Everything is up for sale. And he and Brother Sharpton and Sister Melissa and others, they have sold their souls for a mess of Obama pottage. And we invite them back to the black prophetic tradition after Obama leaves. But at the moment, they want insider access, and they want to tell those kind of lies. They want to turn their back to poor and working people. And it's a sad thing to see them as apologists for the Obama administration in that way, given the kind of critical background that all of them have had at some point."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/13/cornel-west-msnbc-black-hosts-sharpton-harris-perry-obama_n_2121549.html

There is something very specific in that. Michael Eric Dyson says "Obama is not Moses, he is Pharaoh." not that I care who is a prophet or isn't but it indicates how far he takes the religion aspect of it given is PhD in religion but even on religion he comes across as condescending, disinginous, and selective.

So much ink is spilled on prophet all of it in the end to discredit him as a prophet so therefore we shouldn't listen to him and first thing he mentions he isn't an ordained minister, what he is leaving out that Michael Eric Dyson is an ordained minister.

---

West’s lack of understanding of the prophetic tradition is perhaps most evident in his criticism of Sharpton and Jackson. He berates them for their appetite for access to power, their desire for insider status. Even if we concede for the moment that this is true, it isn’t a failure of their prophecy but of West’s ability to distinguish between kinds of prophets. In his 1995 book, The Preacher King, Duke Divinity School Professor Richard Lischer noted that in ancient Israel, the central prophet moved within the power structure, reminding the people of their covenant with God and also consulting kings on military matters and issues of national significance. Peripheral prophets were outsiders who embraced the poor, criticized the monarchy, and opposed war.

--

I love how he concedes for the moment that this is true but too long to detail how it is disingenious. The irony with that statement is wouldn't Jesus be the "peripheral prophet" while whoever the central prophets were got things done were accountable, etc? Then he spins it with MLK that he developed or grew into this views when he always had these views or did so especially during those times. I'm not familiar with the pressures being an ordained minister comes with but I don't see how being compromised by an institution doesn't mean you can't be & obviously with the Larry Summers situation & now he is taking him down basically in the sense he counts more but it also comes with slams of the people he is supposedly defending. MLK waited to come out against Vietnam war basically he didn't want to jeopardize the Civil Rights Act which he said he wouldn't accept a "watered down version" & so many other things. His non-violent views were entirely logical in the sense that if there were violence at a protest the media would obsess over it rather than the reasons for the protests which was exactly what happened with the Memphis Sanitation Workers dispute. FBI agent provocatuers infiltrated, had a pipeline to the local media, committed violent acts which the media later obsessed over them. As you may know MLK was assassinated the same night on the day he spoke at a Memphis Sanitation Workers rally.

I don't know what his argument exactly is with that but it can be read that MLK lost his effectiveness when he became the "peripheral prophet" but it is clearly known he sat on these views but as soon as he aired them they were hit pieces written that appear remarkably similar but if they weren't effectively or weren't speaking the truth you wouldn't be seeing these hit pieces. What is unique is coming from someone who was very much the same way in rhetoric but when he brings up personal issues he leaves out an awful lot of information especially from the sources he cites. He cities a source, but he leaves out what the source also says selective picking and choosing in a case to justify his fall & the hypocrisy of it all. It is one thing to say Cornell West was a little harsh but I can't say he is wrong, this is something else "A hit piece wrapped in scholarly language" which is how I view it. I'm familiar with history of religion on some level so I'm aware of some of what he alludes too but he is more religious scholar than a scholar in the areas Cornell West is. He compares him to Socrates, Michael Eric Dyson would be like Plato but instead a Plato slamming the hell out of Socrates could you imagine the political pressures at the time? According to Plato (who wrote the book on Socrates) he was executed for "corrupting young minds". The obsession with what counts as a prophet or the variations is a simplistic justification when West's argument is they're kissing Obama's ass for the insider access when what views are being expressed.

As far as the prophet nonsense it explains Cornell West's reply which some slam him for not caring more about his proteges for slamming him based on lies. The red bold, there is a reason for that but there is no doubt Michael Eric Dyson can write. He cites his autobiography slamming him for name dropping of rappers which is a side project of his considering there are a lot of "Raptivists" which Eric Dyson wrote books on himself, especially Tupac and also giving him credit for a political satire which I never seen but from what I read is brilliant. That is like the best he has from an autobiography no less but uses it as his career is down the tubes even though Democracy Matters was a hit of the book he both praises & cities the conservative former editor's criticisms of the books. Bizarre.

You can't make this shit up. Do these people ever get out of the white liberal bubble and get out in the world beyond what is at their own front door?

They're all hanging back with the black panthers fighting the establishment and their media overlords -

We're all over here like - I just want the same things everyone else had in the good old days. Not asking so much.

Do you want a real answer or is your question every bit as rhetorical as you and I both know it is??

Keep in mind, this is the same crowd that calls black Obama supporters "Third Way" and "conservatives" blissfully unaware that many progressive, social movements in this country would have failed if not for black involvement. They still have this 60s, 70s mentality of the world and truly don't get that everyone has grown up and moved on. My mother was a Black Panther and she is a huge, MASSIVE Obama supporter -- which would come as no surprise to anyone that knows black people but will probably come as a huge shock to people that still think it's 1968.

All I can think of is how I had to drag my black friends to vote for him in the primaries. I realize that this was before he was the nominee but it has always struck me as odd that I had to beg them to support Obama over Clinton.

This of course is coming from a white liberal so feel free to discard my efforts.

not ALLOW this man to become president. They were wrong though truthfully, the polls made it quite clear that for the most part, white people really, REALLY wanted McCain and Romney.

Many black folks I know also said that if he did become president, that a lot of white people would drop their support for him at the drop of a hat and that a lot of other white people would lose their ever lovin' minds. They weren't wrong about that.

The sniping started on day one.

hypocritical cornel west.. as doing it from the "right".

I agree with MED.. that basically west is a whiny vicious hater stewing in his own juices. He disintegrates any points he makes by wrapping them in ugly, green eyed monster, hate.

23~

Other than that I like the guy. He's been a real leader in the justice movement. Including helping start the Stop Mass Incarceration Network, protesting against random stop-and-frisk searches, in anti-imperialist causes, and now in #BlackLivesMatter. He's been a real positive force in America. I'm glad there are fierce leftist critics of the liberal establishment. I can't imagine turning my back on Dr. West.

It personal. Michael Eric Dyson is not to the right of west.

He said "long before his intellectual" splits which he can't deny, there is no wavering there which cannot be said of Dyson who did make it personal by comparing Obama to Pharoah & certainly makes it personal here or the MSNBC colleagues but West's claims is they evolved into cheerleaders. I don't know former issues with MHP & Princeton but I may not go there, they were certainly slamming him constantly bringing up he is jealous. Always with the jealously but I don't buy it.

This is the source Eric Dyson cites & it is an intellectual argument

No one grasps this tragic descent better than West, who did 65 campaign events for Obama, believed in the potential for change and was encouraged by the populist rhetoric of the Obama campaign. He now nurses, like many others who placed their faith in Obama, the anguish of the deceived, manipulated and betrayed. He bitterly describes Obama as “a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats. And now he has become head of the American killing machine and is proud of it.”

“When you look at a society you look at it through the lens of the least of these, the weak and the vulnerable; you are committed to loving them first, not exclusively, but first, and therefore giving them priority,” says West, the Class of 1943 University Professor of African American Studies and Religion at Princeton University. “And even at this moment, when the empire is in deep decline, the culture is in deep decay, the political system is broken, where nearly everyone is up for sale, you say all I have is the subversive memory of those who came before, personal integrity, trying to live a decent life, and a willingness to live and die for the love of folk who are catching hell. This means civil disobedience, going to jail, supporting progressive forums of social unrest if they in fact awaken the conscience, whatever conscience is left, of the nation. And that’s where I find myself now.

“I have to take some responsibility,” he admits of his support for Obama as we sit in his book-lined office. “I could have been reading into it more than was there.

West says the betrayal occurred on two levels.

“There is the personal level,” he says. “I used to call my dear brother [Obama] every two weeks. I said a prayer on the phone for him, especially before a debate. And I never got a call back. And when I ran into him in the state Capitol in South Carolina when I was down there campaigning for him he was very kind. The first thing he told me was, ‘Brother West, I feel so bad. I haven’t called you back. You been calling me so much. You been giving me so much love, so much support and what have you.’ And I said, ‘I know you’re busy.’ But then a month and half later I would run into other people on the campaign and he’s calling them all the time. I said, wow, this is kind of strange. He doesn’t have time, even two seconds, to say thank you or I’m glad you’re pulling for me and praying for me, but he’s calling these other people. I said, this is very interesting. And then as it turns out with the inauguration I couldn’t get a ticket with my mother and my brother. I said this is very strange. We drive into the hotel and the guy who picks up my bags from the hotel has a ticket to the inauguration. My mom says, ‘That’s something that this dear brother can get a ticket and you can’t get one, honey, all the work you did for him from Iowa.’ Beginning in Iowa to Ohio. We had to watch the thing in the hotel.

<snip>

Obama and West’s last personal contact took place a year ago at a gathering of the Urban League when, he says, Obama “cussed me out.” Obama, after his address, which promoted his administration’s championing of charter schools, approached West, who was seated in the front row.

“He makes a bee line to me right after the talk, in front of everybody,” West says. “He just lets me have it. He says, ‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself, saying I’m not a progressive. Is that the best you can do? Who do you think you are?’ I smiled. I shook his hand. And a sister hollered in the back, ‘You can’t talk to professor West. That’s Dr. Cornel West. Who do you think you are?’ You can go to jail talking to the president like that. You got to watch yourself. I wanted to slap him on the side of his head.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/page2/the_obama_deception_why_cornel_west_went_ballistic_20110516

So the personal side of the betrayal was one of two arguments in 3 pages but the inauguration tickets wasn't the only part of it but it is odd Eric Dyson cites that page for the jealously stuff but cites Alter's book "Obama's enemies" for the Obama confrontation but like I said not the only story

This was maybe America’s last chance to fight back against the greed of the Wall Street oligarchs and corporate plutocrats, to generate some serious discussion about public interest and common good that sustains any democratic experiment,” West laments. “We are squeezing out all of the democratic juices we have. The escalation of the class war against the poor and the working class is intense. More and more working people are beaten down. They are world-weary. They are into self-medication. They are turning on each other. They are scapegoating the most vulnerable rather than confronting the most powerful. It is a profoundly human response to panic and catastrophe. I thought Barack Obama could have provided some way out. But he lacks backbone.

People personally, they are going to react, perhaps in kind. Calling people a liar in public that you supposedly respect is out of bounds.
Thank you for your response, you did point out many things to take in consideration.

2 words.

brave~

Calling Obama a "Republican in blackface", or Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton a "house negro" not okay in my book. Far too much of West's rhetoric falls into that category which means I can't take him seriously as an intellectual. He uses intentionally racialized terms to declare somebody else unauthentically black. He's not stupid enough to be using those terms by accident. In doing so, he's declaring his position to be the only authentic black voice. To me that's no different than somebody like a Pat Robertson declaring only his understanding of Christianity is accurate, or Osama bin Laden's understanding of Islam.

Also anybody who is arrogant enough to consider themselves a prophetic voice, I feel perfectly fine ignoring. But it speaks to why West really can't handle disagreement and so has to resort to petulant name calling. He sees himself as having access to some divine voice, but he has an increasingly limited ability to impact society and cause change. I'm sure that's intensely frustrating, but it doesn't mean it's okay to call people names instead of doing something actually useful.

He wasn't attacked from the right by Dyson. He wasn't actually attacked on political grounds at all. It's not about positions on should we increase funds going to majority minority schools, or how can we get more blacks to graduate college, or reduce the unemployment rate of blacks, or reduce income inequality on racial lines or any of a myriad of actually political positions.

He was attacked for becoming a sanctimonious self-aggrandizing ass who lost his way and descended into self-parody. Once West was reduced to using racial insults, he lost any actual claim to morality. Once West began to believe his own hype, he let himself become more important than what he claimed to believe in.

[hr][font color="blue"][center]I'm always right. When I'm wrong I admit it.
So then I'm right about being wrong.[/center][/font][hr]

Agree completely.

"He wasn't attacked from the right by Dyson. He wasn't actually attacked on political grounds at all. It's not about positions on should we increase funds going to majority minority schools, or how can we get more blacks to graduate college, or reduce the unemployment rate of blacks, or reduce income inequality on racial lines or any of a myriad of actually political positions.

"He was attacked for becoming a sanctimonious self-aggrandizing ass who lost his way and descended into self-parody. Once West was reduced to using racial insults, he lost any actual claim to morality. Once West began to believe his own hype, he let himself become more important than what he claimed to believe in."

Too bad that has to be explained on DU.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1187&pid=13851

From his high horse in Princeton he spits out vitriol. He deserved the take-down.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/04/22/the-sad-but-self-inflicted-fall-of-cornel-west.html

Dyson starts off by describing West’s animus toward the president as a love that has turned into a hatred so severe that it would make the heavens shudder. He mentions the times when West called Obama a “Rockefeller Republican in blackface,” on Democracy Now! and a “brown-faced Clinton” in Salon magazine. He discusses a moment when West told him, Dyson, that he does not “respect the brother at all,” referring to Obama. All this in the first two paragraphs.

As the piece winds its way to the conclusion that solidifies the end of their personal and professional relationship, a narrative of West emerges as a man of supreme intellect who thought that he had reached the pinnacle of African-American thought. West had even gone so far as to start referring to himself as a prophet. He believed that he was the voice that the black community would run to when in need of clarity. Dyson was one of those voices early on, so West’s fall from grace in his eyes is all the more striking. He was a self-anointed prophet, who has publicly lost one of his most significant disciples and a friend.

Apparently, it was the release of Race Matters in the mid-’90s that placed West at the pinnacle, and he intended on staying there for life. He did not need to publish new, thought-provoking works. His lack of output was disappointing, and so were his verbal attacks toward others in the black community, especially at MSNBC contributor and professor Melissa Harris-Perry.

Still, he potentially could have recovered from both of these errors. Yet he decided to rest on his laurels from here to eternity, and as he did so, time, unbeknownst to him, began passing him by. When Obama showed up, and politely challenged West’s idyllic place at the summit, West responded venomously to challenge this young, brash usurper.

snip

is read Cornell West for yourself. Reading a recap of Michael Eric Dyson he was very inaccurate of many things described, including the fact he called himself a prophet & went really far with his criticisms. He'd actually go further than West like when the audience turned on him when he said Obama isn't "Moses, he is Pharoah" he'd say "its the office" always with that to cover his criticisms so it wouldn't come across as "ragging on the man". Cornell West was more straight forward so I respect the honestly and it kinda explains why he escaped as an Obama hater now his cheerleaders are his #1 fan for writing this hit piece. You already have someone under the false impression that Cornell West called himself a prophet when Eric Dyson certainly did. There is video evidence of that but that isn't even what the dispute was over. This was it

“Character assassination is the refuge of those who hide and conceal these issues in order to rationalize their own allegiance to the status quo,” West posted Thursday, indirectly addressing Dyson’s claims—namely that West claims to be a “prophet”—without naming his longtime compatriot. “I am neither a saint nor prophet, but I am a Jesus-loving free Black man in a Great Tradition who intends to be faithful unto death in telling the truth and bearing witness to justice.”

<snip>

The source of Eric Dyson's recent column was inspired by West's claim he sold his soul & mention the tradition of black prophets saying nothing about himself being one so so much ink was spilled to say he isn't a prophet therefore we should ignore which was a success for the poster above you. That isn't the only thing



Prophetic Fire articulates West’s fundamental critique of President Obama. “With the black middle class losing nearly 60 percent of its wealth, the black working class devastated with stagnating wages and increasing prices, and the black poor ravaged by massive unemployment, decrepit schools, indecent housing and hyperincarceration in the new Jim Crow, the age of Obama looks bleak through the lens of the black prophetic tradition,” West argues. “This prophetic viewpoint is not a personal attack on a black president; rather it is a wholesale indictment of the system led by a complicitous black president.”

These are words of fire, and West deploys them with a passion and zeal that, at its best, recalls the activist spirit of Ida B. Wells, Ella Baker, Frederick Douglass and Malcolm X, the figures profiled in his book.

The more of Prophetic Fire I read, the more I find myself nodding in agreement. West’s past critiques of Obama have, at times, crossed the line of respectful discourse, but he’s on measured ground here.

Avoiding personal attacks, he takes aim squarely at the depressing state of racial and economic injustice in America, a nation he characterizes as being ruled by rich elites that actively crush democratic strivings and censor radical voices and visions.

http://www.theroot.com/articles/history/2014/10/cornel_west_s_new_book_black_prophetic_fire.html

For someone who doesn't shit for over 10 years also has a new book out that has excellent reviews talking about issues that I really can't disagree with.

There is The New Republic but its easy to say they have a new editor except when Eric Dyson cities the former editor's opinion of Race Matters which is a book he likes but includes his slams anyway to justify an overall argument but like the above poster said. If something is inaccurate, generally you'd discard the rest but the lies are already traveling all around the world before the truth has a half chance

This Isn't the Same 'New Republic'

The first New Republic I recall seeing erased me. I found it in my local public library during my junior year of high school; the edges were a little bit tattered. The magazine had put a blond, white teenager wearing headphones on the cover and called him “The Real Face of Rap.” People had been reading this, I realized, and I felt acid in my throat. The kid’s expression in the cover image hinted that even he was surprised. The boldness of the contrarian image and the declaration seemed intended to injure. And the article it introduced was not merely ignorant. It bludgeoned me with its wrongheadedness. Not only did I feel that the magazine wasn’t for me: It actively sought to invalidate me.

This was hardly an isolated incident of cultural insensitivity or obtuseness, as Ta-Nehisi Coates reminded us last December. The New Republic archives are rife with it, from an issue devoted to The Bell Curve to Stephen Glass’ inventions to the unconscionable bigotry against Arabs written by former editor Marty Peretz. But by the time the magazine, now my magazine, published its own examination of its racial legacy in February, it seemed to me that things had changed, and I had taken a job here as a senior editor.

I bring all this up because of the discussion that has arisen among readers since the publication of a Michael Eric Dyson essay about Cornel West on our site this past Sunday. The conversation has been wide-ranging, but for me, there has been one stinging question that must be addressed: Why, considering this magazine’s history of a white gaze and a white audience, did it appear in The New Republic?

I first saw that question in a post on my Facebook wall the night we published the essay, which I co-edited with my colleague Theodore Ross. Lamenting the harshness of the critique and the public manner in which it was delivered, author and Vassar professor Kiese Laymon directed this question at Dyson on Facebook: “You do this in the New Republic? This? There? Why?”

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/121641/why-we-published-michael-eric-dysons-cornel-west-essay

See, they bring up their past history of having racial problems as a reason as to why they needed to publish this essay which is incredibly divisive on those lines.

Sid

She just went to a conference some people didn't approve of(for the record, I wouldn't have gone to it).

But it goes without saying that, as a Jewish person herself, she cannot hate Jews or wish them collective harm.

I found a couple of quotes online, from a site(http://tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/186201/medea-benjamin-iran) where Todd Gitlin was questioning her presence at the event, in which she wrote a response to a person who had written her a letter questioning her presence at the conference in question:

First, this

I certainly heard things I didn’t agree with—over-the-top conspiracy theories and statements that I thought were anti-Jewish, homophobic, or anti-immigrant. I brought up my concerns to the organizers after the first day and during the second day as well. Some of my issues were addressed, such as clarifications from the podium by the organizers that the conference is not anti-Jewish or anti-Semetic [sic] and that it’s important to make a distinction between Judaism and Zionism. This was reiterated several times.

Then this

I was definitely uncomfortable, with some of the people in the conference, but I’ve been in many situations where I feel uncomfortable with attendees from a variety of political backgrounds, from AIPAC conferences to Tea Party gatherings to Muslim Brotherhood-sponsored rallies to Thanksgiving meals with extremely right-wing family members. I’m a big supporter of talking to all kinds of people, learning their perspectives, and sharing mine. During the conference days I was up until the wee hours of the morning engaging in heated debates with some of the attendees about their conspiracy theories, their homophobic views, and their rigid value system. Sometimes I felt like I was among people who were closer in ideology to right-wing conservative Christian groups, like Focus On the Family, who were railing against attacks on family values and have concocted the most elaborate and zany conspiracy theories.

Then this, which may explain why she attended the conference:

We should talk to our adversaries whenever we can [you write]. That means traveling to Iran. That means going to conferences with different kinds of people—listening to their views and having them hear mine. I think some of the people at the conference were moved by some of our late-night discussions. And I learned a lot, particularly from the Iranians attending the conference, that will be very helpful to me as a peace activist. Peacemaking is all about dialogue, Todd, with people who see the world from very different perspectives.

Having read these words, do you STILL feel justified in calling Ms. Benjamin what you called her?


The real issue, as I see it, the real reason some people are obsessed with using her attendance at this conference to anathemize Medea Benjamin, is that she doesn't accept the idea that being Jewish obligates her to be a Zionist. And really, whatever you can feel about the I/P issue, why SHOULD she feel such an obligation?

It was a hate Israel event, not just some sort of civilized "I just disagree with Israel's actions in Gaza" kind of conversation.

Here's ADL's take on it: http://blog.adl.org/international/iran-new-horizon-conference-draws-u-s-anti-semites-holocaust-deniers

I included quotes from her in the post you just responded. She challenged bigotry and hate speech AT THE EVENT. That may have been more effective(and certainly was far more personally courageous) than simply condemning the conference from afar, which would have been both useless and meaningless.

I'm not sure I wish to engage this discussion.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=6580480

but he has crossed the line many times into character assassination in his criticisms of the Obama administration. Dyson has the right to call him out on it.

West speaks truth in greater conviction, depth, breadth, weight, and volume than Dyson, Harris-Perry, Sharpton, and Obama added together, shaken up in a magic basket til it was seven times over.

Yeah, he was coming from the right using souldick Summers as a central point, taking his shifty jab at King pursuing peace and economic justice, and condescending and stupid it is with his stupid conspiracy theory of a petty rampage about inauguration tickets and how impossible it would be for someone to actually care about policy enough to illicit anger says more about him than it does West it feels like those motherfuckers as well. Not exactly policy but worldview? Rightist.

He's like the Donald Trump of the left.

is not so much about Dr. West, per se; rather, it's Dr. West is used by many on the "Left" in the same way that Clarence Thomas, Herman Cain and Dr. Carson are used by the right ... to give legitimacy to their attacks on President Obama (a Black man) ... and in the same basic context ... "If a Black man is saying it ... well ..."

Dr. West had said the same things about the bush administration, using similarly inflammatory and colorful language, in much wider forums ... yet, he was largely unknown to, and rarely (if ever) cited to by the Left, that now holds him as speaking truth.

If Dr. West was white ... Or, if President Obama was not Black ... Or, if Dr. West spoke of conditions and/or the lack of pro-Black policies, without mentioning President Obama; but attacking Congress, instead, the Left would have no use for him. My problem, therefore, is his willingness to be used.